Verizon's attempts to divest itself of its FiOS assets is an important counterpoint to the tech media narrative of lucrative wireline monopolies protected by lobbying muscle. Nobody actually in the market thinks that: <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/2886186-verizon-fools-frontier-again" rel="nofollow">http://seekingalpha.com/article/2886186-verizon-fools-fronti...</a>. The other two companies that bought wireline assets from Verizon ultimately went bankrupt: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/business/verizons-former-hawaii-new-england-operations-struggling-/d/d-id/1074510" rel="nofollow">http://www.informationweek.com/business/verizons-former-hawa...</a>.<p>It's also interesting to note that at the same time Verizon is selling off wireline assets, it's returning money to shareholders via stock buybacks: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/102402418" rel="nofollow">http://www.cnbc.com/id/102402418</a>. The signal is of course that the return on investing that money into network upgrades wouldn't be worthwhile.