The end is near for Frontier Communications, as we know it. According to a story in Bloomberg by Allison McNeely, Katherine Doherty and Sridhar Natarajan, California’s second biggest telephone company will file for bankruptcy in March. Frontier is carrying $17.5 billion in debt – its purchase of Verizon’s Californian wireline systems accounts for a significant chunk of that – and continues to lose broadband subscribers.
Despite being initially considered a saviour for rural Californians held hostage by Verizon’s decrepit copper phone lines – many communities lacked even slow 1990s DSL service – Frontier has proven to be unable to improve broadband service, outside of its affluent urban territories. It fumbled its cutover of Verizon customers, and now faces an investigation by the California Public Utilities Commission as a result. It’s enthusiastically tapped the piggybank that California lawmakers created when they gutted the California Advanced Services Fund program, but has mostly used the money to patch up legacy DSL systems at cost levels more commonly associated with full fiber upgrades.
California is not the only place where Frontier is performing poorly, according to a story in Ars Technica by Jon Brodkin…
Frontier Communications failed to properly maintain its telecom network in Minnesota, leading to “frequent and lengthy” phone and Internet outages, an investigation by the state Commerce Department found in January 2019. The investigation led to a settlement. New York state officials are also investigating Frontier over its repeated outages and long repair times.
Many Frontier customers in different states have been hit with giant overcharges and cancellation fees, or draconian policies like one requiring customers to pay for router rentals even when they have purchased their own router. (A new US law scheduled to take effect in June 2020 would ban that practice.)
The Bloomberg article indicated that Frontier would be filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which allows it to continue operating while it sorts out its finances. It’s the same procedure PG&E is using.