Frontier Communications told customers in western New York not to expect FiOS fiber-to-the-home technology from them anytime soon, claiming residents in upstate New York do not need broadband speeds that fast.  That prompted regular Stop the Cap! reader Bob in Rochester to drop us a note.

Ann Burr, general manager of Frontier’s Rochester division, told WHAM-TV reporter Rachel Barnhart the company believes its current DSL service is more than adequate for residents in the company’s largest service area.  This, despite the fact Frontier recently adopted a handful of FiOS markets purchased from Verizon Communications.  While Frontier has promised to continue delivering the fiber-to-the-home service in areas already offered the service started by Verizon, they have no plans to expand FiOS.

“We’re constantly upgrading our local networks to make sure they can get higher and higher speeds,” Burr told Barnhart. “Fiber lines are installed in newer developments, and neighborhoods that report problems with DSL lines get attention from technicians.”

With Frontier’s DSL service already available in 95 percent of Frontier’s Rochester-area division, Burr added, there is no need to offer FiOS in Rochester.

Burr, who was formerly president of Time Warner Cable’s Rochester division from 1995-1999, has made similar remarks in the past.  In February, she told readers of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle they didn’t need ultra-fast broadband speeds from Frontier either.

Yet Verizon, one of the nation’s largest phone companies, thinks otherwise.  In upstate New York, the company is still completing its fiber optic network in cities like Albany, Buffalo, and Syracuse.  Verizon FiOS remains a top-rated favorite among readers of Consumer Reports.  Frontier’s DSL managed a less impressive 12th place.

Barnhart learned about Frontier’s broadband plans as part of a larger story about how the phone company will survive the age of the cell phone, as local customers continue to disconnect their Frontier landlines in favor of wireless service from providers like Verizon and AT&T.

Burr warned customers to think twice before disconnecting service.

“Don’t do it. Because I’ve personally been in a situation where my home was without power for a couple of days and you have to recharge cell phone batteries, which you can’t do if you don’t have power,” Burr said.

Burr can’t see a day when no one has a landline phone any longer.

“I don’t see that for a long time. I think that wired phone, copper infrastructure that’s been here for many years provides [the] security [and] reliability that people want,” she said.

Burr’s beliefs are contrary to industry statistics that show Americans continue to drop landline service.  Among those under 30, it’s sometimes hard to find anyone who has a landline at all.

The Bridge reports in the second quarter of 2010 alone, just three phone companies — AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest lost nearly 1.5 million landline customers, mostly to cell phone service and competing “digital phone” products offered by the cable industry.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHAM Rochester Will Frontier Communications Survive in Cell Phone Age 9-15-10.flv[/flv]

WHAM-TV’s Rachel Barnhart talked with local residents who have disconnected their Frontier landlines and spoke with Frontier’s Ann Burr about the long term prospects for a company primarily delivering that service.  (2 minutes)

Frontier Communications CEO Maggie Wilderotter has bought a first class ticket to Fiber Fantasy Island, where phone companies dream of delivering fiber-optic broadband service without actually deploying fiber.  They just tell you they did.

In an interview published today in The Oregonian, Wilderotter tries to convince residents Frontier’s arrival is good news, making promises about broadband and service improvements based on a company track record an independent observer would conclude she simply made up.

If Wilderotter’s command of the facts about her own company are reflective of “a distinct, improved image in its new territories,” Oregon is in big trouble.

Let’s review:

CLAIM: “We deploy fiber to the home all across the country. We don’t call it FiOS. We call it high-speed Internet. For our customers, the technology doesn’t matter. What matters is access, speed and capacity.”

REALITY CHECK: Frontier, as far as we have been able to determine, has not deployed fiber to the home anywhere in the country, with the exception of the FiOS network it acquired from Verizon.  Frontier Communications’ deployment of fiber optics to the home is comparable to the amount of fiber found in a box of Cookie Crisp cereal.  In their largest market, Rochester, N.Y., Frontier relies on the same legacy copper wire phone network it utilizes everywhere else.  It is highly misleading for Wilderotter to represent otherwise.  Fiber to the home means exactly that — fiber optic cable brought right to the home.  This is not a case of “you call it corn, we call it maize.”

Fiber optic cable is not also known as “high-speed Internet,” just as the cute kitten on the left is not called an iguana.  For the significant number of customers who ask Frontier to disconnect their service year-after-year, technology matters very much, and this particular phone company lacks it.  Frontier relies on the same DSL technology other phone companies and customers increasingly consider yesterday’s news.

