What's Wrong with CT? (telephone edition)

This article in the Hartford Courant lays it out:

The independent phone company known as 

Southern New England Telephone (SNET)

was bought out by

Southwestern Bell Company (SBC)

was then bought out by

American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T)

which is now being bought out by

Frontier Communications

doing business as (possibly) 

South New England Telephone (SNET)

SNET was independent for a long time and never fully part of the original AT&T.  In the new deal, AT&T will retain only its wireless phone service in CT.

All in all, the wired telecom business is sinking pretty fast as a fraction of the telecom market.  I suppose a smaller and more agile company should be managing it;  maybe that's Frontier.  On the other hand, if it is locked out of the wireless business and it doesn't have lots of capital available, will it ever be at the forefront of technology?  Will CT residents resume their status as a telecom backwater? Will there be more or less competition in this market?

State approval is needed, but I'm not feeling optimistic.  On the bright side, we dumped AT&T U-verse service in favor of Comcast for phone, data, and video a year ago.