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Frontier Has Sucked Up Millions Before Without Giving W.Va. Good Broadband. They're About To Get Another Chance

This story was originally published by Mountain State Spotlight. For more stories from Mountain State Spotlight, visit www.mountainstatespotlight.org.

West Virginia’s biggest telecommunications company will get hundreds of millions more in federal money to serve the state, despite being under investigation for its chronic poor service and misuse of funds by the state’s utility regulator.

It’s the result of an auction in which the Federal Communications Commission gave away $9 billion of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which is financed by surcharges on customers telephone bills. Of the $362 million allocated to West Virginia by the FCC, over two-thirds will go to Frontier Communications and will be distributed in annual installments over the next decade.

It’s “the single largest step ever taken to bridge the digital divide,” Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, said in a press release announcing the completion of the auction on Monday.

But some broadband advocates in West Virginia are not so thrilled.

Frontier, which was allocated nearly $250 million in the state, declared bankruptcy in March. The company has a long track record of making — and then breaking — extravagant promises in West Virginia, and there’s doubt as to whether this time will be any different.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Mike Holstine, the secretary-treasurer of the state council tasked with coordinating rural broadband expansion in West Virginia.

“I think the state is going to get screwed again,” he said, referencing the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program scandal in which West Virginia was forced to return nearly $5 million in federal funds in 2017 after regulators discovered Frontier had wasted it.

Back then, the state took federal stimulus funds and awarded them to Frontier. This time, the FCC eliminated the middleman and allowed companies to compete directly for the subsidies.

But the result was similar. Frontier was allocated over $370 million in eight states — but won most of it in West Virginia, solidifying the company’s checkered relationship with the state it entered a decade ago after it bought out Verizon’s local telephone network and promised to provide high-speed internet to a vast majority of its new customers.

Just three years later, the West Virginia attorney general launched an investigation into the company after customers complained that Frontier service wasn’t living up to its promises. The state settled for $160 million, albeit with dubious results.

Eight other companies, besides Frontier, won money to serve West Virginia. They include local companies like Bridgeport-based Citynet and Virginia’s Gigabeam Networks — but also Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the fledgling California startup that has built a network of 900 communication satellites launched into space on custom-built rockets.

Source: Federal Communications Commission

Citynet, the second-largest winner, was allocated more than $50 million. State lawmakers had hoped to give local companies a boost by easing restrictions on the state’s loan insurance program, an executive order that Gov. Jim Justice had promised would help smaller companies bid more competitively in the auction.

But it wasn’t enough to boost Citynet’s efforts to win more territory in eastern sections of the state, where Frontier bid too aggressively for Citynet to compete, Holstine said.

Promises of fiber

In the end, Frontier won a bulk of the subsidies by promising to do the job for less than its competitors.

In what is known as a “reverse auction,” companies competed over census tracts that the FCC determined currently do not have high-speed internet: primarily rural areas where rugged terrain and low population density made it uneconomical to wire service without government subsidies. The company that promised to provide service with the least amount of federal help won the subsidy.

Since companies that promised lower speeds were penalized, Frontier promised the fastest option on the menu — gigabit speeds — which will require wiring fiber optic cable directly to homes.

Jeff Proctor, a retired Fayette County businessman who is now on the state’s broadband enhancement council, has doubts whether Frontier can pull this off. In Proctor’s neighborhood, Frontier’s service is so slow it’s hardly usable.

That’s because Frontier relies almost exclusively on its rickety copper telephone network to deliver DSL internet service, and the company has little experience in West Virginia installing fiber to the home. Furthermore, Frontier’s workforce and capital spending in the state has dwindled in recent years as its business suffered from underinvestment.

“I was hoping they wouldn’t be as successful as they were,” Proctor said.

As bidding went on over the last month, Frontier drove prices lower and lower until Citynet was forced to drop out. In some areas, according to Holstine, Frontier was bidding as low as one-fifth of the original auction price.

It wasn’t just Citynet that was pushed out by Frontier. Hardy Telecommunications, a local utility cooperative in Hardy County, ended up winning no money despite being authorized to bid in the auction.

Much of the census blocks near the co-op’s current territory were gobbled up by Frontier.

Derek Barr, an assistant general manager at Hardy Telecommunications, couldn’t comment directly on the bidding because of an FCC-mandated “quiet period” as the auction results are finalized.

