Frontier: For Now, Nothing ChangesBut in 12 months, company has some decisions to make... 06:21PM Thursday May 14 2009 by Karl Bodetags: dsl · Video · Fiber · businessMultichannel News notes that Frontier has some decisions to make. The company currently has a relationship with Dish Network, while the Verizon markets they'll be acquiring are a combination of DirecTV and FiOS TV. Specifically, 110,000 FiOS Internet customers, 69,000 FiOS TV subscribers and 164,000 DirecTV customers who were once Verizon will now be Frontier. Frontier says that for the next nine to twelve months, nothing will change for customers in divested markets. Obviously Dish, who just got kicked to the curb by AT&T, would benefit greatly if Frontier insisted upon pushing Dish as part of a pseudo-triple play option.
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en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | Dish will Be begging for a deal... or getting ready to sink.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
| psilocybin
join:2007-07-19
Monroe, NY | FIOS Users I'd like to know what happens to those 110K FIOS Users. I fear for them. Maybe Frontier will decide to rollout fiber in their entire footprint. j/k | |
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jchambers28
join:2007-05-12
Alma, AR | Re: FIOS Users whats going to suck is for people who rent apartments who can't put up a satellite dish will have to convert to cable. | |
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yolarry
join:2007-12-29
Creston, WV
 ·HughesNet Satellit..
| Re: FIOS Users said by jchambers28  :whats going to suck is for people who rent apartments who can't put up a satellite dish will have to convert to cable. My suggest is to just get DSL and phone package.
I think FIOS will still be Verizon. | |
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darcilicious
Cyber Librarian
Premium
join:2001-01-02
Forest Grove, OR
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Comcast
| Re: FIOS Users said by yolarry :I think FIOS will still be Verizon. Not in the states like OR, WA, and IN that have FiOS and are part of this deal. We'll have fiber but it won't be a part of the Verizon network/company/billing/support/etc. | |
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SuperJoker
join:2005-11-21
Yermo, CA
 ·Verizon Online DSL
·Verizon west (ex G..
1 edit | Re: FIOS Users said by darcilicious :said by yolarry :I think FIOS will still be Verizon. Not in the states like OR, WA, and IN that have FiOS and are part of this deal. We'll have fiber but it won't be a part of the Verizon network/company/billing/support/etc. And to think Verizon is still sending get FiOS PR out here and with No intention of actually delivering more than the status quo. | |
| | | hottboiinnc
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH
·Time Warner Cable
·buckeye cable
| You can put up a Dish if you live in an apartment. That is FUD and has been changed. There is an actual FCC Rule that requires owners to give that option otherwise face the FCC and the Court.
Also many apartments now offer private cable and internet systems to their residents. | |
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jchambers28
join:2007-05-12
Alma, AR | Re: FIOS Users My land lord will not let me put another dish she told me if I did they would evict me. | |
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SuperJoker
join:2005-11-21
Yermo, CA
·Verizon Online DSL
·Verizon west (ex G..
| Re: FIOS Users said by jchambers28 :My land lord will not let me put another dish she told me if I did they would evict me. Call Your Senator, Congressperson and the FCC and complain and in writing if needed via snail mail(Hey the USPS needs You), I think Your land lord may be wrong, A lot of people here put dishes up, The land lord doesn't care as long as their done by a professional installer. | |
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cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
| You can put up a dish as long as you have exclusive control over the property. So if you have a private balcony or patio, then you can.
However, the OTARD ruling Bob61571 linked to does not grant permission for you to modify any existing structure, so you wouldn't have automatic permission to screw/bolt/drill into a building.
