A notorious hacker group says it has sensitive data for up to 2 million Frontier Communications customers and it’s about to put around 5 gigabytes of stolen digital info on the Dark Web for auction. 

Dallas-based Frontier has been quiet about all of this, but the theft by RansomHub reportedly took place back on April 14. 

The telecom reported the incident to the Maine Attorney General, and messaged its customers, saying that sensitive data for around 750,000 customers was “accessed by a third party during a recent cyber incident.” (Light Reading was the first to report on this.)

Frontier offered its customers free credit monitoring and identity-theft resolution services.

However, hacker group RansomeWare separately reached out to Bleeping Computer, declaring that the actual base of affected customers is closer to 2 million. The group also said it’s giving Frontier until Friday (June 14) to respond to its threats with a payment. 

“Data is more than 2 million customer with address name email ssn credit score date of birth and phone number. We gave frontier 2 months to contact us but they don’t care about clients data,” the group told Bleeping Computer.

Frontier Communications has partnered with YouTube on a limited-time “NFL Sunday Ticket” promo that will give users access to every out-of-market Sunday afternoon game and over 100 live TV channels at a discounted rate.

Frontier internet customers who are subscribed to YouTube TV and sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket can save $100 through Aug. 21. New subscribers to both Frontier and YouTube TV can save up to $500 their first year vs. cable plus, get $100 off NFL Sunday Ticket through Aug. 21.

Earlier this year, Frontier partnered with YouTube TV to offer integrated billing for internet and YouTube’s live TV vMVPD.

Frontier Communications has become the latest pay TV operator to drop/lose carriage of far-right channel Newsmax TV. 

"Our contract with Newsmax TV expired and we made the business decision not to renew our agreement," Frontier said in a statement on its website. 

The telecom, which reported 306,000 remaining TV/video customers at the end of 2022, also said that it has stopped carrying Fuse Media channels Fuse and FM. 

Also read: The Future of the Internet-TV Bundle? Frontier Integrates YouTube TV Into a Single Unified Bill

“Since we began renewals last year, 99% of our operators have renewed, representing about 98% of our subscribers,” reads a Newsmax statement. “Frontier’s decision was clearly political, because they will lose far more money in cancellations and lost business without Newsmax.“ 

The channel’s comments jibe with rhetoric used in a much higher-profile two-month carriage dispute with DirecTV, which was just resolved two weeks ago. 

Just as DirecTV did last year, Norwalk, Connecticut-based Frontier, a publicly traded company listed on the Nasdaq, also recently dropped carriage of another far-right channel, One America News. 

In its dispute with DirecTV, Newsmax was able to tap into the outrage of House Republicans, many of whom called for investigations of the satellite TV company over alleged political bias and the “silencing of conservative voices.” 

Newsmax also flooded its on-air and digital news channels with negative DirecTV press.

Newsmax returned to DirecTV’s program guide, but without securing its core demand, sources familiar with the negotiation told Next TV. Newsmax, which had previously been carried by DirecTV under advertising revenue share terms, had been seeking a license fee of $1 per DirecTV subscriber per year.

Newsmax disputes this assertion, telling Next TV that its DirecTV deal is “consistent in terms of licensing fees with all other agreements we have secured over the past 15 months.”

In any event, given that Frontier's pay TV heft doesn’t come close to DirecTV's 13.1 million subscribers, don't expect this latest garden-variety carriage dispute to rise to a similar level of prominence and acrimony. 

Frontier Communications, which has bundled third-party virtual pay TV services with its fiber-based high-speed internet service tiers for several years, will now integrate its customers’ monthly fees for YouTube TV with their main broadband bill. 

Call it one small step for a telecom, but one giant step in the evolution of bundled telecom services, with operators aggressively moving out of the business of licensing their own channels and showing no sign of looking back. 

Spiraling content licensing costs and cord-cutting may have splintered the ties between broadband and TV/video, but here they are, once again, bundled together in one oversized bill. 

"This is an exciting rollout for both Frontier and YouTube TV, and highlights the continued move away from traditional pay TV," said entrepreneur Jason Cohen, whose startup, MyBundle TV, is pitching a similar bundled third-party video scheme to smaller telecom companies. 

"Broadband providers have the opportunity to play a major role in helping existing and prospective customers simplify the streaming TV world, from live TV/cable replacements to on-demand services. Bundling streaming with internet is where we see the world going and represents a big part of MyBundle’s focus."

Frontier, which ended 2022 with 1.7 million FTTH subscribers, still has deals to market DirecTV Stream and Dish Network satellite TV as third-party TV/video replacement options. 

But Google’s YouTube TV seems to get most of Frontier’s promotional water, with the operator offering $10 off the vMVPD’s just-hiked $72.99-a-month bill for one year. 

Cable operators are very much part of trend of pulling back from licensing their own content. But insomuch as Comcast and Charter are still in that business, Frontier is using its YouTube TV billing integration move as counter-marketing. 

“Our partnership with YouTube TV makes it easier for customers to ditch cable,” John Harrobin, Frontier’s executive VP of consumer, said in a statement. “We take our position as the un-cable provider seriously and are constantly listening to consumers. Many want one source for internet and TV, and that’s what this partnership is all about. With Frontier and YouTube TV, there’s no settling for anything but the best.”