But he did express some apparent frustration at the auction’s results via email. “[Bidders] must determine how low they can go before the available funding would no longer be sufficient to responsibly take on the project,” he wrote.

“I hope Frontier exercised the same fiscal responsibility when determining the viability of any project.”

Frontier was even more circumspect. “We cannot comment beyond what has been made publicly available by the FCC due to quiet period regulations,” wrote spokesman Javier Mendoza.

Holstine fears that Frontier’s bidding strategy was more about thwarting competition than improving its own service.

Over the last year, Holstine has been putting together a grant proposal in partnership with Citynet and the Greenbrier Valley Economic Development Corporation to bring high speed internet to nearly 1,000 households in Pocahontas County where Holstine lives. But now, with Frontier promising the federal government that it will provide high-speed internet to many of the county’s census blocks, that proposal is gutted. It now covers fewer than 200 households, and it’s future is in jeopardy.

“The USDA has pulled their funding on it, because they’re now saying RDOF has already served those areas,” Holstine said, referring to the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, the official name of the FCC auction.

Roane County is in a similar situation, and had to cut back its own plans. The chairman of a three county committee, Matt Erb, dedicated to planning out broadband expansion in the region recently resigned, citing frustrations with the federal grantmaking process. It stripped local governments of control over their own destiny, he said, and handed it to private companies like Frontier — despite a miserable track record.

“Holding these companies accountable is laughable,” he said. “Why would you believe that things would be any better with the same players?”

Retired, Erb is looking to the future. “I’m just waiting for Elon Musk and SpaceX to make all of this obsolete,” he said.

‘Hold these providers accountable’

But this isn’t a done deal, yet: Frontier must jump through more hoops before it receives the money. It needs to prove to the FCC that it’s financially qualified, and it needs to certify that it’s an “eligible telecommunications carrier.”

Whether the company can do this will depend on the Public Service Commission, West Virginia’s utility regulator, which has yet to approve Frontier’s restructuring plan. The company has been trying to convince the commission that it’s serious about reinvesting in West Virginia, despite sucking profits from the state for years and spending them on ballooning debt payments as it expanded to new coastal markets.

Once approved by the FCC, Frontier will need to actually build the fiber it’s promising. It has six years to do so, according to the regulator’s timeline, which includes annual milestones and speed tests. The federal government can pull the subsidy — and eventually levy fines — if a company doesn’t follow through.

‘“The job now lies on the FCC to hold these providers accountable,” said Delegate Daniel Linville, R-Cabell.

Reach reporter Lucas Manfield at lucasmanfield@mountainstatespotlight.org

W.Va. PSC 'Disappointed' With Frontier's Plans To Improve Service

An audit of Frontier Communications in March found that the state’s main landline phone provider isn’t doing enough preventative maintenance on its infrastructure for landline phones.

After the telecommunications company promised to make improvements in its response to the audit two months ago, the West Virginia Public Service Commission said Friday it was “disappointed by the omission of any meaningful detail” in Frontier’s response to the audit.

Now, the PSC is ordering Frontier to provide by the end of July specific details, such as how much Frontier plans to spend on upgrades, and when improvement projects will begin.

The audit, which was published with redactions in March, was part of a two-year investigation the PSC announced in 2018.

News got out in April from Ars Technica, a science and technology website, that Frontier had improperly redacted its public version of the audit.

Frontier unsuccessfully tried to redact lines detailing how the company has lost thousands of phone and internet customers in West Virginia in the last 10 years as people switched to other telecommunications providers, according to auditors.

Frontier is still asking the Public Service Commission to keep a redacted version of its audit on the PSC website, even though the unredacted findings have been publicized by Ars Technica and West Virginia Public Broadcasting in April.

Commissioners are still considering a records request from West Virginia Public Broadcasting for the unredacted version.

The PSC investigation kicked off in August 2018, after union leaders for Frontier field staff complained of faulty landline phone service in areas of the state with little to no cell service. Customers in areas with poor service have said frequent and long-lasting outages hinder the ability of local businesses to thrive, and in one case it prevented a Grant County family from calling 911.

The PSC selected a third party auditing firm to examine Frontier’s work in West Virginia in July 2019.

For the last decade, Frontier has had a legal obligation to provide quality landline phone service to most of the state as West Virginia’s “carrier of last resort,” a status the company took on after acquiring former Verizon territory.

