Gene Johnson, the chief executive of Fairpoint Communications, would have probably promised to shovel the driveway of every new Maine customer if the Maine Public Utilities Commission made it a stipulation of his company’s purchase of Verizon’s business in northern New England.

Instead, the MPUC made him promise to pay $150 million by 2011 if FairPoint failed to meet debt ratio targets… not a bad compromise. The ubiquitous executive, whose mug bombarded the local airwaves with a presidential candidate’s frequency, was happy to oblige, so the PUC said you’ve got a deal.

Maine’s regulators drove the hardest bargain in this tri-state production of bad cop, worse cop, worst cop. Vermont took the toughest stance by first rejecting the deal outright; New Hampshire waited, to see what Maine accomplished. New Hampshire’s decision is now the fulcrum upon which the sale balances.

Whatever happens now, the MPUC did its job. It realized the state’s precarious position between a company that can, but won’t, and one that wants, but perhaps cannot. The ideal solution was protecting the willing party against failure; unfortunately, this means endorsing a less-than-ideal phone company, saddled with debt.

Given Maine’s other choice was essential abandonment by Verizon, pushing FairPoint to its brink was the savvy move; now, the same regulators who defined these terms must enforce them. The PUC’s aggressive record with Verizon should continue, unabated, with FairPoint.

This is most necessary with broadband expansion. Regulators lack the clear authority to mandate broadband growth, but FairPoint must be held to its promise of 90 percent penetration within five years. State leadership that creates clear targets and goals for expansion must force FairPoint’s hand.

Currently, though, the targets of growth are quizzical. While broadband is pushed into rural locales like the Cranberry Isles and Piscataquis and Washington counties, which are great symbolic achievements, there remain areas of “metropolitan” Maine that still lack broadband, or strong competition among broadband providers.

A goal of FairPoint, and Maine, should be to ensure universal broadband availability and competition in the state’s economic centers, before embarking on the expense of full-fledged rural expansion. The economic benefits of the former should help offset the capital costs of the latter.

By bowing to the MPUC’s demands, FairPoint has demonstrated a willingness to work with Maine, as well as Vermont and likely New Hampshire as well. This is an opportunity for these states to help dictate their broadband future; a scenario unimaginable under laissez-faire Verizon.

It won’t be the latest broadband technology, critics of the sale rightly point out. But it promises to be better than what’s now unavailable, which sums the Verizon-FairPoint deal nicely.

This deal wasn’t pushed and approved to put Maine technologically ahead. This state – and Vermont and New Hampshire – needs FairPoint if it ever hopes to catch up.