In many Frontier service areas, there is no access to broadband because line quality will not support the service.  In Brighton, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester less than a minute from the Rochester city line, Frontier could only manage to deliver 3.1Mbps DSL speeds, and until recently Frontier was crying it needed a 5GB usage allowance because of the threat higher amounts of consumption might have on its network capacity.  Access, speed, and capacity does matter, which is why Time Warner Cable is picking up the bulk of its new broadband subscribers at Frontier’s expense.

CLAIM: “For high-speed, it means having speed and capacity in addition to reach. We’ll do add-on services. We have a terrific Yahoo-Frontier portal that will be a gateway on our high-speed Internet service. We are in the throes of putting together Wi-Fi hotspots that will be distributed throughout this market for customers.  If you’re a high-speed Internet customer of ours it’s free. We’re looking to put one at Hillsboro Stadium. Typically, we put them in hotels, convention centers, truck stops, trailer parks, outside parks, campuses for colleges, shopping centers, business campuses.”

REALITY CHECK:  Those “add-on services,” such as Frontier’s Peace of Mind, come with a price tag and are often required components of a bundled service discount offer.  As first impressions go, a company still relying on Yahoo! for a front end is not exactly on the cutting edge, nor are “portals.”  It’s like trying to impress new customers with free web space through GeoCities.  Actually, that is something Frontier could offer because GeoCities is now owned by Yahoo!

Frontier’s Peace of Mind Services

• Hard Drive Backup: $4.99 per month
• Hard Drive Backup + Unlimited Technical Support: $9.99 per month
• Hard Drive Backup + Unlimited Technical Support + Inside Wire Maintenance: $12.99 per month
• $50 early cancellation penalty if you get these services with a term commitment

Rochester’s experience with Frontier Wi-Fi has not been very impressive.  Most residents don’t even know the service exists.  The city and several suburbs offer limited Frontier pay-walled Wi-Fi service and a handful of free access hotspots in cooperation with Monroe County.  Unfortunately, many of the fee-based and free hotspots have fallen into disrepair and no longer function.  Signal strength is not impressive either, and many were not usable indoors.  We tested several of the free hotspots and discovered one only delivered a signal into a suburban parking lot, another only into an empty soccer field, and the third was not functioning at all.  Frontier’s record in Wi-Fi delivered more promises than actual service.

Those Wi-Fi services, by the way, are not free for all Frontier broadband customers.  Evidently Ms. Wilderotter is not acquainted with her own company’s products and services, nor Frontier’s own website:

CLAIM: “We deliver the highest value for the price you pay. We also have excellent customer service. We also don’t raise our rates every 12 months, no matter what.”

REALITY CHECK:  In Rochester, the out-the-door price Frontier charges its broadband customers is actually higher than that charged by Time Warner Cable, which delivers far faster connections.  In West Virginia, the state’s Consumer Advocate put together a chart depicting Frontier’s broadband prices.  Determine for yourself if it delivers the “highest value for the price you pay.”

CLAIM: “If I look across the board at our basic service pricing, I don’t think we’ve raised prices anywhere in the last four or five years.”

REALITY CHECK: We looked and found Frontier demanding the right to increase basic service rates in New York by $2 a month each year for up to two years.  In fact, last November, the New York State Public Service Commission, at the request of Frontier, sent the company a letter authorizing a rate hike of $2 a month for customers in the state.  Even more enlightening was Frontier’s filing in August 2005 with the PSC demanding near-complete deregulation and rate relief allowing Frontier to raise rates up to $1 per month annually indefinitely for basic service.  Frontier also wanted consumer protection rules “relaxed” and ban the PSC from investigating consumer complaints.  One of the reasons they cited is that basic phone service is not the same critical service it used to be because people can communicate through blogs instead.

In fact, consumers should be asking why Frontier’s rates haven’t decreased.  From that same filing: “Frontier believes that with the decreasing costs and increasing bandwidths of new technologies and the acceleration of intermodal market entry, the market will cause rates for non-basic services in all parts of the State to decline.”

CLAIM: Local regulators tell me they did see a spike in billing complaints after Verizon took over. Any thoughts on why? — “Whenever there’s a change — you change the name on the bill, you change the format — customers tend to look at it more closely. We always expect a spike in billing calls whenever we’ve done acquisitions. It has already (settled out).”