In April, Frontier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Frontier Weighs In On Phone, Internet Audit

Frontier Communications responded on Thursday to a recent audit regarding the quality of its landline phone service in West Virginia, which is regulated by the state Public Service Commission.

The audit, completed in March, found Frontier has lost thousands of phone and internet customers in the last decade, and roughly half of its experienced field employees are due to retire in the next five years. The audit also stated Frontier is not doing enough preventative maintenance on its more than 49,000 miles of infrastructure, which serves roughly 300,000 landline customers and 170,000 DSL internet customers.

The commission called for an audit more than two years ago after complaints from Frontier customers and a union representing Frontier employees. According to staff for the commission, they received approximately 2,000 complaints related to Frontier’s landline phone service in the last year.

The commission eventually selected a third-party auditing firm for the job at the end of July 2019. Frontier sent the finished audit to the commission on March 18.

In its Thursday response to the audit, Frontier addressed several — but not all — of the findings and recommendations auditors made.

According to Frontier, the audit did not “fully appreciate or adequately detail the reality of the difficulties” Frontier faces, including the “heavy burden” of operating in a “rural and difficult-to-serve” region. Frontier voluntarily acquired much of this area in 2010 from Verizon, agreeing at the same time to various additional reporting and service conditions set by the commission.

Not only did Frontier request the commission impose similar conditions on other phone providers in the state, but it asked the commission to consider creating a fund to help Frontier and other companies “support the continued universal availability of affordable telecommunications services in West Virginia.”

Frontier filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York on April 14.

Auditors stated they had a difficult time understanding the full financial picture of Frontier’s operations in West Virginia, because overhead costs like employee benefits are budgeted at a corporate level, along with major improvement projects that happen on the state level.

Frontier rejected auditors’ recommendation to budget these allocations more locally, saying their process now is more efficient.

The company said it is prepared to implement other recommendations from auditors, to address backlogs in preventative maintenance work and to improve the company’s 25 worst performing areas in the state.

Frontier did not address a recommendation from auditors to plan for the mass retirement of experienced field employees, who are responsible for restoring service to customers during outages and other maintenance work, nor did Frontier address any of the auditors’ broadband related recommendations.

It is unclear when the commission will address Frontier’s response, or the audit’s findings and recommendations. Other parties involved in the audit — including the Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, which requested the audit back in 2018 — have until May 20 to respond to Frontier’s response.

Much of the information included in this article, including Frontier’s number of West Virginia customers and details about its infrastructure, originally had been redacted from the audit. In April, science and technology magazine Ars Technica found Frontier had improperly redacted a public version of the audit.

The commission is still in the process of responding to a Freedom of Information Act request West Virginia Public Broadcasting submitted before the Ars Technica report, requesting access to the full Frontier audit. Although the redacted information has been made available by news outlets, Frontier was allowed to upload a newly redacted version of the report to the commission’s website.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Newly Revealed Data Shows Problems With Frontier's W.Va. Landline Phone System

A fully unredacted version of an audit of the state’s main privately-run, state-regulated landline provider was made public by a science and technology website Thursday, indicating the phone company faces a serious shrinking customer and revenue base in the Mountain state.

According to Ars Technica, the audit was improperly redacted and all information was visible after copying and pasting the text into a separate document.

The audit was publicly available until recently on the West Virginia Public Service Commission’s website, which indicated the improperly redacted report was “submitted by Frontier,” the phone company at the focus of the audit.

“Frontier operates in a competitive industry and, therefore, took steps as permitted by law to protect its competitively sensitive information,” company spokesman Javier Mendoza said in an email Thursday evening. “Frontier is investigating whether there was an error in the redaction, filing or copying process of the report.”

Blacked out information included the company’s worst performing areas, workforce concerns, the age of its network, a huge drop in customers and a dour glimpse at the company’s poorly performing internet services in West Virginia.

Frontier was permitted to file a redacted version of the more-than-160-page audit, which was completed by a third-party firm, on March 25, after submitting a confidential, unredacted version of the document to Public Service Commission a week earlier.

Commissioners ordered an investigation nearly two years ago and selected auditing firm Schumaker & Company in August 2019.

Company attorneys stated Frontier redacted the audit because it wanted to protect “trade secrets” and any other information that competitors could use to take business and revenue from the telecommunications group.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting filed a Freedom of Information Act request on April 2, requesting the commission make the information publicly available.

