Frontier prepares for bankruptcy, regrets failure to install enough fiber
Frontier said it lost customers due to “significant under-investment in fiber.” …
reader comments
84 with 72 posters participating
As Frontier Communications moves closer to an expected bankruptcy filing, the ISP told investors that its troubles stem largely from its failure to invest properly in upgrading DSL to fiber broadband.
The presentation for investors, which is included in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, said that “significant under-investment in fiber deployment and limited enterprise product offerings have created headwinds that the company is repositioning itself to reverse.” Much of Frontier’s fiber deployment was actually installed by Verizon before Verizon sold some of its operations to Frontier.
About 51 percent of Frontier revenue comes directly from residential consumers, with the rest mostly from wholesale and business customers. Frontier said the residential segment that provides most of its revenue “has the highest monthly churn,” meaning that customers are leaving the company in large numbers. DSL-customer losses are expected to increase, Frontier said.
Frontier also said a “large portion” of its revenue is from “declining legacy products” like copper-landline phone service. Frontier’s consumer-broadband network is primarily copper-based DSL, whose capabilities are easily surpassed by cable and fiber networks. Frontier Internet service is available to 14 million homes across the United States, but 11 million of those are DSL-only, the presentation said. The remaining 3 million homes, 21 percent of Frontier’s footprint, have access to fiber.
Frontier said it has 2.6 million Internet subscribers, with 1.4 million on DSL and 1.2 million on fiber. The homes-passed and subscriber numbers exclude operations in four Northwest US states that Frontier is
Continue reading – Article source
