Telecompetitor

Frontier Communications proposed purchase of Verizon rural wireline operations has received approval from state regulatory agencies in California, Nevada and South Carolina, Verizon announced Thursday.

Verizon on May 13 announced that Frontier had agreed to purchase local wireline operations serving residential and small business customers primarily in small to medium-sized areas in 14 states.  Serving approximately 4.8 million local access lines as of year-end 2008, the acquisition is more than double the 2.3 million access lines in 24 states Stamford, Ct.-based Frontier owned at that time.  In addition to the local access lines, the sale-purchase includes 2.2 million long distance customers and 1 million high-speed data customers, which in turn includes about 110,000 FiOS Internet and 69,000 FiOS TV customers.

The FCC and state regulators in Arizona, Illinois, Ohio, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia still have to sign off on the deal.  The FCC and Dept. of Justice granted the two companies’ request to “early termination” of the waiting period required as per the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.

Frontier has received cable television franchise approval from 10 of the 41 communities it will serve in Oregon and Washington, according to the news release.