Verizon today announced they'll be hosting a special event next Wednesday in West Virginia celebrating West Virginia's portion of the 38 LTE launch markets set to go live by the end of the year. The celebration will involve Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller and West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin and is by and large a political puppet show that will overshadow Verizon's historical neglect of the state's broadband infrastructure. Rockefeller is the chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology and as a key telecom regulator, has AT&T, Verizon and Comcast as his top campaign contributors.

Verizon has traditionally wanted absolutely nothing to do with West Virginia broadband, which is unfortunate since they sold it. Limited competition left DSL penetration at 60% for years, and Verizon was so disinterested in providing service in the largely rural state, Verizon's own employees complained how they'd been neglecting fundamental maintenance for the better part of a decade. The obvious result was high prices, poor service, and skyrocketing complaints to state regulators about repair delays.

Verizon solved their "problem" by offloading West Virginia and millions of other unwanted subscribers in 14 states to Frontier Communications in a $8.5 billion deal. While Frontier was thrilled to grow, it was Verizon that made out like a bandit. Using a Reverse Morris Trust, Verizon not only offloaded unwanted networks and customers, it saddled Frontier with several billion in debt and all the regulatory headaches that had been piling up from said neglected networks. As an added bonus, Verizon got several hundred million in tax breaks.

While Frontier and Verizon pretended the deal was in the best interest of the consumer -- Frontier is now saddled with so many regulatory obligations and so much debt that most of these customers will remain on slow, last-generation DSL well through the next decade. While Frontier may not wind up in bankruptcy as with Verizon's New England deal with Fairpoint, they're not in a particularly good position to deal with cable and faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds. As local news outlets note, Frontier will be fixing Verizon's problems for a very long time.

But there's one more wrinkle struggles Verizon partners Fairpoint and Frontier will have to face. Like we mentioned in January of 2009, LTE for Verizon isn't just about mobile. As these leaked exclusive photos in our forums indicate, Verizon's clearly looking at LTE as a serious residential option in their former DSL markets. In other words, the companies Verizon saddled with debt? They now get to have their subscribers slowly leeched by overpriced LTE service that will likely be faster than the aging overpriced DSL service Verizon didn't want.