The commission asked Frontier to comment, and staff then replied to WVPB’s FOIA request on Thursday, saying the commission needs time to “deliberate, decide and issue an order” regarding Frontier’s request to maintain a redacted, public report.

The commission’s executive secretary said she anticipates the commission will issue an order to Frontier, regarding the matter, soon.

Frontier is supposed to respond to the report by April 20, and share a plan for how it will address issues identified in the report.

As of Friday morning, the improperly redacted version of the report was no longer available on the Public Service Commission’s website.

Frontier Hid Issues With Weak Points, Shrinking Customer Base, Internet Services

According to the report, the copper cable network is more than 49,000 miles long. It was built to serve 2 million customers, but the redacted version of the report shows the company only has around 300,000 people now.

Since Frontier acquired roughly 600,000 new access lines from Verizon, the state’s former main provider, in 2010, the report shows Frontier had lost roughly 37 percent of its total customers by 2017.

Landline phones are not the most popular nor lucrative telecommunications option – in 2017, the federal National Center for Health Statistics reported roughly 53 percent of West Virginia adults were using wireless services exclusively, while only 22 percent of West Virginia adults were using landline services exclusively or most of the time.

For West Virginians without reliable access to cellular services, landline phones are still vital for local businesses, daily use and emergency response. The Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, a union representing Frontier field employees, noted this in March 2018, when the group requested the Public Service Commission order an investigation into Frontier’s maintenance of its landline network.

“CWA started this process because of the condition of the copper plant and problems with service quality,” said Edward Mooney, vice president of the regional CWA district, in a written statement to WVPB in March. “In a state like West Virginia, the copper network is a critical portion of the telecommunications system for people and businesses. It is a network that requires investment in both people and its infrastructure.”

Almost half the network is 36 to 47 years old. There are roughly 952,000 areas of the network that are susceptible to “moisture, corrosion, loose connections, etc. that may cause interruptions of service to customers,” according to the report.

The report notes a higher trouble reporting rate in its southern coverage area. Generally, the network performs better in the northern part of the state.

Although auditors said the company has a sufficient number of staff now, redacted lines in the report said Frontier is slated to lose 50 percent of its experienced field employees over the next five years, due to retirement. Schumaker & Company, the private auditing firm that wrote the report, recommend the company come up with a plan to find and train more people soon.

Auditors also recommended the company take on more original maintenance projects – according to the report, Frontier is not doing enough preventative maintenance work on its copper cable network for landline phones in West Virginia.

While the West Virginia Public Service Commission regulates landline rates and services, the commission has not been given authority by the state Legislature to have a say in broadband services.

Frontier cited this as a reason to redact all portions of the audit detailing the company’s efforts to sell internet offerings in West Virginia. Staff for the commission recommended making that information public on March 31, noting a “large amount of comments from impacted customers throughout the state of West Virginia” involved “Frontier’s provisioning of internet services throughout the state and the speeds of internet service provided.”

Redacted portions included that Frontier is not offering broadband over fiber to end users in West Virginia, meaning its broadband speeds are limited to DSL speeds.

“While both companies present a high “availability” for their broadband, speeds are relatively slow and customers have complained about the speed and the reliability of the service,” according to redacted parts of the audit. “Frontier, like many local exchange companies, continues to lose telephone and broadband customers to other providers.”

The audit also stated that between December 2010 and December 2017, Frontier lost 1,000 broadband customers a month since April 2017.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Editors Note: The current story image replaces a previous image of foreign power lines.

Phone Company Frontier To Respond To Lengthy Audit By April 20

The long-awaited results of an investigation into Frontier Communications, the state’s primary landline provider, finds the company isn’t doing enough preventative maintenance work on its copper cable network for landline phones in West Virginia.

Despite several redactions, the more than 160-page report reveals new details into the quality of Frontier’s infrastructure for landline and internet services in West Virginia.

Frontier is a U.S. telecommunications provider, operating two companies in West Virginia — Frontier West Virginia and Citizens Telecommunications Company.

Both private companies’ landline services and rates are regulated by the West Virginia Public Service Commission.

The PSC ordered Frontier to select a private firm to audit the company’s quality of service, the condition of its infrastructure and its financial capacity in August 2018, months after a union representing Frontier employees, the Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, filed a petition requesting it.

