Buy out your local phone company

Information Week has an interesting article about SBC and Verizon. The two big phone companies are selling off their rural landlines to raise cash to run fiber to their higher density urban and suburban customers.

So instead of complaining about your local phone company, buy them out! The neat thing here is that if you buy out the lines, the customers come with them, so you have instant cash flow. Here's the business plan:

• Form a coop.
• Borrow money and/or get funds for starting coops from the USDA.
• Buy out the phone company.
• Start offering services and billing customers.
• Develop long range plans to offer broadband; include VoIP services and other advanced services to help make the transition financially sound.

I've obviously oversimplified this a good deal, but coops are a tried and true business model that have successfully offered wireline services in rural areas for decades. And fiber is nothing more than another cable. If coops have gotten a cable to their customers in the past for telephone and electric services, why can't they do it in the future?