Bill Weber has been a satisfied customer of Verizon Communications for eight years. He gets his home phone, wireless, Internet and pay-TV services from the company.
Weber, 74, a professor emeritus of history at Cal State Long Beach, now can look forward to starting over mostly from scratch with a company that he says has a "lousy reputation" for treating customers fairly.
Weber is among the hundreds of thousands of Californians who stand to be affected by Verizon's pending $10.5-billion sale of its broadband and landline operations here and in Texas and Florida to Frontier Communications.
If state and federal officials give the deal a green light, all of Verizon's landline phone, Internet and TV services — everything but wireless — in the three states will shift to the new provider, probably by the middle of next year.