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You might have heard that PAETEC (News - Alert) Holding Corp is conducting a merger agreement with  preferred master agent carrier of TBI, Windstream (News - Alert), but according to industry observer Josh Long, a financial analyst has raised a concern making PAETEC’s future “less certain.”

Would Level 3 Communications (News - Alert), Long asks, fresh off its acquisition of Global Crossing, “submit an unsolicited bid that PAETEC’s board of directors would have to consider?” Long cites a research note dated October 6 from FBR Capital Markets & Co. analyst David Dixon saying “Level 3 would be justified to offer a higher bid than Windstream,” in Long’s words.

He quotes Dixon saying that while the WIN/PAET deal “makes sense from a defensive perspective and offers some synergies, an LVLT/PAET deal makes greater strategic sense from a scale perspective and we believe creates more upside for both LVLT and PAET shareholders, due to even higher synergies from their overlapping network coverage and operations.”

Back in August, TMCnet’s CEO Rich Tehrani wrote that Windstream agreed to purchase communications conglomerate PAETEC for $2.3 billion “in order to add scale and drive growth.” As Tehrani noted, PAETEC is an interesting company as it not only provides broadband and IP communications services; it also has data center services, is a large telecom reseller/interconnect, provider of telecom expense management (TEM) solutions and more.

“Earlier this year I reported that PAETEC CEO Arunis Chesonis was looking for potential acquisition targets in India and elsewhere and in fact the company did just pick up XETA Technologies (News - Alert) to boost its cloud-based service offerings,” Tehrani wrote. “Interestingly his own company may have been in play while PAETEC itself was exploring more acquisition targets..”

Spokesmen for Level 3 and PAETEC declined to comment, and PAETEC’s shareholders are scheduled to vote on the Windstream merger on Oct. 27 in New York. Long reported that PAETEC officials say they “may terminate the merger agreement if PAETEC has received a proposal that its board of directors determines in good faith to be superior to the merger and certain other conditions are met, including PAETEC’s provision to Windstream of notice of such a proposal and an opportunity to revise the terms of the merger agreement."