We see the consolidation in the rural landline business. Verizon has dumped unwanted regions on Hawaii Telecom, Fairport (New England), Alltel (old GTE areas like Eastern KY), and soon the Frontier deal.  

Centurytel and Embarq just merger. It was May, 2006 that Sprint spun off its wireline business into Embarq. Alltel followed suit with a spin-off of its landline business to Windstream which was a merger of Valor and Alltel. 

The RBOC's have tried to staunch the landline slide, but I think now that they have declared themselves wireless companies, have given up the ghost. Verizon is now advertising to consumers to cut the cord. VZ has been selling Naked DSL longer than AT&T, but not as long as Qwest. I think VZ is betting entirely on FiOS and cellular.  We'll see because Comcast is now bundling Clearwire and Sprint 3G with its triple plays.