FairPoint Communications is, by its own account, already ahead of schedule in its integration of former Verizon Communications properties it acquired in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The is particularly the case on the back office, where FairPoint said on a conference call late last week it already had spent about $120 million ($40 million of it contributed by Verizon) to integrate 17 billing platforms. It has added 220 employees to manage the transition. Though FairPoint still will pay $16.5 million per month until September to use Verizon's back office systems, the telco said it has already completed about 18 months worth of transition work on what was expected to be a 24-month overall integration project. If the integration continues well ahead of schedule, it will end up taking about half the time it took for this deal to get necessary regulatory approvals and be completed.
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- see this story at Telephony