Looks like Bobsled is off to a rough start.

For the most part, I would agree with this merger assessment. But among major telecom mergers, the track record is actually pretty good. The only real black eyes for big telecom mergers in the past decade or so is the WorldCom fiascos, which are more attributed to fraud ( I think Bernie Ebbers is still locked up, right?) and Sprint-Nextel. Sprint is still recovering from that merger that should have never happened.

But when you think of most others, and there's been a lot, they tend to work out ok. All the baby bell mergers have worked (from a financial and investor return point of view) out pretty well. I'll give you that the recent Verizon transactions haven't been great (FairPoint, Hawaii Tel), but those were isolated incidents - maybe.