Just ask the consumers and regulators in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Hawaii.

The companies who took over Verizon's networks in those states are struggling to provide adequate service to their customers.  They both are also in deep financial distress.  The bottom line: sales like this in the past have not gone well.

• FairPoint Communications -- the company Verizon sold its Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont operations to in 2008 -- is foundering as it tries to integrate operations while choking on the debt it incurred to finance the transaction. In 2008, Verizon sold its 1.5 million access lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to FairPoint. FairPoint has struggled to provide adequate service prompting an unprecedented number of complaints to state regulatory commissions from frustrated consumers. FairPoint’s finances are also in disarray. Since the deal was announced, FairPoint’s stock price has declined by about 95%, and the company has been forced to suspend dividend payments.
  
• Hawaiian Telcom, the company to which Verizon sold its Hawaii operations in 2005, filed for bankruptcy. Verizon sold its 715,000 access lines in Hawaii. Since then, Hawaiian Telcom has experienced significant transition issues that resulted in major financial and customer service problems. In three years, the company lost 21% of its customers. In December 2008, Hawaiian Telcom filed for bankruptcy.
• The yellow pages company that Verizon spun off also filed for bankruptcy.  In November 2006, Verizon spun off its yellow pages directory business to Verizon shareholders, loading the new company, Idearc, with about $9.5 billion in debt and extracting a cool $9 billion in cash and debt reduction.  Last year, interest payments alone on Idearc’s debt accounted for almost one-quarter of its total revenues!  Representing something of a Verizon failing company “hat trick,” Idearc filed for bankruptcy in March 2009.

Even the Wall Street Journal questions the outcomes of Verizon's deal-making.  Check out this video: