MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – Using a wheelbarrow, union leaders, small business representatives and some politicians delivered 2,600 postcards to Gov. Jim Douglas on Wednesday urging him to oppose a plan to sell the Verizon landline telephone system to FairPoint Communications.

FairPoint hopes to buy Verizon’s landlines in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

The Vermont activists feel that North Carolina-based FairPoint doesn’t have the financial ability to expand broadband internet service to all corners of Vermont, which some feel is a key to the economic future of the state.

And even the DSL service on existing copper telephone lines that FairPoint is promising to install in many areas isn’t the most up-to-date technology, the activists said.

“Fiber optics is today’s best technology and that is what Vermont deserves,” said Ron Lewis, founder and co-owner of a Colchester company called Computer Care. “We cannot settle for a company that promises only to deliver yesterday’s technology.”

Lewis and the others spoke at a Statehouse news conference using the postcard-filled wheelbarrow as a prop. sponsored by unions representing Verizon workers, emergency responders and others opposed to the proposed sale.

They turned the cards over to David O’Brien, the commissioner of the state Department of Public Service, which represents consumers before the quasi-judicial Public Service Board, which regulates utilities.

The Public Service Department has urged the board to attach 56 conditions to the sale. Among those conditions were requirements that FairPoint shield its Vermont customers from financial troubles at corporate headquarters.

“If they have not met their (obligations) we will restrict funds flowing up to even meet corporate debt obligations,” O’Brien said. “We would rather see the corporate organization face bankruptcy to make sure the financial resources stay in Vermont.”

The $2.7 billion deal must be approved by utility regulators in all three states. The Vermont board is expected to issue its ruling in the case before the end of the year.

In response to the postcard campaign, FairPoint spokesman Rose Cummings said the company has settled with all of the large interveners in the regulatory proceedings, except the unions.

The company also has heard from hundreds of elected officials and individuals who favor the deal, she said.

“We respect all of the regulatory processes that we’re going through. They have been extraordinarily thorough,” she said.

She said the company strives to provide broadband service to communities that do not have it or are underserved.

“It’s not old technology at all,” she said.

In an effort to promote the deal in the three states, FairPoint has launched an ad campaign touting its ability to bring broadband services to the three states.

In September, Maine opponents of the sale delivered more than 5,000 postcards to Gov. John Baldacci.

At Wednesday’s event, state Sen. Vince Illuzzi, R-Essex/Orleans, said he hoped that if the board approved the sale, it would attach a number of tough conditions that would require FairPoint to expand broadband services.

“Vermont is in need of broadband access for every business and household, not someday, not maybe, and not when Verizon of FairPoint gets around to it, but as soon as possible,” Illuzzi said.

AP-ES-11-14-07 1813EST

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