There is also a requirement that the dish must be grounded, and current NEC doesn't allow you to tie to a cold water pipe anymore, so if they wanted to be sticklers, they can still prohibit it via a code violation. | |
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SuperJoker
join:2005-11-21
Yermo, CA
·Verizon Online DSL
·Verizon west (ex G..
| Re: FIOS Users said by cdru :You can put up a dish as long as you have exclusive control over the property. So if you have a private balcony or patio, then you can. However, the OTARD ruling Bob61571 linked to does not grant permission for you to modify any existing structure, so you wouldn't have automatic permission to screw/bolt/drill into a building. There is also a requirement that the dish must be grounded, and current NEC doesn't allow you to tie to a cold water pipe anymore, so if they wanted to be sticklers, they can still prohibit it via a code violation. I already have a Satellite Dish for My TV and have had Dish since 2004 here in the park since then(Dish Network) on My mobile home(they ain't quite that mobile and beware Fleetwoods are cheaply made too, After 3 total moves all mobile homes may need some structural work inside), Others here have either cable(TWC) or Dish or Direc TV or even more rarely they use a translator UHF antenna. | |
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yolarry
join:2007-12-29
Creston, WV
·HughesNet Satellit..
| said by jchambers28 :My land lord will not let me put another dish she told me if I did they would evict me. Heres a idea.
Grab a bucket.
Put the pole in the middle
Pour Concert
Apply Dish
Run cable to your window
and point
volla
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HN7000S - 99 West 1370 MHz - Pro - installed October 2007 - Linksys WRT54G V8 - Xbox 360, PSP-1001 CFW - 2 Vista Desktops - 1 XP Desktop - 1 vista Acer Aspire 3680 laptop | |
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SuperJoker
join:2005-11-21
Yermo, CA
·Verizon Online DSL
·Verizon west (ex G..
| said by hottboiinnc :You can put up a Dish if you live in an apartment. That is FUD and has been changed. There is an actual FCC Rule that requires owners to give that option otherwise face the FCC and the Court. Also many apartments now offer private cable and internet systems to their residents. I believe the same rule also applies to Condo HOAs too(Home Owner Associations), As one HOA official(the Treasurer) at one time said HOA rules are above everything else including the US Government(No one should be above the Law), She wouldn't budge(She rented Her 2 Condos of the 12 units there, I owned 1 & lived there with My Mother), So not too long after that I left and sold My place, My Mom and I made $20,000 on that place back then which got plowed into another house, Sometime soon after needless to say I had My revenge later as the Condo market I'd heard went into a steep dive some months later, too bad, so sad. Today She'd have the FCC and the Courts to deal with I'd expect. | |
| Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA | Frontier states the obvious! The sale is expected to take up to a year to close so why would anyone expect things to change before 9 to 12 months. | |
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cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
| Re: Frontier states the obvious! said by Sammer :The sale is expected to take up to a year to close so why would anyone expect things to change before 9 to 12 months. Because there are already people trying to get out of contracts/commitments before any change in service happens or is even announced. | |
| fiber4ever
join:2001-07-26
Beaverton, OR
| kicked to the curb Im a verizon fios tech in oregon and I am getting more pissed off every minute. I keep reading all this crap about "rural" and I can't speak for Indiana or South Carolina, but a lot of verizon's territory in Oregon and Washington, especially around Seattle and Portland, is FAR from rural. It's the suburbs, highly populated, lots of large houses and apartments and lots of picky people who expect quality service. This aint an area where houses are 2 miles apart and separated by dirt roads. Employees and customers in these states were basically "laid off" from Verizon in this transaction. Frontier better come with their "A" game or this will get ugly, service-wise and employment-wise. Thanks for allowing me to vent... | |
| | Bob61571
join:2008-08-08
Washington, IL
·DIRECTV
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: kicked to the curb Sir, if you follow DSL Reports, you must know that Verizon is shedding these few scattered farmers to concentrate on the much more attractive metro areas for their FiOS investments.
Please encourage your hillbilly country folk Ma and Pa Kettle customers to abandon their outhouses, and move to places like NY City, or DC.
(meant as satire) | |
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cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
| said by fiber4ever :I keep reading all this crap about "rural" and I can't speak for Indiana or South Carolina, but a lot of verizon's territory in Oregon and Washington, especially around Seattle and Portland, is FAR from rural. Quit looking at it from just a local area and look at the entire footprint. Most of Frontier's service area is less dense "rural" area. Yes there are urban or suburban areas, among them some of the areas that FiOS currently serves. But if you look at what percentage those non-rural areas are as compared to all the area that they are acquiring, they are a drop in the bucket.