Added Tony Archibong, managing director of global product partnerships at YouTube: “Frontier is a natural partner for YouTube TV, due to our shared dedication to customer choice and flexibility. With this next stage of our partnership, Frontier customers will be able to sign up and enjoy all the perks of YouTube TV such as unlimited DVR, the ability to watch on any screen, innovative features such as key plays and multiview, special pricing offers for NFL Sunday Ticket and the option to cancel the service at any time, all on the same bill as their Frontier internet.” ▪️

Frontier Communications CEO Nick Jeffery said he believes his company's fiber-based networks will ultimately win the battle with cheaper fixed wireless offerings from competing telcos, adding that measuring the differences between the two technologies is like "comparing a Ferrari to a horse."

Fixed wireless access (FWA) has emerged as a viable broadband alternative, especially in rural markets where building fiber is costly. In Q2, T-Mobile said it added 565,000 FWA subscribers, beating analyst predictions soundly.

Also: Charter Says Fixed Wireless Was a Factor in Q2 Subscriber Declines 

Cable operators have criticized FWA service as an inferior technology, adding that while it may be an alternative to even slower copper-based digital subscriber line service from telcos, it hasn’t been a major factor in the overall broadband subscriber slowdown.  

Frontier embarked on its "Gigabit America" initiative — its plan to bring fiber to 10 million homes by 2025 — shortly after emerging from bankruptcy protection in 2021. So far, the company has extended the network to about 4.4 million homes and expects to build out 1.1 million to 1.2 million new locations this year. 

At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference Tuesday, Jeffery said that data usage among its customers is just too high — fiber customers average 1 Terabyte per month of data usage, with top tier subscribers consuming 2 Terabytes — for fixed wireless to make a dent.

Also: Fixed Wireless Could Add 10 million Subscribers By 2027, Analysts Say  

“If you had a choice between high-speed symmetrical fiber and FWA, you’d always choose fiber,” Jeffery said at the conference. “Which means FWA is probably picking up segments of younger people in shared homes that move, and they’re a very difficult segment to make money out of. And eventually those customers, once they settle into their homes, they will flip to fiber. I think FWA will grow, it will have some impact on our copper base, we’re watching it closely, but at the end of the day we’re really comparing a Ferrari to a horse.”

Jeffery was equally confident about Frontier’s position versus cable operators, who until recently, have dominated the broadband market. He added that Frontier has three sources of growth — movers, copper-to-fiber migration and winning share from cable. 

“It’s very, very clear that we are taking the majority of our customers from cable, no doubt about that,” he said. “It’s based on the underlying truth that fiber is a fundamentally better product than cable.”

Jeffery expects that momentum to continue as cable operators build out DOCSIS 4.0 networks. DOCSIS 4.0 is expected to deliver up to 10 Gigabit per second speeds over hybrid fiber-coax networks. The Frontier CEO said DOCSIS 4.0 is too expensive, will take years to fully deploy and still would be inferior to existing fiber networks.

“Frontier’s fiber network is 10-gig capable end-to-end today to the home,” Jeffery said.

Jeffery joined Frontier in 2020 after serving as CEO of European telecom giant Vodafone UK, which went through its own problems in the past. When he took the helm of Vodafone UK in 2016, Jeffery said the company had a terrible brand reputation, negative NPS scores and poor employee engagement. Five years later Vodafone UK is taking market share from every segment, has the highest NPS scores in its markets and has the highest employee engagement among its peers. 

“It’s winning left, right and center,” Jeffery said, adding he sees Frontier moving along the same path.

“If I map that across into Frontier’s early experience, we are already taking share against every competitor in every geography that we work, the brand is repairing, NPS is going up, internal engagement is accelerating,” Jeffery added. “All of those things are happening. It does take a number of years for those things to fully embed in the market, but when they do, customers will come to us because they want the best product, they want the best service. They want to be associated with a modern, fun, agile tech company and that’s what we’re setting out to build.” ■ 

Frontier Communications promised to expand high-speed fiber internet service into unserved and underserved urban and rural areas of Connecticut, eliminate hidden surcharges and improve its marketing and customer-service functions, all part of a settlement with the state attorney general valued at $60 million.

The settlement, unveiled August 31, was part of an overall investigation by the attorney general’s office and the Connecticut Department of Consumer Services as to whether Frontier deceived or misled consumers in the state in the marketing and sale of its internet services. The two agencies jointly reviewed more than 1,400 consumer complaints against the company, ranging from fees for equipment already returned, poor customer service and charges that continued after service had been canceled. 

“Frontier failed Connecticut consumers,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a press release. “Their DSL internet quality was slow and unreliable, and their customer service was unacceptable. They tacked on hidden fees, charged families for returned equipment, and kept charging customers even after services had been cancelled. That ends now.”

Also: Nearly 2,000 Striking Frontier Workers Back on the Job in California 

In a statement, Frontier said the complaints dated back to old legacy services and the company admitted no wrongdoing. 

“Frontier is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build a fiber infrastructure that will provide high speed, reliable connectivity across the State of Connecticut,” Frontier said in a statement. “The settlement with the State of Connecticut is primarily related to legacy DSL services and stipulates that Frontier has admitted no wrongdoing. We settled the investigation in good faith to put it behind us so we could focus on our business – that’s in the best interest of all our customers.”

