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Frontier Communications customers lucky enough to live in an upgraded or recently acquired service area may soon be getting Frontier Vantage, a new suite of enhanced products including a multichannel TV package, faster broadband, and phone service.
Frontier Vantage started life in Frontier’s fiber to the home market trial in Durham, N.C., and is set to accompany, not replace, the Frontier FiOS and U-verse brands, starting in a wide rollout in Connecticut. Much like the XFINITY brand today co-exists with Comcast, Frontier intends its new Vantage brand to signify a premium experience. It is part of Frontier’s larger plan to introduce IPTV service in more than 40 of its larger markets across the country over the next four years, with an even larger presence in former Verizon service areas in Texas, Florida, and California.
In all, Frontier expects to offer the enhanced service to more than eight million of its customers after upgrades are finished.
Frontier’s biggest challenge will be getting Vantage service to customers in its legacy service areas, where its reliance on ADSL and its slow broadband speeds are often inadequate for a shared broadband and IPTV platform. In upgraded service areas, other challenges are appearing, including firm rejections of Vantage in multi-dwelling units where complex owners have signed multi-year exclusivity contracts with cable operators.
“As far as Durham goes, some of the initial learnings are that we were locked out in many cases of securing long-term contracts with some of the apartments and condominium owners in the market because we didn’t have a video product other than a mini head-end that was using satellite, which was not the preferred solution,” said Frontier CEO Dan McCarthy in February. “In the first several weeks of introducing the product, we’ve already secured new contracts that would be substantial units right out of the gate. Our door-to-door sales process has been very successful so far, but we’re in the early days — it’s only been really about a month or so.”
McKenney
Much of the door knocking is taking place in Connecticut, where Vantage started replacing the older Frontier TV/U-verse platform on set-top boxes starting last Monday. Former AT&T customers have transitioned through three brand changes. Originally served by AT&T U-verse, Frontier’s acquisition of AT&T’s wireline facilities in the state introduced customers to Frontier U-verse/FrontierTV. As of this week, it is now VantageTV.
The new firmware introduces a Netflix “on-demand channel” (Ch. 800 in Connecticut) where subscribers can access Netflix content without having to use separate hardware like Chromecast or Roku. This is the first of several “apps” that Frontier will offer, allowing customers to reach Facebook, Twitter, home shopping, weather, and games over their set-top box.
Frontier also plans a ‘start-over’ feature that allows viewers to start at the beginning of a show already in progress, an enhanced on-screen program guide and easier access to a list of upcoming shows. A video-on-demand library will also be on offer, and Frontier claims it will include over 100,000 movies and TV shows.
Customers will also get a whole-home DVR that can record four shows at once on a 1TB hard drive. A limited number of markets will also be offered 4k video service.
Accompanying the TV package will be phone service and Internet access at speeds starting as 12Mbps up to 1,000Mbps, depending on the market and available infrastructure.
“This is the perfect time for Frontier to launch our premier products,” said Cecilia K. McKenney, executive vice president and chief customer officer and head of corporate marketing at Frontier. “‘Vantage’ conveys the ultimate customer experience and represents products and services that deliver value, solutions, and choice.”
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Frontier What is Vantage TV 3-24-16.mp4[/flv]
Frontier introduces Vantage TV to customers in Connecticut formerly served by AT&T U-verse. This introductory video shows Frontier’s new set-top box firmware includes direct support for Netflix. (2:16)
this can only mean one thing : Verizon’s FIOS and AT&T’s U-Verse brands that Frontier is currently licensing from the giants is going to expire soon so the company has built their own brands to replace what they are temporarily using now.
Joe V – possibly. Or they just wanted to standardise the name across their service areas. Kinda silly for the same company to be offering a product called “uVerse” in one market and “FiOS” in another.
Mediacom has labelled their new TV package(using a new Tivo DVR) as “Xtream”.
Just you wait. After the Frontier April 1st acquisition from Verizon is completed there will be another announcement.
AT&T is just itching to rid itself of last mile wireline. There will be another “agreement” and Frontier will take over AT&T’s wireline operations in another huge state (hopefully it is California). All of you that think they are investing in this so-called “gigapower’ are kidding yourselves. For all we know, all the fiber that AT&T has laid down is backhaul/backbone for network redundancy to the cellular towers and has very little to do with the legacy wireline they still control.
http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/att-writes-its-own-permission-slip-to-end-california-wireline-service/
@JoeV, it will take just a little bit longer than that. Wait for AT&T to have a big expense from a merger or buying a huge amount of spectrum and they will use Frontier like a “purchase eraser” on a credit card so that they can hide the effect that his has on earnings. Wall Street Analysts fall for it every time, or maybe they think that everyone who lives in an underserved area should move to San Francisco. Frontier wins from this too because they can momentarily look like they aren’t bleeding customers to death by buying a fresh… Read more »
BINGO Paul. How ironic as there’s another spectrum auction coming up. This is NO coincidence.
Frontier offers VantageTV in the Bloomington-Normal, Illinois area. They are competing with Comcast and MetroNet (a fiber overbuilder from Evansville, Indiana). My guess is that Frontier is finding tough sledding in the Bloomington-Normal IL market.