Frontier appears to have hit another milestone in moving to acquire Verizon's rural lines as Verizon Northwest received all local franchise approvals in Washington State and Oregon. These approvals are one of many necessary steps Frontier needs to meet in order to proceed with its acquisition of Verizon's operations.
In addition to other independent authorities, three cable consortia--Metropolitan Area Cable Commission (MACC); the Mount Hood Cable Regulatory Commission (MHCRC); and the Verizon/Frontier Transfer Consortium in Washington--approved the transfer of the cable franchises to Frontier.
Interestingly, this latest approval comes months after staffers at both the Oregon and Washington state argued regulators should not approve the deal because of concerns over the amount of debt that Frontier would have to shoulder when the deal is completed. Of course, Frontier is far from making its acquisition a done deal. The ILEC still needs to get approvals from The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, The Oregon PUC, utility regulators in four other states as well as the FCC. With the exception of Washington, which will hold their hearings next week, Frontier has completed hearings with every state of the purchased affects.
For more:
- see the release here
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