Frontier’s “pervasive lack of credibility” drives FCC’s rejection of its service claims; CPUC urged to ignore its “high level rhetoric and promises”

1 July 2020 by Steve Blum
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There’s rapidly increasing skepticism in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. of Frontier Communications’ corporate honesty. Frontier was blasted in two separate agency actions in recent days: the California Public Utilities Commission’s review of its post bankruptcy plans and the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband subsidy auction, as it prepares to distribute the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.

Challenges filed by incumbent broadband providers, aimed at blocking federal subsidies in their captive rural markets, were largely dismissed by the Federal Communications Commission last week. After reviewing tens of thousands of challenges in California alone, the FCC issued its verdict and published a new list of census blocks eligible for RDOF subsidies. In unusually blistering terms, the FCC dismissed Frontier’s claims it was providing adequate broadband service in 23,000 U.S. census blocks…

Given the numerous and significant concerns in the record regarding the validity of Frontier’s filing, including its own admission that it had misfiled its June 2019 data and then misfiled (again) the data for its challenge, and inconsistent explanations for its challenge, we conclude that taken together there is a pervasive lack of credibility and accordingly deny Frontier’s challenge regarding its deployment and decline to exclude those blocks from consideration for eligibility.

Frontier’s facile attempt to convince the CPUC to approve whatever settlement comes out of its New York bankruptcy proceeding on the basis of faith in its selfless devotion to the interests of Californians was similarly slammed in protests filed this week by a major telecoms union – the Communications Workers of America (CWA) – and three advocacy organisations, and CPUC staff.

CWA and the three organisations – TURN, the Greenlining Institute and the Center for Accessible Technology – pointed to the major role that Frontier plays in California’s telecoms market, and said the CPUC…

Has a statutory obligation to conduct a full analysis of the impact of this transaction that goes beyond a high level public interest review and to require [Frontier] to provide the Commission with more than high level rhetoric and promises.

They cited, among other things, Frontier’s failure to live up to promises made when it acquired Verizon’s decaying copper telephone systems in California and questioned its willingness to meet obligations attached to state subsidies, including money from the California Advanced Services Fund.

The CPUC’s quasi-independent public advocates office also asked for a full review, citing Frontier’s “unsubstantiated claims” and demanding specific plans for “network infrastructure investments, service quality and reliability improvements, consumer protections, including pricing, and broadband deployment”.

Frontier’s wish for quick and cursory CPUC approval by October is a forlorn hope.