As part of the settlement, Frontier will spend $42.5 million over the next 3.5 years to upgrade outdated digital subscriber line (DSL) service in the state, with at least half of those improvements made in economically distressed urban and rural communities, or about 40,000 homes. In addition, Frontier has agreed to eliminate what the state called a $6.99 hidden monthly surcharge for internet service (amounting to $16 million last year alone), to pay $1 million to the state and to dole out $200,000 for credits and refunds to consumers who filed complaints beginning in 2019.

“We intend to hold Frontier accountable to every word of this agreement,” Tong continued. “If you continue to have any problems with Frontier, we want to hear from you.”

This is the second settlement Frontier has made in the past three months. In May it agreed to pay $8.5 million in civil penalties and costs and return $250,000 to consumers in California as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and two California law enforcement agencies over DSL service.  

Also: FCC to Investigate Frontier Outages in Arizona  

Also as part of the Connecticut settlement, Frontier must meet several accountability targets over the next six years, including new price and billing disclosures, advertisement disclosures that address its DSL representations, requirements that Frontier deliver promised internet speeds or provide options for consumers who do not receive promised speeds, and assurances that the company will implement transparent and fair cancellation and equipment return processes. Failure to meet those requirements could end in another $6 million in penalties levied against the company by the state. 

The agreement also provides protections for consumers offered the upgrade, including a 45-day period to decide whether to transition to fiber internet, protections against early termination or disconnection fees if they elect to cancel Frontier service, access to new customer promotional rates, and information about internet subsidies through the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). ■

Frontier Communications chief financial officer Scott Beasley said the mid-sized  carrier does not expect to introduce a mobile product in the near future, mainly because returns on its fiber-based broadband service are so high.

Frontier emerged from bankruptcy protection about a year ago with a goal to upgrade its network and vastly improve its customer experience. The company built out about 640,000 homes to fiber in 2020, and expects to pass another 1.1 million to 1.2 million homes with fiber this year -- up 20% from the original forecast. The plan is to pass 10 million households by the end of 2025.

At the Credit Suisse Communications conference Tuesday, Beasley said the build has been progressing well, adding that the company also is exceeding expectations for its goal of removing about $250 million in costs annually out of the business. 

“We’re about a year ahead of that plan. We expect to meet the $250 [million] a year ahead of schedule, plus add to it,” Beasley said.  

But one thing the company will not be focusing on is launching a mobile product, something overbuilder WideOpenWest  did earlier last month. 

At the Credit Suisse conference, Beasley said mobile has had no impact on Frontier’s fiber success, adding that at this point, the returns on the fiber product are so high, it doesn’t make sense to shift resources at the moment toward a mobile product.

“The demand for fiber is clear, we’ve had three successive quarters of record net adds without a wireless product,” Beasley said. “Consumers are choosing the best connectivity product separately from the potential to bundle it with wireless. Secondly, we haven’t done it yet because the returns on capital from building fiber are so strong for us that we’ve chosen to stay focused, we’re going to allocate capital to our fiber build. The unlevered IRs are in the mid-to-high teens there.” 

Also: Cable Wireless Grows Up 

But the CFO added that if consumer behavior does change, Frontier has the resources and the leadership -- Frontier chairman John Stratton and CEO Nick Jeffery have extensive experience in the wireless business -- to quickly launch a mobile product. 

“If we decided to do that we could do it quickly, we could do it well,” Beasley added. “But it hasn’t been a part of the core strategy this far.”

Also: It’s Time to Take Frontier Communications’ Fiber Plans Seriously 

In April, Frontier made 2 Gigabit per second data speeds available across its entire footprint -- making it the first carrier to do so, according to Beasley -- and the CFO said the company has been “very pleasantly surprised with the uptake.” While he conceded that not everyone needs that level of bandwidth -- “power users” like gamers and those who need to download and upload massive files are the main customers -- that may change sooner than you think. 

Beasley estimated that data consumption has risen between 30% and 40% annually over the past few years, with the average Frontier fiber customer consuming almost 1 Terabyte per month of data, up 30% from pre-pandemic levels. Also, as the number of devices connected to the network rises -- he estimated that the average household in Frontier’s footprint has 22 devices -- so will the need for bandwidth.

“We think demand is there now for a portion of our customer base, and we think it’s going to  continue to rise as data consumption rises,” Beasley said. ■ 

Using unusually harsh language, the Federal Trade Commission and two California law enforcement agencies said they’ve stepped in to stop Frontier Communications from “lying” about internet speeds and “ripping off" customers, including by requiring Frontier to build out fiber and pay millions of dollars in reparations.

Specifically, the FTC said the broadband provider had been charging for high-speed internet speeds it failed to deliver under several digital subscriber line (DSL) service plans per an FTC complaint filed in May 2021 it had now settled with the agency. Frontier will pay $8.5 million in civil penalties and costs, as well as $250,000 to go to the “ripped off" California Frontier customers and future discounts for DSL service.

Frontier will also have to deploy its fiber plant in California more quickly over the next four years.

Also: Frontier to Expand Connecticut Fiber Network to 280,000 Additional Consumers in 2021

The settlement announcement came a day before Frontier reported its earnings, which it said represented three consecutive quarters of record operations growth, including building out fiber to a “record” 211,000 locations.

