Frontier Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Frontier Agrees to Regular Meetings With House Committee, Liaison

Frontier Communications agreed Wednesday to quarterly meetings with the House Technology and Infrastucture Committee, as well as the creation of a liaison between the company and the committee for constituent complaints.

The agreements come as Frontier is wrapping up a national Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, and a few months after the Federal Communications Commission announced it would award the company more than $247 million over the next 10 years for broadband deployment, through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

“It really positions us even better,” said Allison Ellis, Frontier senior vice president of regulatory affairs, during a hearing with the committee. “Because we are freed from the $10 billion worth of debt that we [were] previously trying to shoulder, and that will give us more flexibility in the RDOF work that we’re doing.”

Frontier, a national telecommunications company, is the state’s main landline phone provider. After acquiring territory formerly owned by Verizon in 2010, the company made a series of commitments to the Public Service Commission, which regulates the company for landline phone service, to expand broadband access.

Although its coverage is nearly statewide, Ellis said, only about 14% of the state’s population uses Frontier for voice services and only about 10% are Frontier internet customers.

Most recently, in bankruptcy agreements and following a third-party audit of the company’s landline and broadband offerings, Frontier pledged to spend $200 million on capital improvements by the end of 2023, and to expand its broadband fiber offerings to at least 150,000 households by 2027.

Additionally, in applying for funding through RDOF, Frontier committed to raising nearly another $250 million in private capital to fund the construction of broadband infrastructure, in addition to the FCC’s $247 million.

The RDOF announcement was met by opposition from several state lawmakers, including those on the House Technology and Infrastructure Committee, and U.S. Sen Shelley Moore Capito, who said in December the company’s mismanagement and delays in past federally funded programs “raises significant questions about their ability to manage federal funds of this magnitude.”

Ellis said through restructuring, Frontier is in a better place to handle these projects now.

“I will also say that on a go-forward basis, the company is committed to a very rigorous approach to any additional borrowing. We absolutely want to guard against any future financial difficulty,” Ellis said. “We think that we’re just not going to have the issues that we had previously.”

Members also heard from the company on the results of Frontier’s performance review audit for the PSC, as well as previous efforts to build out to unserved West Virginia communities through federal funding and emergency response efforts.

The committee first invited Frontier representatives to a hearing in late February. They also received documents from Frontier related to the company’s progress on federal funded broadband expansion programs, as well as a settlement with the West Virginia attorney general’s office in 2015.

House Technology and Infrastructure Chair Daniel Linville suggested toward the end of Wednesday’s hearing that the committee will be inviting more providers in the future.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

W.Va. PSC Issues Preliminary Order In Frontier Landline Case

State regulators are ordering Frontier Communications to make some changes, more than two years after initiating an investigation into the company’s infrastructure for landline phones in West Virginia.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission issued an order on Wednesday, Sept. 16, requiring that the telecommunications company implement some of the recommended actions from an audit that was finalized in March.

The commission’s demands on Wednesday were preliminary. Frontier has 30 days to provide additional information that the PSC requested on Wednesday, before the commissioners release their final order.

“Frontier customers in this state remain plagued with service problems,” the commissioners wrote in the most recent filing. “[E]ven as the customer base – and the corresponding revenue – declines.”

Some of the actions the PSC is seeking from Frontier, including a proactive tree-trimming program and initiatives to identify problem areas in Frontier’s antiquated copper network, are already underway, according to responses from the company included in the Wednesday order.

For other initiatives that Frontier previously called unnecessary, including one to make state-level capital budgets for Frontier’s two West Virginia companies more transparent, or another to deploy more fiber optic cable, the commission is asking that Frontier to provide information on what’s holding the company back.

PSC staff have received 1,342 informal and formal complaints regarding Frontier’s landline phone service in the last year, according to the agency.

Commissioners agreed to initiate a focused management audit into the company in August 2018 after a union representing Frontier employees filed a petition requesting action that March.

Frontier had agreed to added regulation from the PSC in 2010, when acquiring the former Verizon territory.

An auditing firm that the PSC selected in July 2019 found that the company wasn’t doing enough preventative maintenance work. It also determined that Frontier faced a poor financial outlook due to the decline of landline phone use nationwide, and found that the company was slated to lose more than half of its experienced field employees in the next five years, due to retirement.

Although the PSC selected the auditing firm for Frontier, after earlier proposals from the company didn’t meet the PSC’s standards, Frontier was still financially responsible for the audit.

Frontier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April. The PSC is keeping tabs on the company’s plans for new leadership, to make sure their subsidiaries in the Mountain State continue to comply with regulatory rules. The PSC plans to hold a hearing on the matter in Charleston on Oct. 28.

On Broadband

Although the West Virginia Public Service Commission doesn’t have the authority to regulate broadband, commissioners say that Frontier committed to offering internet-related services in 2010 when it acquired 600,000 access lines from Verizon.

Auditors included information on broadband in the report – all of which Frontier was allowed to redact along with phone-related information Frontier classified as “trade secrets.” The PSC later disagreed with this categorization.

In April, a reporter for Ars Technica found that Frontier hadn’t completely redacted the report. By copying and pasting blacked out text in a clean word document, the redactions disappeared, showing that auditors had found more than 900,000 susceptible points in Frontier’s copper network.

The Public Service Commission later agreed more than four months later that Frontier had no legal authority to redact roughly half of the landline-related information that the company tried to hide. A new, less redacted version of the report was uploaded to the PSC website in August.

In the same month, the West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council requested to intervene in the case.

“[I]nternet access in West Virginia through Frontier is inextricably intertwined with Frontier’s copper network,” the council wrote in a filing to the PSC in late August, earlier acknowledging that the company offers both internet and phone service through the same infrastructure. “Investments in broadband will help Frontier retain customers with bundled service, resulting in improvements in Frontier’s telephone network, which is a major focus of the audit.”

The PSC decided on Wednesday that it would reject the council’s request, due to the fact that commissioners don’t have the authority to regulate broadband.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Staff For W.Va. PSC Again Recommend Release Of Redacted Info

Even after the information was made public earlier this month by a science and technology magazine, a debate continues in the West Virginia Public Service Commission as to whether commissioners should make fully public a lengthy audit into state’s main landline provider.

A third-party auditing firm completed its investigation into Frontier Communications and its two West Virginia subsidiaries in March, regarding the quality and management of the private company’s publicly regulated copper cable network for landline phones.

Frontier also offers internet services using its copper network, a service that’s not regulated by the state.

Frontier attorneys submitted the audit confidentially to the PSC on March 18 and filed a redacted version for the public a week later.

Nearly a week after West Virginia Public Broadcasting filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the commission, asking commissioners to release the full report, a journalist for Ars Technica found Frontier’s public version of the audit was improperly redacted, revealing physical characteristics related to the more-than 49,000 mile copper cable network, and its roughly 952,000 weak points.

Frontier also had redacted its low number of DSL customers (175,000), problems with that service’s speed, and a large gap between the 2 million customers the company’s infrastructure is capable of serving, and the roughly 300,000 landline customers the company actually has.

PSC staff called the Ars Technica report an “unfortunate disclosure” in public documents filed April 17 to the commission. In those same documents staff advocated for the commission to release the information on its own accord to WVPB, in response to the FOIA request.

Staff previously recommended the commission reject Frontier’s redactions on March 31, a week after Frontier filed its redacted version of the audit for the public.

“For the public to understand why Frontier is struggling to provide quality service it must know the magnitude of Frontier’s system,” staff wrote in their more recent April 17 recommendation, regarding WVPB’s request for the unredacted audit. “The sheer size of its copper network, the number of poles, switches, batteries, splices, etc. all contribute to Frontier’s poor quality of service.”

Although the redacted information already is publicly available online, staff’s recommendations to share the data highlights a greater debate regarding the commission’s authority to regulate various aspects of Frontier, and other utilities in general.

When information related to Frontier’s internet service was redacted, the company stated it deserved protective treatment because the commission doesn’t have the authority to regulate broadband.

Staff argued that Frontier agreed to conditions related to broadband offerings when it acquired hundreds of thousands of access lines previously belonging to Verizon in 2010.

Frontier reported to the commission in 2018 it had successfully made broadband offerings available to at least 85% of the former Verizon service area, according to staff, who went on to add “complaints and comments filed with the Commission … claim a different story.”

“Frontier cannot claim a customer has broadband service if the speed is too slow to effectively use the service for its stated purpose or if the service is unavailable due to problems with the copper network, batteries, etc.,” staff wrote.

Public Service Commission staff also noted that much of the redacted information in the audit regarding the company’s number of customers and Frontier’s investment strategies already is included in other public and closed filings, making the redactions unnecessary.

In an email on Saturday, Frontier spokesman Javier Mendoza said the company “operates in a competitive industry and, therefore, took steps as permitted by law to protect its competitively sensitive information.” The company will reply to the entire audit on April 30, after filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy and receiving an extension from the Public Service Commission.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Frontier Files Bankruptcy, States No Changes To W.Va. Customers

West Virginia’s main landline phone provider filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late on Tuesday.

The request, filed by Frontier Communications in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, is waiting on approval from a federal judge.

It’s unclear when, but eventually Frontier also will need the West Virginia Public Service Commission to approve the terms of whatever settlement the company reaches with its creditors.

Frontier runs two West Virginia subsidiaries and serves roughly 300,000 customers with its landline phone service, according to the recent findings of an audit the commission ordered in August.

That audit also finds Frontier was serving roughly 175,000 DSL internet customers in September 2019, whose service is not regulated by the public service commission but is provided along the same copper cable network that facilitates landline communications.

Frontier notified the state it was filing bankruptcy in a letter on Wednesday, saying “the reorganization of Frontier through the bankruptcy process is expected to improve the company’s financial and operational status to the benefit of its customers.”

Both Frontier and the Commission have stated the bankruptcy announcement won’t change publicly regulated landline services and rates.

“All Frontier customers need to know that the bankruptcy filing will not affect their service,” said Commission Chairwoman Charlotte Lane in a written statement Wednesday. “The Commission will be closely monitoring this proceeding to ensure that West Virginians will not see any disruption of service.”

Frontier and its two West Virginia subsidiaries were recently the focus of a more-than-160 page focused management audit on the company’s capacity to manage a copper cable network for landline phones it acquired in 2010. According to the audit, that network is more than 49,000 miles long.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission ordered an investigation of Frontier’s management of its landline phone network in August 2018, after customers and a union representing Frontier employees requested an investigation. It selected an auditing firm, Schumaker & Company, a year later. The commission received that completed audit in March.

Auditors found that the company has lost thousands of customers in the last decade as people have gotten rid of their landlines. That means the company lost money they would have used for maintaining landline phone infrastructure.

The audit also states Frontier isn’t performing enough preventative maintenance on its aging infrastructure.

Many of these details — including specific customer numbers, and the length of Frontier’s network — were redacted in a public version of the audit Frontier contributed on March 26. A journalist for Ars Technica found last week the audit was improperly redacted.

The commission has shared it received nearly 2,000 complaints about landline phones from Frontier customers in the last year.

The state was supposed to hear a formal response from Frontier to the audit by April 20. In a written statement to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Allison Ellis, senior vice president of Frontier’s regulatory affairs said the company might seek a “short extension” for its response.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.