"dial tone and access to 51 percent of a local telephone exchange."
Now, I will start by pointing out this is an out-of-context snippet of the law, and so I don't know for sure whether other details in the legislation would contradict what I'm about to say, but:
It seems to me that perhaps Verizon has a point based on the language used.
After all, it's 51-percent of a "local telephone exchange", which doesn't necessarily mean 51 percent of subscribers within Hopewell city limits, if the local exchange is shared with neighboring townships, villages, cities, etc.
Now, that said, I presume the judge in the case would have taken that into account if that were actually the case, so I suppose probably something in the law makes what I said not valid.
The other thing I wonder about, these days - accounting for these percentages must be starting to get pretty complex - because now in addition to copper telephone lines, within a local exchange, you have VOiP lines from cable/fiber services, you might have a VOiP company selling VOiP services using the local exchange numbers, but the customers they are providing service to may be anywhere in the world and move frequently, you have mobile-phone numbers, etc.
It's got to be quite a nightmare to account for all that.