The proposed settlement — which must be approved by a U.S. District Court judge — would:

• “Require Frontier to substantiate its internet speed claims at a customer-by-customer level for new and complaining customers and notify customers when it is unable to do so;

• “Require Frontier to ensure it can provide the internet service speeds it advertises before signing up, upgrading, or billing new customers;

• “Prohibit Frontier from signing up new customers for its DSL internet service in areas where the high number of users sharing the same networking equipment causes congestion resulting in slower internet service; and

• “Require the company to notify existing customers who are receiving DSL internet service at speeds lower than was advertised and allow those customers to change or cancel their service at no charge.”

The language in the press release on the settlement differed markedly in tone from the May 2021 announcement of the complaint, which alleged the company had “misrepresented” internet speeds and “failed to deliver” on its promises. ▪️

While cable operators grapple with the slowdown of broadband subscriber additions expected in the third quarter and beyond, Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino said that telcos, long the butt of jokes about the sluggish speeds and poor service inherent in their core digital subscriber line service, have streamlined operations and are positioning themselves to take back significant market share. 

In a research note, Supino pointed to AT&T’s spinoff of DirecTV, Frontier Communications’ emergence from bankruptcy, Lumen’s (formerly Century Communications’) sale of about 7 million passings to Apollo Global Management and T-Mobile’s successful integration of Sprint, and how those moves have freed up their respective balance sheets to invest in fiber-to-the-home networks and technology to bring faster, more reliable broadband to residential customers. Tack on investment in C-band spectrum by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to extend fixed wireless broadband to harder to reach areas, and the outlook for telco service looks a lot better than it has in the past. 

“During 2021, each of AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, Lumen, and T-Mobile, in different ways, became a more viable contender for residential broadband subscribers,” Supino wrote, adding that he expects telco fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband passings to rise 50% from 51.1 million in 2021 to 77.1 million homes by 2025.     

AT&T is expected to lead the pack, with 1.8 million FTTH passings by 2025, up from 411,000 this year, according to Supino. Total FTTH penetration from the four telcos is expected rise from -0.7% in 2021 to 3.1% by 2025, the analyst wrote.

Cable companies have dominated the broadband business for more than a decade, accounting for the lion’s share of additions by offering  higher speeds and better quality compared to telcos’ inferior DSL service. But as cable operators have warned that the record-setting growth pace of the past few years will slow down in the third quarter, AT&T and others have committed to building out their fiber networks and lowering prices to capture share. 

Also Read: How Slow Will the Broadband Slowdown Be?  

Last month, Comcast said broadband customer additions would be slower than expected in the third quarter. On Sept. 23, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei warned that his cable company expected to lose between 15,000 and 20,000 broadband customers in Q3, and could possibly end the year with flat net additions. 

Also Read: Broadband Slowdown Forces Analyst o Go Negative on Cable Sector 

That sent cable stocks into a tailspin, with Altice USA losing about 28% of its share value in two weeks. Other stocks like Comcast, Charter and Cable One, were down less dramatically, but the shift caused a few analysts to rethink their outlooks on the stocks. 

Altice USA fell another 3% on Oct. 12 (it closed at $17.63 down 49 cents each) after Deutsche Bank analyst Bryan Kraft lowered his rating on the stock to “Hold” from “Buy,” and reduced his price target to $22 per share from $40 each. 

Also Read: Broadband Slowdown Forces Analyst to Go Negative on Cable Sector 

That downgrade came a day after Raymond James analyst Frank Louthan downgraded the cable sector, saying operators could lose as many as 11 million broadband customers in the next four years. In his note, Louthan wrote that telcos could make “a significant change to the communications landscape that is set to shift the balance of power that has favored the cable companies for the past 20 years,” according to Bloomberg. 

Barclays Group media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar believes that telcos have more short-term visibility than cable due to new device launches, tailwinds from the EBB program and successes bundling streaming and wireline broadband offerings.

“We also believe that the industry in some ways is seeing more stable promotional activity than last year because of the structure of promotions,” Venkateshwar wrote. “In addition, T-Mobile’s focus on higher end pricing plans and ARPA growth should also provide some stability to the competitive environment near-term. Telecom companies also appear to be getting better at bundling wireline and wireless as organization structures are better aligned.”

AT&T has struck a deal with Frontier Communications to expand its fiber network offerings to enterprise customers while adding fiber capacity from the smaller carrier that will help it boost its 5G mobile network.

AT&T, which is in the process of offloading the media assets it spent billions of dollars accumulating over the past five years, has said it is refocusing its efforts toward its fiber network and 5G offerings. The telecom giant already plans to reach about 2.5 million incremental customer locations with fiber by the end of this year and 30 million locations by the end of 2025. The Frontier deal apparently will help to close the "last mile" gap for many of these customer locations -- AT&T said that across the country, more than nine million business customer locations are within 1,000 feet of its fiber network. 

Frontier, which emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year, has embarked on an aggressive fiber buildout -- dubbed Build Gigabit America -- and plans to make fiber available to 600,000 locations by the end of 2021, expanding to pass around 10 million locations by the end of 2025.

"We're bringing together two complementary networks to benefit business customers that require fiber-optic connectivity," said Mike Shippey, Frontier executive VP of business and wholesale, in a press release. "As part of this deal, we'll use our expanding fiber network to provide AT&T high-speed connections for large enterprise customers and the expansion of its 5G mobile network across our markets."

The agreement, AT&T said, will enable the telecom giant to reach additional locations more quickly through the Frontier fiber network, and together the two companies will bring high-speed connectivity to enterprise customers within Frontier's 25-state footprint.

