FairPoint has Reached an Agreement with its Bank Lenders that will Restructure its Costs and Balance Sheet
As a leading provider of a full range of communications services, FairPoint Communications provides local and long distance voice, data service, Internet, television and broadband services. FairPoint operates 32 local exchange companies in 18 states with 1.7 million access lines. Like many companies, FairPoint has been impacted by the recent turmoil in the financial markets. As we have shared with many of our stakeholders, we have been working with our bank lenders to reduce our debt. We are pleased to announce FairPoint has succeeded in reaching a pre-arranged deal with our bank lenders that will reduce our debt in excess of $1.7 billion. We have entered Chapter 11 to implement this deal and restructure our costs and balance sheet. This is good news and we are confident that FairPoint will emerge as a much healthier and more viable company structured for future growth and profitability.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and Communication Workers of America (CWA) announced Friday that FairPoint was on the brink of bankruptcy.
As the unions have consistently maintained, FairPoint's problems were caused primarily by its crushing debt and an organizational chaos that adversely affected revenues and operations. Despite waging an all out campaign to oppose the sale, thousands of former Verizon workers have spent the last year-and-a-half working to make their new company succeed.
If you're not already a regular reader of Vermont Newsguy, which we've had in our blogroll for some time now, you should hop over and read today's post on how Verizon Wireless is cozying up to the climate change deniers.
You may have read about it on Facebook, but VNG has the whole story right here, along with some pointed, and very well-founded, criticism of news bias over at WCAX.
Democratic candidate for Governor Scudder Parker has been in a serious hole. Atrocious name recognition, limited funds, and he can't get press to pay him any attention... until today, that is, when Parker brought the NSA domestic spying issue home for Vermonters and finally made the Times Argus step up and take notice:
"I have asked my campaign staff to investigate whether the Bush administration's warrantless spying activities, and the action of telecommunication companies involved in these disclosures, may have violated any Vermont laws, and if so, what actions have been taken to protect the rights of the citizens of this state," Scudder Parker wrote in a draft of a letter to David O'Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service.
The fact is that it's going to be much harder for Douglas to claim that Bush (and his association with him) are irrelevant to the election this time than it was two years ago, when Douglas laughed off any attempts by Clavelle to draw a linkage -- and was gleefully joined by his plentiful allies in the Vermont Press. The excesses of the Bush administration are too pervasive, too omnipresent.
And Douglas knows it. That's why he stands up quickly to inoculate himself, rather than dismiss it out of hand.
Jason Gibbs, a spokesman for Gov. James Douglas, said the governor had ordered O'Brien to determine if Verizon's actions violated Vermont law immediately after hearing that Verizon had shared phone records with the NSA.
Things will have to change quickly for Parker to have a chance in this, but now that George Bush will be on the debate stage with him and Douglas, anything is possible.
