MCI shareholders will vote on the pending Verizon merger at a special shareholder meeting at the company’s Ashburn, Va., headquarters October 6.

Most shareholders are expected to vote for the deal, though some are still holding out hope of a Qwest buyout. Qwest executives said they are not going to bid for MCI again.

That’s the news. My personal opinion of this merger is, at the moment, it’s terrible news for residential telephone customers of both companies. Verizon is primarily interested in MCI’s worldwide long distance and IP networks and its commercial, enterprise and government customer base. Neither company has said much at all of what might become of residential and small business subscribers under the merger.

In this case, no news is bad news.

In the recent Sprint Nextel merger, the FCC required the company to divest itself of all of its land line telephone customers. Pending state approval, the spinoff will take place sometime next year. That’s good news for those customers, as the new company will be able to focus on its only business: residential and business land lines.

Neither federal nor state regulators have yet proposed such a spinoff for Verizon and MCI, and the fate of millions of telephone subscribers remains in limbo.

MCI recently announced the September 30 closure of three U.S. call centers which primarily served local telephone customers, moving most call center operations to India, Mexico and the Philippines.