"With Frontier building out its own fiber network where we are not building, we'll be able to work together to provide large business customers with the high-speed, low-latency data connectivity they need to grow and thrive," said Scott Mair, AT&T network engineering and operations president, in a press release. "As demand for broadband connectivity grows, we will be able to plug and play into Frontier's network to support businesses and help grow our 5G mobility network for consumers."

The Federal Trade Commission has joined six states in suing Frontier Communications for allegedly not delivering the DSL internet speeds it promised its customers and charging for higher speeds than it delivered. Frontier counters that it will vigorously defend what it said is a baseless complaint.

Also Read: Frontier Sets April 30 for Chapter 11 Emergence

The FTC, along with Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and California filed the suit n the U.S. District court for the Central District of California.

Frontier, which recently emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, has more than three million internet customers, including 1.3 million residential broadband users in 25 states.

"In numerous instances, Frontier has sent consumers advertisements for DSL Internet service at speed tiers that Frontier could not provide to them," the complaint alleges, saying that at the point of sale--at the point of sending geo-targeted mailers or on the phone with potential customers--Frontier has information that it is unable to provide certain DSL speed tiers to consumers based on their addresses, but offered those ties anyway, and charged consumers for them.

"Since at least Jan. 1, 2015, Frontier has in numerous instances advertised, marketed, offered, or sold DSL Internet service at tiers corresponding to speeds that Frontier did not, and often could not, provide to consumers," the complaint alleged.

Responding to the complaint, Frontier said that it believed it was "without merit," and "includes baseless allegations, overstates any possible monetary harm to Frontier’s customers and disregards important facts." Those include, said the company, that "1) Frontier offers Internet service in some of the country’s most rural areas that often have challenging terrain, are more sparsely populated and are the most difficult to serve and 2) Frontier’s rural DSL Internet service was enthusiastically welcomed when it was launched and has retained many satisfied customers over the years."

Also Read: Hill Seeks ISP Help in Promoting Broadband Subsidy

As to the claim it misrepresented its service in marketing it to customers, the company said: "Frontier’s DSL Internet speeds have been clearly and accurately articulated, defined and described in the Company’s marketing materials and disclosures."  

The FCC has approved Frontier's plan for restructuring out of bankruptcy, which includes allowing it to complete what amounts to a transfer of control from the old company to the restructured one before the FCC authorizes its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Phase I support. It was one of the winning bidders in the recent auction for rural broadband buildout subsidies.

That is part of a $1.4 billion investment the company has said it planned to make in building out its network.

Also Read: Frontier Maps Out Restructuring Plan

"We have thoroughly reviewed the record, including the supplemental information submitted by the Applicants, and we conclude that the transaction serves the public interest, convenience, and necessity and meets the requirements of the Act," the FCC said.

A bankruptcy court approved the plan Aug. 21.

The Communications Workers of America had asked the FCC to hold off on the decision until it collected more data on the restructuring's impact on workers and until it had reviewed the results of state regulatory reviews, but the FCC declined to do both.

"Based on the record, we find no merit to CWA’s and TURN’s concerns regarding service quality, competitiveness, workforce, including CWA’s members, and operations," it said. "Indeed, we expect that Frontier is more likely to improve service quality and invest in infrastructure than it would be absent its prompt emergence from bankruptcy."

It pointed out Frontier had promised that “all employee wages, compensation, benefit programs, and collective bargaining agreements in effect as of the Plan’s effective date will remain in place.”

CWA said it would continue to monitor the deal.

"In the absence of an investigation of these issues by the FCC, some states like California are pursuing thorough oversight that is resulting in strong commitments to ensure the bankruptcy reorganization will benefit the public," CWA said in a statement. "Frontier’s recent proposed settlement to the California Public Utility Commission to gain approval of the bankruptcy restructuring plan included a commitment of $1.75bn in new capital investment, 350,000 new fiber to the premise connections, and a commitment to maintain technician staffing levels and California call center locations required to perform this work. CWA will continue its advocacy for other states to follow suit and for Frontier to use its enhanced financial flexibility to invest equitably across all the communities it serves."

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) has written FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to stick up for Gray Television's WWSB-TV Sarasota, Florida, in a retrans fight with Frontier Cable. 

Citing a failure to reach a retransmission agreement with Frontier, WWSB-TV used some in-house news reporting last week to relay that it had been pulled from the cable system Friday (Dec. 18) after WWSB offered to keep the signal on at current terms while they continued to negotiate.

In the WWSB reports, VP and GM Jeff Benninghoff said: “I am absolutely stunned. In all my 27 years in local media, I have never even heard of a cable operator just dropping a station when it was offered a no-strings-attached extension to work things out."

Also Read: Comcast, Hearst Reach Retrans Deal

Actually, cable operators have been known not to agree to extending the same terms beyond a contract's expiration when they are asking for more money.

Robert Folliard, III, SVP of government relations for Gray, said that the broadcaster filed a good-faith complaint against Frontier Dec. 18 after it dropped Gray in three markets "despite Gray granting Frontier an extension until December 31, 2020 to give the parties time to continue to negotiate an agreement."

The complaint asserted that Frontier appeared never to have intended to carry the stations after the contract expired Dec. 18. "Instead, it just strung Gray along for weeks making us believe progress was being made until informing Gray with less than an hour to go that Frontier’s negotiator actually had no authority to enter into an agreement on the terms she had most recently offered to us and in fact she could not agree to terms along the lines of any of the proposals she had made over the last several weeks."

