frontiercommunications

Frontier makes the case, California's AB 1665 is double disaster

3 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Frontier’s admittedly “late-filed” attempt to kill grant funding for the Gigafy Phelan fiber to the home proposal in San Bernardino County does a much better job of demonstrating why assembly bill 1665 is a bad idea than it does of effectively arguing against the project.

In addition to reinstating a tax on phone bills and adding $300 million to the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), AB 1665 would lower California’s minimum broadband service standard to 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds.… More

Frontier Communications hates double dipping, unless it's licking the cone


Federal subsidies are in the pink.

As might be expected, Frontier Communications objects to a proposed $29 million California Advanced Services Fund subsidy for a fiber to the home project in its San Bernardino County territory. Its first instinct was to try to a backdoor approach at the California Public Utilities Commission, but that was rebuffed. So yesterday Frontier filed formal comments urging the CPUC to kill the Gigafy Phelan project when it comes up for a vote next week.… More

Frontier pays a price for its California meltdown

5 November 2016 by Steve Blum
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Frontier Communications’ cutover problems when it took control of Verizon’s wireline systems in California, Texas and Florida were costly, in terms of broadband subscribers and overall revenue. On Frontier’s third quarter earnings call earlier this week, company executives said that they saw a net loss of 100,000 broadband customers in the three states between April and June, and lost another 75,000 from July through September.

In revenue terms, though, the biggest hit in California and the other two states came from phone and video customers: total revenue was down $55 million in the third quarter, compared to the second, with video services accounting for $24 million and phone service for another $20 million.… More

Frontier complaints drop as it fixes California FTTH problems

18 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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Business as usual.

Hundreds of fiber-to-the-home customers crashed and burned when Frontier Communications took over ownership of Verizon’s wireline networks in California last April. Phone, Internet and television service was disrupted, apparently because the customer data Frontier received from Verizon was faulty. The problems were compounded by a temporary call center that was drafted in to help Frontier get through the transition period.

The company’s position is they’re in business as usual mode now, and preliminary data from the California Public Utilities Commission appear to back it up.… More

Frontier gets California subsidy to upgrade Shasta County service

1 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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A thousand homes in the rural Shasta County community of Shingletown will be getting faster DSL service from Frontier Communications, as a result of a $546,000 subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) that was okayed by the California Public Utilities Commission at its meeting last week. According to the resolution approving the grant…

Frontier submitted an application for CASF funding to build 64,950 feet of fiber cable from the Shingletown, California central office to six digital loop carrier sites…The sites under this grant are currently served by broadband over copper facilities to DSLAM’s served from the Shingletown central office in Shasta County.

… More

Broadband gaps to fill, but willingness to do so in northeastern California

26 June 2016 by Steve Blum
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A different way of looking at it.

Many homes will still be without broadband service in northeastern California, even after upgrades paid by the federal Connect America Fund (CAF-2) program are complete. That’s mostly because the census blocks deemed eligible for the subsidies by the Federal Communications Commission are limited – many thousands of unserved homes are outside of those areas – but also because the FCC doesn’t necessarily require that all homes in a given census block be served.… More

Broadband gets lowest satisfaction rating of any industry in latest survey

18 June 2016 by Steve Blum
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Click to download the study

Consumers are a wee bit happier, on the average, with Internet service providers, but that’s not to say happy, according to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) telecommunications company rankings. Overall, Internet service providers get an average score of 64 (out of 100), up one point from 2016. It is the lowest industry average of all those ranked by ACSI. Subscription TV companies – there’s quite a bit of overlap, of course – are nearly as bad on the average, getting 65 out of 100.… More

Bad Verizon data led to Frontier's customer call tsunami, legislators told

19 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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Oops.

The problems Frontier Communications had as it took over ownership and operating control of wireline phone systems belonging to Verizon were chewed over in a California assembly committee hearing yesterday. Melinda White, president of Frontier’s west region, told committee members that the service outages experienced by some customers were primarily due to three causes:

  • Corrupt data in the customer records imported from Verizon’s system.
  • Records that said some customers’ equipment had one serial number when in fact it had another.
… More

California lawmakers need sharper thinking, reality check on telecoms policy

16 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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Not everyone is 99 and 44/100% pure.

No one expected zero problems when Frontier took over Verizon’s telephone systems in California last month. At least no one who understands that big telecommunications companies are complicated and not particularly predictable. It’s a lesson that California lawmakers should take to heart, as they consider allowing AT&T to replace wireline service with cell phones at will.

Frontier added about two million customers to its existing 200,000 subscriber base in California, scattered across 150 telephone exchanges that range from the best infrastructure in the state – FiOS-brand fiber to the home – to the worst.… More

California says adios to Verizon, bienvenido to Frontier

3 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Work in progress.

As of Friday, two million Californians have a new telephone company. Frontier Communications wrapped up the paperwork and took title to Verizon’s wireline telephone systems in California, Florida and Texas…

The acquired businesses include approximately 3.3 million voice connections, 2.1 million broadband connections, and 1.2 million FiOS video subscribers, as well as the related incumbent local exchange carrier businesses. New customers will begin receiving monthly bills starting in mid-April.

“This is a transformative acquisition for Frontier that delivers first-rate assets and important new opportunities given our dramatically expanded scale,” said Daniel J.

… More