With the political primaries winding down, let’s have a poll of our own. One of the bigger stories of the spring is the Verizon strike, which has grown increasingly nasty since starting four weeks ago and yesterday apparently spread across the Pacific to the Philippines in what looks to have been a very scary incident. In the end, how disruptive do you think this situation will be to the industry and infrastructure as a whole?
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Icahn sold the pieces of XO that an interested party was interested in. Its called a free market where capitalism drives outcomes. In this case VZ is acquiring assets that it will in the end assuming regulatory approval is received will drive synergies and optimizations to maximize yield on the transaction. Other 3rd parties like Windstream, Level3 or smaller players could have purchased the same assets or structured a deal in their favor assuming icahn saw the value penciling out the numbers. In the end it was VZ who succeeded and now all of a sudden people are concerned with competition? Seriously?
In my opinion Windstream is raising objections b/c they can. They are in no position to acquire XO’s assets. If they were they would have since they certainly have enough of XO’s former leadership players who clearly know what the value is and could be in extracting from the assets VZ is acquiring. But again, if Windstream could have acquired the assets or wanted to acquire the assets b/c of some strategic need the table might be turned. But in the end they chose not to and now all of a sudden Windstream objects. Its political maneuvering b/c they can.
Now its not lost on me that the field gets smaller with the elimination of another telco provider such as XO. But in the end isn’t that what the free market is about? Lets put “greed” motivations aside for a moment do we want an open market? How much longer would XO have operated on its own?