If the lead negotiator had no power to negotiate, Frontier could hardly be negotiating in good faith, which would violate FCC rules.

Frontier saw it differently.

"Until our contract with the programmer expired, Frontier worked hard to negotiate a fair deal. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach an agreement," said Javier Mendoza, VP of corporate communications and external affairs for Frontier. "No provider is immune from network negotiations and programming removals; and other providers also face the continual need to reassess their channel and content lineup."

But Buchanan expressed concerns about the Florida station's absence from the lineup. 

In a letter Tuesday (Dec. 22), Buchanan said that he was concerned about the "blackout" of the local TV station and the importation of ABC affiliate WFTS Tampa, denying his constituents access to "exclusive local news focusing on Sarasota and surrounding area."

Buchanan also tweeted about the letter, saying: "Our community depends on access to local news for important information that impacts their daily lives. That's why I just wrote to the chairman of the FCC expressing my concern at the sudden blackout of a local TV news station here in Sarasota."

He urged the FCC to "take any appropriate action to help ensure that Frontier acts in the public interest and that Gray Television receives fair and equitable treatment..."

Chairman Pai has avoided getting into the middle of retrans disputes, suggesting the marketplace was the better arbiter.

Frontier Communications has become the latest telecom to retrench from the traditional pay TV business and simply offer a third-party virtual MVPD service to its subscribers to what is now its core service offering, broadband. 

Philo, which offers a bundle of 59 entertainment-themed channels—no broadcast networks, or sports or news—for an industry-low $20 a month—announced this week that both Frontier and cable company WideOpenWest will offer its service to its broadband-only customers. 

Also read: Cable Operator WOW! to Market vMVPDs Sling TV, YouTube TV, fuboTV and Philo in Charleston

Frontier paid Verizon $10.54 billion in 2016 for Fios assets in California, Texas and Florida. But less than four years after that deal closed, Frontier seems to be content with rendering its Fios service a single-play offering. 

Also read: YouTube TV Gains Distribution Into Windstream Kinetic Broadband Homes

Frontier’s pay TV subscriber base shrunk to below 700,000 at the end of the third quarter. And like virtually all other North American pay TV operators, the company faces a virtuous cycle—the more its customer base for TV shrinks, the less bargaining power it has to push back against programmers in licensing negotiations. 

This downward trajectory has most small and mid-sized telecoms looking to third-party OTT services. Providing a video solution is crucial to packaging what is now their core business, broadband. And bundling ready-made live-streaming services like Philo has become a hot trend. 

Altice USA and Frontier Communications are the first announced addressable advertising clients for Xandr, AT&T’s newly formed advertising unit consolidating AT&T’s advanced TV business, AT&T AdWorks, its data and analytics business, as well as the newly acquired ad tech company AppNexus.

Xandr encompasses all aspects of the existing AT&T advertising & analytics businesses and will be run by Brian Lesser, the former GroupM North America chief who was recruited over to AT&T last year.

Related: AT&T Hires GroupM's Lesser to Run New Ad Business

“Xandr is a name that draws inspiration from AT&T’s rich history, including its founder Alexander Graham Bell, while imagining how to innovate and solve new challenges for the future of advertising,” Lesser said, in a statement.

Under the agreements with Altice USA and Frontier, Xandr will aggregate and sell the telecom companies’ national addressable advertising inventory. Xandr will also collaborate with Altice’s advanced advertising division, a4, in an effort to help it expand its addressable advertising capabilities.

The announcement was made from the Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., an industry event produced by Xandr.

Touting around “170 million direct-to-consumer” relationships across wireless, video and broadband, AT&T CEO Randall Stephens used September’s Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference to outline a strategy in which AT&T will try to take a piece of the sizable advanced advertising market share controlled by Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook.

“Advertising models will be very, very important," Stephens said. “We think we have the elements that are gonna be required to stand up a very impressive advertising business.” 

The Big Hero 6 series is set to air, a few years after the 2014 film came out. It has been a long three years for executive producers Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle. “When you have an actual airdate after you’ve been working on it for three years, it’s, ‘Oh wow! People are actually gonna watch it!’ ” Schooley said.

Disney XD will preview two episodes Nov. 20 on its app and on-demand, after the one-hour movie Baymax Returns. The series officially starts early in 2018 and picks up where the movie left off, exploring the relationship of 14-year-old Hiro and robot Baymax, who Hiro believed was lost forever.

The show, like the movie, is set in the mashup metropolis of San Fransokyo. “The city was a character in the movie,” McCorkle said. “We get to explore more parts of the city.”

The voice cast includes Maya Rudolph, Ryan Potter and Scott Adsit, with Andy Richter in a recurring role as Globby. McCorkle described Globby as “the most incompetent pickpocket in the city.”

The producers rave about Richter. “Like the classic voiceover guys,” said Schooley, “he just gets it.”

McCorkle promises “a great catalog of villains” in Big Hero 6.

Also boasting of memorable villains is Frontier on Netflix. Season two of the series, which looks at the rough-and-tumble fur trade in the early 18th century, starts Nov. 24. Executive producer/director Brad Peyton said Frontier offers something no other series does: A close-up of working folks in the 1700s. “I decided to do it because there were no other shows set in that time period, unless they were about the upper-class and British royalty,” Peyton said. “We’re interested in exploring the working class.”

