Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) Chairman Ivan Seidenberg on Wednesday had some harsh words for the Federal Communications Commission a day ahead of its planned vote on open Internet rules, adding to what has become a fever pitch of public debate over the proposal.

The speech was delivered on the same day that 30 business investors in technology companies sent a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski praising the rules.

In a speech before the SUPERCOMM 2009 conference in Chicago, Mr. Seidenberg said it would be a “mistake, pure and simple” for the FCC to impose a “burdensome regime” of regulation on the Internet, particularly if the rules apply only to Internet service providers like Verizon and not Web companies like Google Inc. (GOOG).

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Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) boss Ivan Seidenberg may be one of the best deal makers of his time, or one of the worst.

Today, three of Verizon’s most significant divestitures are either in bankruptcy or near it. As they say on Wall Street, it all depends on what side of the trade you’re on.

Verizon’s former yellow-pages unit, which goes by the ungainly name of Idearc, sought court refuge from creditors in May; Verizon’s former Hawaiian telecom franchise, purchased by Carlyle Group, filed for bankruptcy in December, and FairPoint Communications, which absorbed landlines from Verizon in a complicated divestment, is close to going under, the company said in a July securities filing. In all, these companies have lost upward of $13 billion in value and counting.

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Should Verizon Communications (VZ) deals come with a warning label?

In the past few years, the telecommunications company has been shedding slow-growth businesses as it focuses on its wireless and FiOS businesses. While the deals have served Verizon well, they haven’t worked out as well for those acquiring the assets–at least in three cases.

Wednesday, Frontier Communications (FTR) embarked on this path. The rural telecommunications operator agreed to acquire 4.8 million access lines in 14 states from Verizon in a deal valued at $8.6 billion. Will Frontier face the same fate? Perhaps not.

“The problems with those deals had nothing to do with Verizon or how the deals were structured. The companies had operational problems after the deals closed,” a Verizon spokesman said.

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Four years ago, Verizon Communications embarked on an ambitious and expensive plan to run fiber optic cables, which can deliver ultra-fast Internet service and dozens of high-definition video channels along with old-fashioned telephone service, past 19 million homes, roughly half its territory. When it was announced, Verizon’s $23 billion planned investment in the service, called FiOS, was met by a chorus of skeptics, both on Wall Street and among rivals.

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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday that Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable and Sprint would “shut down major sources of online child pornography.” What Cuomo didn’t say is that his agreement with broadband providers means that they will broadly curb customers’ access to Usenet–the venerable pre-Web home of some 100,000 discussion groups, only a handful of which contain illegal material.

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