Employees and customers in these states were basically "laid off" from Verizon in this transaction. How were you laid off? Yes there will probably be some employment changes. But for the most part it's going to take the same number of employees to keep the network running. Do you think that just switching companies is going to make line maintenance disappear? Are fewer CSRs going to be able to handle those customers?
How have customers been laid off too? Exactly ZERO changes have been announced. Frontier is still going to offer pone service. They are still going to offer DSL service. They are still going to offer fiber service. They aren't "spending" $5+b just to rip it all out and install tin cans with strings to everyone's house.
I understand your feelings about employment. A previous employer "sold out" my department to the competition as it was the best move from the company's standpoint. They could either spend a fortune recoding the main application that we dealt with a more modern programming language, or partner with our competition to transition our customers to the competition's existing software. They chose the latter.
There was a lot of hurt feelings as for years the company would tell us how valuable we were, but then they just sold us out out of the blue with no warning. I resented what they did for some time. However, as a result of that I looked at other related career paths and now I appreciate my current job even more then my previous job before being sold out.
Now looking back, I'm glad that what happen, did happen. I agree that from a strictly business perspective, it was the correct thing to do. It would have been a huge investment to recode our application, just have the same functionality. We recently had a reunion of sorts where many of my former co-workers that were scattered around as the result of my department closing and everyone there seemed to have careers that they were happy with. There wasn't any depressed unemployed alcoholics living off of welfare...but it was at a bar so the alcoholic part might have been masked.
My point is, the situation is only going to be as good as you make it. If you want to be all doom and gloom, there is no way this is going to work, I'm going to be unemployed by Christmas, then that's what's going to happen. If you look at is as an opportunity, then one will present itself. | |
| | | fiber4ever
join:2001-07-26
Beaverton, OR
| Re: kicked to the curb What I meant by "laid off" is that Verizon is letting 11,000 employees among those 14 states go, although it's different from the traditional sense in that we are retaining employment, albeit with a different company. Don't get me wrong, between being laid off or being divested, I'll take my chances with divestment anyday, but I'm concerned about the company taking over our area as are many customers. Someone said in another thread that you dont turn a Mercedes into a Datsun, but I can't shake the feeling that this is what's happening here. | |
| 
cabletvtech
@npgco.com
| i feel sorry I feel sorry for the people getting picked up by frontier. Frontier was the phone company in new york when i lived there, and here where i live in arizona. In both location, frontiers service is garbage, there phone service is ok but there dsl is the worst product i have ever had. These folks getting frontier may have better luck because it was previously verizon, but if the verizon plant is not in good shape dont expect frontier to invest to upgrade it, as they arent upgrading the plant here in bullhead even tho its 30 years old at least, and yet they continue to sell dsl service, thats advertised at 7/3 and if your lucky you pull down 4/1 | |
| | Mark F
join:2007-08-01
Fort Wayne, IN
| Re: i feel sorry With FIOS TV we now get far more channels than we ever thought was possible. How many channels will we lose when Frontier takes over? Many of them are channels we never had before and that you can't get on cable around here. Many have become favorite channels.
And, I know I'm really going to miss the MRDVR ability to record something in one room and watch it in another. And the outstanding PQ. And fastest internet. And, 100+ HD channels, and many other things that we never had before.
But, if Verizon is giving up on us Hoosiers, will they let us keep anything we now have? Or, will we be offered much less at a higher price?
Satelite isn't an option, and I'm not about to buy a chainsaw at Lowes to make it one.
So, at this point all we can do is hope and pray that we end up with something good out of this.