The show is shot in Newfound-land, not far from where Peyton grew up. “It’s weird having your aunts and uncles come by the set,” he shared.

Season one, he said, featured antagonist versus protagonist. Season two sees “the antagonists start to turn on each other.”

The new season also sees ruthless Declan Harp, played by Jason Momoa, evolve in his desire for vengeance, looking to form an alliance to take down rival Hudson’s Bay Company.

Peyton’s highlight of season two? “Two words: Jason Momoa,” he said. “He’s really enthusiastic about his character, and really goes the extra mile.”

He mentioned Momoa showing up one day, volunteering to start a scene from inside a frozen lake. “Jason has a real savagery and real charm that he brings to work every day,” Peyton said.

Frontier Communications is cutting about 1,000 jobs across its 29-state footprint amid a reorganization that follows the company’s acquisition of Verizon’s wireline operations in California, Texas and Florida in April.

The workforce reduction, which includes cost savings, is also coming alongside a reorg in which Frontier is creating commercial and consumer business units.

“On Tuesday we announced a restructuring that is a meaningful and necessary next step toward realizing the full potential of our increased scale following the recent Verizon transaction,” Frontier said in a statement. “We are focusing our field staff on operational excellence and centralizing other support functions.  These changes will unfortunately impact approximately 1,000 valued Frontier employees across our 29 state footprint—employees who have made significant contributions to the organization.   Impacted employees will be notified over the next several weeks.”

Daniel McCarthy, Frontier’s president and CEO, noted on the company’s Q3 call on Tuesday (Nov. 1) that Frontier, prior to the Verizon wireline asset acquisition, had been organized around a regional structure, with each having its own resources for areas such as marketing, finance, engineering and human resources.

According to a memo from McCarthy posted by DSL Reports (a Frontier official validated its contents),  the new structure, which will include seven geographic operating areas each led by an SVP of operations, becomes effective December 1.

Per the memo, those SVPs will report to Ken Arndt, EVP of customer operations, succeeding John Lass, who intends to retire in 2017 and will lead a centralized Commercial Sales team on an interim basis. Cecilia McKenney, meanwhile, will head up Frontier’s centralized sales team focusing on consumer and small business.

“Our focus in the consumer market has not changed,” McCarthy said. “We will pursue opportunities aggressively in all of our Fios markets,” he added, noting that Frontier is expanding its Vantage product footprint and working toward a relaunch in legacy Fios areas.

RELATED: Frontier Fires Up ‘Vantage’ Brand

On the video side, Frontier expects to roll its Vantage TV product to three markets and 150,000 homes this year.  Frontier has initiated a plan tolaunch IP-based video service to more than 40 markets, representing about 3 million homes, over the next three to four years.

Frontier lost 92,000 video subs in Q2, giving it a total of about 5.07 million. It also shed 99,000 broadband subs, for a total of 4.4 million.

Frontier posted Q3 revenues of $2.52 billion, down $84 million versus the previous quarter.

Its revised annualized cost synergy target is $1.4 billion, up from the $1.25 billion outlined in its Q2 report. 

Frontier Communications said executive chairman Maggie Wilderotter will step down in April after more than a decade at the telecom company, succeeded by Pamela Reeve, a telecom veteran and long-time board member.

Wilderotter joined Frontier in 2004. The move is not unexpected -- in March she relinquished the CEO title to Dan McCarthy. Reeve joined the Frontier's Board in 2010 and currently serves as Lead Director. During her 15 years at Lightbridge Inc., a mobile business software and technology solutions provider, Reeve held executive positions including president and chief executive officer. She currently serves as a director on the boards of Sonus Networks, Inc. and American Tower Corporation, where she is also lead director.

"Pam's strong leadership skills, extensive background in telecommunications and technology, as well as her tenure on Frontier's board, make her the right choice to serve as Frontier's new Chairman," Wilderotter, known in cable circles for past stints at Wink Communications and Microsoft, said in a statement. "With our transformative Verizon acquisition solidly on track, the board is comfortable moving forward as planned with an independent chairman of the board in 2016."

Frontier agreed to buy Verizon FiOS systems in California, Florida and Texas in February for $10.5 billion. That deal is expected to close in the first half of this year.

Frontier Communications has begun to promote a new offering called “FreedomTV” that’s targeted to cord-cutters and broadband-only subscribers that is based on TiVo’s Roamio OTA model.

Word of the promotion, first spotted by DSL Reports, comes about seven months after Frontier and TiVo announced plans to offer a co-branded version of the TiVo Roamio OTA, an HD-DVR model that provides access to over-the-air broadcast TV as well as over-the-top content from sources such as Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video.

A web site about the FreedomTV offer says it starts at $20 (with a year of  Amazon Prime baked in), with the caveat that subs also get a qualifying Internet service from Frontier and agree to a one-year service agreement (or get hit with a $100 early termination fee).  

Subs who take the FreedomTV option can also get a TiVo Mini (an IP client to access service on an additional TV) or the TiVo Stream (a streaming sidecar that can deliver live TV and recorded shows to mobile devices) for an additional $9.99 per month.

According to the fine print, Frontier recommends an Internet service that provides at least 6 Mbps, and notes that OTA TV reception requires “clear line-of-sight.”

