Hold the phone...

Or sell it.  It seems Verizon is tired of not fixing all those pedestals I have run over mowing roadsides during my farming career.  They have sold my phone business.

Verizon continued their move to exit the rural local exchange business with the announcement today of the sale of 4.8 million access lines to Frontier Communications of Stamford, Connecticut. It’s a bold move by Frontier, almost tripling them in size and catapulting them to one of, if not the largest, service provider focused on rural markets in the U.S. Frontier will have over 7 million combined access lines after the acquisition. The new Frontier and the combined CenturyTel-Embarq will be extremely close in size and either could qualify as the largest U.S. rural service provider, depending on the choice of measurement. The operations Frontier will acquire include all of Verizon's local wireline operating territories in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. In addition, the transaction will include a small number of Verizon's exchanges in California, including those bordering Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. [More]

Now, of course, my heart leapt with anticipation of true high-speed broadband (>3 Meg for me), but who am I kidding?  Anyhoo, one of my neighbors has 5 Meg!! at his farm (wireless), and I'm going to duplicate his setup if I can.