Mark F. | |
| tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Floral Park, NY
| land of opportunity verizon isn't exactly doing such a great job anymore since every other competitor significantly lowered the bar on expectations for deployment, price & service offering competitiveness. frontier may have problems, but nothing a nice sized bankruptcy couldn't deal with. once the debt is offloaded they will have a much easier time upgrading service areas with nice shiny fttp equipment. the banks are out to screw everyone anyways so why not screw them back with offloaded debt. if it's good enough for chrysler (and a slew of others over the past decades), it's good enough for frontier. the company isn't so big that it would hurt their branding, market share, or buying / borrowing power like it would a verizon or comcast.
fyi, for the verizon tech in the thread.. sorry, but frontier may not be paying what verizon was with their comfy union job... so if you have better opportunities elsewhere you may as well get that resume out there! | |
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RAD
@curchin.com
| Calling all Verizon Techs... All Verizon Techs should call and listen to the recorded conference call w/Ivan about the Frontier deal (will be deleted after Monday).
1-800-677-1310
AT THIS TIME, NO FURTHER FIOS WILL BE DONE AFTER 2010.
What does this mean for us? Any thoughts on FIOS & Copper in Jersey? Is Verizon planning massive layoffs for the next contract? What's the union doing?
Appreciate ALL input!!! | |
| | JPL
Premium
join:2007-04-04
West Chester, PA
·Verizon FIOS
| Re: Calling all Verizon Techs... said by RAD :
All Verizon Techs should call and listen to the recorded conference call w/Ivan about the Frontier deal (will be deleted after Monday).
1-800-677-1310
AT THIS TIME, NO FURTHER FIOS WILL BE DONE AFTER 2010.
What does this mean for us? Any thoughts on FIOS & Copper in Jersey? Is Verizon planning massive layoffs for the next contract? What's the union doing?
Appreciate ALL input!!!
I don't think there's any call to panic. The operative phrase in your post is: 'at this time'. As this Frontier deal shows, plans change - and sometimes pretty quickly. It was only a few months ago that someone high up at Verizon speculated on the possibility of rolling out FTTN to bring FiOS to the more rural parts of their system. This deal shows that that plan is no longer on the table. It's hard to know what the company will be doing post 2010 - there are just too many factors at play. | |
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cdru
Go Colts
Premium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
| You can read the transcript here.
The quote you mention is towards the top of page 5. The whole question was:
quote:
John Hodulik - UBS - Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks for the question, guys and thanks for doing the call. Just a couple housekeeping things actually. You said that it brings you down to 27 million homes in the territory. What was the number of homes in the territories divested? That would be helpful. And then I'll just run through a couple quick ones. And if you could help us on -- you said that you expect to be at 17 million homes by the end of 2010. Any sort of further update on sort of where you go from there, if in fact you get to a larger percentage of that 27 million over time?
Response:
quote:
John Killian - Verizon Communications - EVP & CFO
Okay, let me hit a couple of these, John. If you look at homes in the divested property area, it is roughly 5 million. We have talked about a 32 million number roughly in that particular range. The slight difference we had in the FiOS target here is we have been talking 18 million by the end of 2010. About 750,000 of those were in the divested properties. So as we rethink this now, we think about a target of about 17 million. Our ultimate plan is about 18 million. We are, and as I mentioned this on the quarterly call, we had, a while ago, we are very focused obviously on free cash flow generation. We have invested a lot in FiOS and we are very satisfied with that investment. We are doing quite well with it, but that will begin to ramp down in 2010. And we will begin to see more free cash flow generation coming out of the wireline business as we enter 2011.
Note that they said that they will be ramping down, not stopping. They will have ~27m lines if/when the transaction is complete. They currently have about 10m lines in areas already covered with Fios (~37%). They plan to cover an additional million lines (~26%) for a total of 17m (63%). They have also stated that they are shooting for a 65%-80% coverage of FiOS ultimately.
I don't think anyone could reasonable expect 100% of their network would ever be converted (at least in a reasonable period of time) nor that boom of fiber tech jobs would last forever. But it also doesn't mean you should polish off the ol' resume quite yet. | |
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Fairpoint...