REALITY CHECK: As Stop the Cap! has reported, Frontier’s takeover in West Virginia has hardly “settled out.”  Service interruptions, forgotten service calls, and other problems have plagued the state to the point the PSC needed new hearings to review the situation.  Many of Frontier’s billing complaints come from customers choosing to cancel Frontier service, only to find unjustified early termination fees added to their final bills, even when customers never agreed to a term contract.  That problem was so serious in New York, the state Attorney General fined the company and ordered customer refunds.  Changing a customer’s bill by adding $100 or more to the total amount due will always get a customer to look at the bill more closely.

CLAIM: “One of the big opportunities that we’re working on is the ability to display Internet content and video on the television set.”

REALITY CHECK: That “big opportunity” has been available to broadband users for several years now.

CLAIM: We also have a new site that’s called myfitv.com. We carry over 100,000 titles of free television content on this site. It’s a little bit like Hulu on steroids. It’s provided free of charge to all our customers.

REALITY CHECK: MyFitv is not “a little bit like Hulu on steroids.”  In fact, it is Hulu.  Frontier simply used Hulu’s “embed” feature to take content, slap the Frontier logo on it, and add Google ads in an attempt to rake in a few extra dollars.  You can do exactly the same thing yourself.  Meanwhile, the service is added to customer bills showing an amount of $0.00, a very inexpensive way to try and impress customers with content Frontier never developed, deployed, or created — just like their phantom fiber to the home network.

CLAIM: “We think over time the Internet will also provide different packaging, different prices, different ways to buy content than the traditional viewing platform. We also think that mobility is important. We want to make sure that whatever you do you’ll be able to take it with you.  The Sling technology is interesting, too. It’s something we’re talking about DISH Network with.”

REALITY CHECK: Every time Maggie has talked about “different packaging and prices,” it has been in the context of an Internet Overcharging scheme — limited usage allowances, extremely high rate increases for those deemed to have consumed too much, etc.  And yes, Sling technology is interesting.  A company conceived of the idea, built it, developed a marketing plan, and sold it.  That’s a concept Frontier needs to understand.  You cannot transform a legacy network with words alone.  Here’s an idea.  How about conceiving of a real fiber-to-the-home network, build one, develop a marketing plan, and then sell it.  For those in markets like Rochester, it’s the only way Frontier Communications will avoid becoming the horse and buggy carriage maker of the 21st century.

CLAIM: You’re around Seattle, around Portland, but not in them yet. Is there any possibility that Frontier would build into another company’s market? — “There’s always a possibility. It’s not a priority for us. And the reason why it’s not a priority is we’ve got a lot to do, just in the service areas that we own today. When I’m humming on all cylinders there, and I’ve been able to do everything I possibly can in those areas, then I might look to extend service areas out.”

REALITY CHECK: Translation — “when pigs fly.”  Frontier would be laughed out of the Seattle and Portland markets.

Ms. Wilderotter needs to be a lot more open and forthcoming with the press.  Frontier’s business plan makes it clear the company’s future is serving uncompetitive rural markets that will be forced to tolerate the products and pricing Frontier delivers.  Where competition exists, let’s face facts.  Frontier is not gaining market share — it is losing it, eroded away year after year by uncompetitive, substandard products at high prices.

That’s a reality you are bound to miss if you spend too much time with Mr. Rourke and Tattoo.

Bray Cary has been falling all over himself again — singing praises for Frontier Communications while many of its customers in West Virginia contend with service problems and outages, sometimes for weeks at a time.

Cary, president and chief executive officer of West Virginia Media, owner of television stations across the state, was a big supporter of the deal to sell Verizon’s landlines in West Virginia to Frontier Communications. This past spring, Cary’s weekly Decision Makers program treated viewers to a softball question and answer session with Frontier’s Ken Arndt, who was forced to “endure” Cary’s contention that opposition to the deal was limited mostly to labor union sour grapes.

With a hard interview like that, Arndt was delighted to be asked back for another edition of Tea-’N-Cookies Breakfast Club With Bray, this time to answer tough questions about how the transition could have possibly gone any better for the independent phone company.

Good morning and welcome to Decision Makers on a weekend when America is discovering the beauty of the great state of West Virginia.  Through the magic of worldwide television […] we here in West Virginia are on the verge of discovering the power of the Internet across all of our hills and all of our valleys.

With that over-the-top introduction, Cary was off, spending nearly 20 minutes glad-handing Arndt through an interview that could have been produced in-house by Frontier’s marketing department.

[flv width=”500″ height=”395″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTRF Wheeling Decision Makers Cary Arndt Frontier 7-31-10.flv[/flv]

Nearly 20 minutes of mutual admiration between Frontier’s Ken Arndt and WV Media’s Bray Cary can be experienced for yourself.  These segments appeared July 31st on the Decision Makers program.  (19 minutes)

More tea?