In the last year, the PSC reportedly has received roughly 2,000 formal and informal complaints regarding Frontier’s landline service. In the roughly two years leading up to the report, more than 700 Frontier customers, local governments and businesses throughout the state who depend on Frontier’s service have submitted comments, supporting the investigation.

In West Virginia, where some communities still lack reliable access to broadband and wireless options, landline access also matters for emergency response.

In a June 2019 order, the commission wrote it was “too familiar with the burdens, barriers and barricades that West Virginia geography and small population impose on public utilities rendering service in this state,” referring mostly to cases the commission had written dealing with water utilities.

“The Commission continues to have concerns with the quality of landline service,” the order stated. “Despite the movement to cell service, many state residents, because of economics, geography or terrain, rely on landline service.”

Additionally, Frontier West Virginia agreed to extra reporting and investment requirements 10 years ago, when it volunteered to acquire thousands of miles of landline infrastructure from Verizon.

The audit, published last month, addresses characteristics of the network, like its age, its capacity versus the number of customers it actually serves, its worst performing areas and which spots are more susceptible to service interruptions. It explores staffing concerns, noting a number of engineers who maintain the network are nearing retirement and reporting there’s no company plan to fill their vacancies.

These specifics are all redacted from the current report that’s publicly available online. Frontier submitted the report, conducted by third-party auditing firm Schumaker & Company, to the PSC on March 18. Frontier requested a protective order from the PSC, allowing it to file a redacted version for the public one week later.

According to Frontier, the redactions were made to protect the company’s “trade secrets,” which competitors could use to take Frontier’s business. PSC staff recommended Tuesday night that the commission reject the redactions, saying the data is too specific to West Virginia to cause any harm.

As of Wednesday, April 2, the commission had yet to address the redactions. Frontier is required to address the report’s findings by April 20.

Network Condition And Maintenance

The exact age of Frontier’s landline infrastructure remains redacted, but the report notes a spike in copper installation in 1974 and 1983, which if applied to the network would mean a significant portion is around 46 and 37 years old, respectively.

As the network ages, the report notes more “splices” must be made, to connect more lines to the network. Splices and other connection points are susceptible to moisture, corrosion, loose connections and more that may cause interruptions of service to customers.

Frontier redacted the number of these connection points from the report, and the areas with the most and least connection points.

According to the report, the best thing Frontier can do for its network is offer more company-identified, preventative maintenance.

“Our ride-arounds identified field conditions that needed to be corrected,” the report said. “However, at that time there was not a systematic process in place to assure these conditions are getting addressed.”

Frontier has recently begun implementing a process to address its lack of preventative work, the report said, but the company redacts the specifics of that process.

Additionally, the company is slated to lose a noteworthy number of experienced field employees responsible for maintaining the copper network, who respond to customer complaints about service outages. The report recommended coming up with a plan to find and train new employees, although Frontier redacted the number of people set to leave.

The report also notes a discrepancy in the number of customers the network was built to serve, and how many customers Frontier actually has on it. That number, though, was redacted.

In 2018, Frontier told the PSC that the company lost 37 percent of its access lines between 2010 and 2017, from 613,443 to 385,832, which happens as customers drop their service. That was despite gaining Verizon’s extensive former network in 2010.

According to the most recent audit, Frontier doesn’t track the kinds of the customers it’s losing.

“Frontier has no information or analysis concerning the categories of customers that have dropped their service,” the report said. “Whether they were the most profitable customers (businesses, urban, high density) or the rural or least profitable customers.”

Murky Financials

Frontier’s financial health appears cloudy. In March, Bloomberg noted the company was skipping certain debt payments as it continued conversations with creditors about filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

On March 16, Bloomberg reported Frontier had $17.5 billion in debt.

At one point in the audit, auditors for Schumaker & Company refer to Frontier’s earnings in West Virginia as “healthy.”

Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Allison Ellis at Frontier disputed this in a written statement to WVPB last week, saying the audit is “flatly wrong” and that both Frontier companies in WV have lost money since 2012.

“The auditors did not properly account for pensions, post-employment healthcare, and other benefits paid by Frontier nor for interest costs on the money Frontier borrowed to invest in West Virginia,” she stated in writing on Thursday, March 26. “When those expenses are taken into account, it is clear that Frontier has invested more in the state than it has recouped.”

Dennis Schumaker, executive vice president for Schumaker & Company, noted the analysis in the audit only considered the financial information that Frontier made available to his firm.