TiVo introduced the $49.99 Roamio OTA DVR in August 2014 as a “limited edition” model, and expanded to full-on national distribution in January 2015. The Roamio OTA does not contain a CableCARD slot, but is outfitted with 500 Gigabytes of storage, four tuners, Ethernet connectivity, built-in 802.11n WiFi, and access to features such as TiVo OnePass.

As shown in the video below (published on YouTube on Sept. 21, 2015), FreedomTV is clearly targeted to broadband only customers or cable TV subs that are looking to ditch their pay TV subscriptions:

Frontier has also begun to offer all new high-speed Internet subscribers (not just FreedomTV subs) a free year of Amazon Prime, the subscription offering that provides free two-day shipping and access to the Amazon Prime video library, Prime Music and the Kindle Owner’ Lending Library.

Cablevision Systems, which is being acquired by Altice Group, has introduced new service packages tailored for cord-cutters that ties together broadband and OTA digital antennas. 

Among 262 companies whose websites were evaluated by 10,000 consumers, six cable MSOs were among the lowest-scoring organizations on the list.

The "2015 Web Experience Ratings," conducted by the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm, examines consumers' likelihood to forgive companies for a poor experience at their websites. The Waban, Mass.-based firm included nearly 300 companies across 20 industries, including pay TV service and Internet service.

Overwhelmingly, consumers indicated they were unlikely to forgive Time Warner Cable, Comcast and CenturyLink (all three tied at #252 of the 262 firms) and Frontier (dead last at #262) for lackluster website experiences in the Internet service category; and TWC (#256), Comcast (#258), Charter Communications (#260) and Cox Communications (#261) in the pay TV service category.

Additionally, Cox was one of the companies that fell the most in the annual ranking from last year, Temkin Group noted, with only 29% of respondents saying they could forgive the MSO for a poor online experience. The two categories earned "very weak" ratings across the board while banks and credit card issuers generally had "strong" ratings.

"It's ironic that many of the cable companies that provide Internet service earned such poor ratings," Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group, said.

The top spot went to USAA for its banking business (it was also ranked at #3 for its credit card business and #13 for its insurance business), while Amazon took second place for its retail business (as well as fourth place in the computers category). Temkin Group said the two companies had traded the No. 1 and No. 2 spots for the five years it has been conducting the study.

Frontier Communications said long time CEO and telecom veteran Maggie Wilderotter will step down as CEO next month, becoming executive chairman of the mid-sized telecom service provider, making way for president and chief operating officer Daniel McCarthy to step into the CEO role.

Wilderotter, who was named Frontier CEO in 2004, will work closely with McCarthy to ensure a seamless transition, which is scheduled to take place on April 5.

The move comes days after Frontier landed one of its biggest deals, acquiring Verizon's wireline voice, broadband and video operations in California, Florida and Texas for $10.54 billion. 

In a note to clients, Elevation LLC media analyst Stephen Sweeney noted that the timing of the transition was “a bit odd” coming so soon after the Verizon deal announcement.

“FTR is in the middle of a very large and transformational M&A transaction with the acquisition of the VZ wireline assets, and it will also be raising a substantial amount of capital to finance the deal,” Sweeney wrote.  “While former CEO Wildreotter is staying with the company as Executive Chairman, the CEO transition does add a degree of risk in our view.  The pushback on the bullish side would be that with a very large deal the company could use a new leader of the transformed and much larger entity who is already very familiar with the legacy FTR business.”

McCarthy has been with Frontier since 1990, and has served as Frontier's president and COO since April 2012. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors since May 2014. McCarthy led the team negotiating the terms of the Verizon deal.

"I am honored to have the opportunity to lead Frontier at this exciting moment in our history, and thank Maggie for her guidance and mentorship,” McCarthy said in a statement. “I look forward to working with her, the Board and the rest of the leadership team as we continue to enhance our competitive position in the markets we serve, execute our strategic plan and deliver strong results benefitting our shareholders, customers and employees."

A veteran of the cable and telecom industry, Wilderotter joined Frontier in 2004 as president and CEO and was named chairman and CEO in 2006. Prior to joining Frontier, Wilderotter served as senior vice president of Worldwide Public Sector at Microsoft. Prior to that she served as CEO of Wink Communications, executive vice president of National Operations for AT&T Wireless Services Inc., CEO of AT&T's Aviation Communications Division and as senior vice president of McCaw Cellular Communications Inc.

"It has been a privilege to lead Frontier as CEO for more than 10 years, and I am very proud of our team's accomplishments,” Wilderotter said in a statement. “The Board and I are confident that now is the right time to transition leadership responsibilities and that Dan is the right leader to advance Frontier's record of success. Since joining Frontier nearly 25 years ago, Dan has been an invaluable leader and contributor to Frontier's significant achievements. Frontier benefits from an outstanding management team with a diverse range of experienced leaders and thousands of dedicated employees. I look forward to remaining with the Company as Executive Chairman and contributing to its continued growth and success."

In a statement, Frontier’s lead director Howard Schrott said the moves are part of the board’s “on-going succession planning process, which took on special emphasis several years ago when Maggie first discussed her plans with us. In Dan McCarthy the Board has found the person best qualified to drive Frontier forward. Dan is a top-notch leader who knows Frontier and our industry. He has an intimate understanding of our strategy, has a proven track record in operational execution and, most of all, knows how to create shareholder value. We are highly confident in Dan's abilities and anticipate a seamless transition to his new role as CEO of Frontier."