Meanwhile, in other parts of the state things are not nearly as rosy as Cary and Arndt contend.

Stop the Cap! reader Ralph points us to Ohio Country, located in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, where Frontier has subjected some customers to service outages extending into three weeks.  Entire neighborhoods have lost phone and broadband service.  Dela Misenhelder, who lives in Valley Grove says a storm August 4th knocked out service for her and her neighbors.  Misenhelder used her cell phone to call Frontier three different times to no avail.

“My concern is the elderly,” Misenhelder told a local TV station.  “Do they have cell phones — being out in the country, do they even have a signal — and be able to get 911 in case of an emergency or problem.”

Frontier’s regional general manager, William (Bill) Moon said that Frontier was supposed to have contacted all of the neighbors impacted by the outage to make sure service was restored.  In Misenhelder’s case, since her phone line was still not working, she never got that call.

Moon is a name readers will become increasingly aware of, as he features prominently in damage control efforts by Frontier in northern West Virginia when they get negative media coverage.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTOV Steubenville Frontier Continues Dealing With Phone Service Issues 8-25-10.flv[/flv]

Dela Misenhelder in Ohio County, W.V., was without her Frontier phone line for three weeks.  She made three calls to Frontier, who ignored her, so Dela called the newsroom of local TV station WTOV-TV in Steubenville, Ohio looking for help.  They achieved results for her, as you’ll see in this report.  (2 minutes)

Matters are even more serious in the northern tip of the state — in Hancock County — where emergency responders are coping with defective T1 data lines that Frontier has failed to maintain properly, causing interruptions in emergency radio traffic.

The problems started when Verizon was in charge, but have gotten considerably worse since Frontier arrived.  Now the backup systems are beginning to fail as well.

When that happens, emergency communications with fire, police, and ambulance can’t happen, forcing first responders to rely on cell phones to communicate with one another.

Frontier called the problems with the T1 lines “odd” and at last check was examining more than 10,000 feet of phone cable looking for problems.

On Saturday, another Frontier outage disrupted 911 service across Jefferson, Belmont and Harrison Counties, forcing local media to deliver streams of local direct numbers for emergency officials across all three counties.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTOV Steubenville Hancock County Experiencing More Phone Problems 7-8-10.flv[/flv]

Not less than three reports about failures in emergency communications attributed to a defective T1 line maintained by Frontier Communications have run on WTOV-TV in the last two months.  (6 minutes)

Residents in Marshall and Wetzell counties, which complete the Northern Panhandle are no strangers to Frontier service problems.  They were Frontier customers before Verizon sold its landline network to the company.

Stop the Cap! reader Mitch in New Martinsville writes to tell us West Virginia is just becoming acquainted with service on ‘the Frontier.’

“The company delivered lousy service to us long before they’ll deliver lousy service to the rest of the state,” he writes. “We cannot get DSL from Frontier because they won’t spend the money to re-engineer the ancient wiring on our street.”

For Mitch, the outage experienced by his ailing grandmother this past February, which stopped calls connecting from outside of the 686 exchange, was the last straw.

“She couldn’t reach me and I couldn’t reach her,” Mitch adds. “If a phone company cannot even handle basic phone call connections, what good are they?”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTOV Steubenville Phone Service Knocked Out In Parts Of Marshall Wetzel Counties 2-10-10.flv[/flv]

A winter storm knocked out Frontier service across parts of the Northern Panhandle this past February.  Customers discovered they could only dial and receive calls from other local residents.  WTOV-TV covered the story.  (2 minutes)

When Mitch tried to cancel Frontier service, he says they tried to stick him with an early termination fee of more than $100.

“I never signed a contract with them,” he writes.

Mitch escalated his complaint to the West Virginia Public Service Commission, which finally got Frontier to relent.

Mitch’s experience with phantom early termination fees charged by Frontier are hardly new.  Last fall, Frontier was slapped with a $35,000 fine and ordered to refund $50,000 in wrongfully charged termination fees by the NY State Attorney General’s office.

That precedent might come in handy in Washington state, where Frontier “accidentally” put former Verizon customer Steve Matheny in Redmond on an annual contract with a hefty cancellation fee.  When Frontier took over for Verizon, Matheny decided it was time to drop service.  Frontier sent him a final bill including a fee of $120 for terminating his service before his contract had ended.

Only one problem — he never had a contract.