“Significant financial transactions applicable to Frontier West Virginia and CTC of West Virginia but paid at the corporate level were not included in the financial statements and annual reports of either company and resulted in an incomplete presentation of net income and cash flows,” the report said.

Frontier doesn’t budget its corporate overhead costs on a state level, the report states, and Frontier doesn’t create capital on a state level either, according to the report.

Schumaker said auditors mostly used data that Frontier already has been reporting to the PSC, as part of the reporting requirements the company agreed to in 2010.

When Frontier acquired Verizon’s network that year, it agreed to meet certain investment requirements the PSC had previously set for Verizon.

The company agreed to spend $30 million that year, $75 million in 2011, $63 million in 2012, and $63 million in 2013.

Verizon also left behind $72.4 million in escrow, for maintenance.

According to the report, operation expenses including maintenance of the network have declined since 2012.

From 2010 through 2018, what Frontier spends on those operations has averaged $131.5 million, but from 2014 to 2018 those expenses have averaged only $123.6 million and are trending downward.

Landline and other aging telecommunications methods are hardly lucrative any longer. In 2017, the National Center for Health Statistics found in a wireless substitution study that roughly 53 percent of all West Virginia adults use wireless services exclusively, while another 10 percent use wireless services most of the time.

The same study reports approximately 22 percent of West Virginia adults use landline services exclusively or most of the time.

Related To Broadband Service

Frontier also redacted most mentions of its broadband operations. The audit points out broadband is not regulated by the PSC, but the revenues generated from broadband services can help support landline operations, and many of the complaints the PSC received described broadband woes.

Out of roughly 100 comments analyzed before the report’s publication, the audit details roughly half deal solely with broadband, mostly related to slow speeds and lengthy service-response times.

The report states that Frontier’s desire to extend broadband offerings was a justification for acquiring the copper network a decade ago.

However, pages upon pages of the report are blacked out that discuss the quality of Frontier’s broadband operations, its number of customers, how much money it generates, and its speeds.

Broadband is not a regulated utility like landline phone service. Yet, in a Tuesday recommendation to the commission, PSC staff asked this information also be made public, noting a “large amount of comments from impacted customers throughout the state of West Virginia” involved “Frontier’s provisioning of internet services throughout the state and the speeds of internet service provided.”

This article was updated at 10 a.m., on Friday, April 3, to add the Public Service Commission has received roughly 2,000 informal and formal complaints in the last year regarding Frontier’s landline service.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Public Service Commission Staff Note Delays From Frontier In Audit Process

As independent auditors continue their six-month review into Frontier Communications’ landline phone operations in West Virginia, staff working for the state Public Service Commission have noted some significant delays on the part of the telecommunications company.

Since August, auditing firm Schumaker and Company has submitted 121 requests for information to Frontier, according to the PSC.

Frontier reportedly has failed to make the 30-day deadline for 30 of those requests so far.

On Thursday, PSC staff filed a motion compelling Frontier to “fully and completely respond” to Schumaker’s data requests.

“Schumaker cannot complete its work [in a] timely [manner] if Frontier delays in responding to basic requests regarding its operations and services,” staff wrote.

In a written statement from Frontier’s office for corporate communications and external affairs, the company’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs said the company has complied with auditors’ requests, will continue to do so and that the company expects the audit to be finished on time.

“I think they’re getting their act together, but we’ve also asked for a lot of stuff,” Dennis Schumaker, with Schumaker and Company, said.

Most of the information requests involve Frontier’s policies and procedures, he said, adding staffers with Schumaker also have visited a few of Frontier’s central offices in West Virginia, where access lines to the copper network are supposed to connect consumers to service.

Landlines are a state-regulated utility, by decision of the West Virginia Legislature.

The PSC chose Schumaker and Company to complete a focused management audit on Frontiers’ copper network for landline operation on July 25, after Frontier missed two deadlines to select an auditing group itself.

The PSC determined a focused management audit by a third-party organization was necessary after initiating a general investigation a year earlier in August 2018, after receiving hundreds of complaints from Frontier customers throughout the state. To this day, the commission continues to hear from concerned consumers, business-owners and even 911 directors.

Their input is listed publicly online with motions and other requests for information on the PSC website, under case number 18-0291-T-P.

The commission anticipates a preliminary report from Schumaker in December and a final report in February.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.