“These folks rolled in and added a fee that no one committed to, at least I didn’t commit to,” he said.

Frontier ignored Matheny’s attempts to get the fee off his final bill, so he called KING-TV in Seattle for help.

As with so many other cases, when local TV stations feature Frontier’s mistakes and bad service on the 6 o’clock evening news, doors to a speedy resolution have a tendency to open.  Matheny got his $120 “fee” removed.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KING Seattle Bundled by accident charged a fee 8-24-10.mp4[/flv]

Redmond, Washington resident Steve Matheny joins a growing number of Frontier customers who suddenly find themselves on annual service contracts with hefty cancellation fees, despite the fact they never agreed to them.  KING-TV reports their intervention finally cut through Frontier’s red tape to get $120 in early cancellation fees removed from a final bill.  (2 minutes)

For West Virginia residents, the next time you experience a problem with your Frontier landline or broadband service, why not contact Bray Cary and ask him what he’ll do about it.  At the very least, ask him to pass you the plate of cookies.

Almost two years to the day Frontier Communications quietly introduced language in its customer agreements providing a monthly broadband usage allowance of just 5GB per month, the company has quietly removed that language from its terms and conditions.

The 5GB usage allowance was deemed generous by Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter.  Frontier claimed most of its 559,300 broadband subscribers (2008 numbers) consumed less than 1.5 gigabytes per month.  But news of the cap angered customers anyway, particularly in their biggest service area — Rochester, N.Y.  In fact, Frontier’s usage cap was what sparked the launch of Stop the Cap! in the summer of 2008.

While never universally enforced against the company’s DSL customers, Frontier has used that portion of its acceptable use policy to demand up to $250 a month from some “heavy users” in Mound, Minn.

Frontier’s usage limit language also played a role in a major controversy in April, 2009 when Time Warner Cable planned usage limits of their own for western New York customers already faced with Frontier’s 5GB usage limit.

The phone company used Time Warner’s planned usage cap as a marketing tool to switch to Frontier DSL service.

This website has pounded Frontier for two years over its continued use of the 5GB language as part of its broadband policies.  We raised the issue with several state regulatory bodies as part of Frontier’s purchase of Verizon landlines in several states.  Several state utility commissions raised the usage cap issue with Frontier as a result, deeming it negative for rural broadband customers who would effectively endure rationed broadband service from a de facto monopoly provider.

We also criticized Frontier for promoting its MyFitv service, little more than a website containing Google ads and embedded videos already available on Hulu, while not bothering to tell its customers use of that service on a regular basis would put them perilously close to their 5GB allowance.

In the end, Frontier itself denied they would strictly enforce the 5GB limit, making its continued presence in the company’s terms and conditions illogical.

Now, the company has returned to the earlier language it formerly used, reserving the right to shut you off if you use the service excessively or abusively.  This resembles similar language from most broadband providers.  While not absolute in defining those terms, Frontier doesn’t commit to a specific number either.  Today’s “generous usage allowance” is tomorrow’s “rationing.”

If Frontier cuts off customers for using only a handful of gigabytes a month, deeming it excessive, we want to know about it.

Stop the Cap! opposes all Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, speed throttles, and so-called “consumption billing.”  We believe such limits retard the growth and potential of broadband service and are unwarranted when considering the ongoing decline in costs to provide the service.  We do not oppose providers dealing with customers who create major problems on their networks, but believe those issues are best settled privately between the company and the individual customer.

Providers must also be honest in recognizing that broadband is a dynamic medium.  They have a responsibility to grow their networks to meet demand, especially at current pricing which provides major financial returns for those offering the service.  We also believe broadband tiers should be limited to speed, not consumption.  Customers with higher data demands will naturally gravitate towards higher-priced, faster-speed tiers, providing higher revenue to offset the minimal costs of moving data back and forth.

Broadband customers will be loyal to the providers that treat them right.  We applaud Frontier Communications for finally removing the last vestiges of its infamous 5GB usage allowance.  Hopefully, going forward, Frontier will spend its time, energy and money improving its broadband service instead of trying to convince customers to use less of it.

One month after Frontier Communications took over phone service from Verizon Communications in West Virginia, unresolved problems over West Virginia’s telephone system continue to mount, leaving one sheriff’s department using Facebook to communicate with some residents and a renewed call for an investigation over Frontier’s poorly functioning “Operational Support System.”

One serious problem is in Wetzel County, where the local sheriff’s office faces trouble from disruptions to their call management system that began July 1st, the date Frontier switched over operations from Verizon Communications.  Calls that are intended to reach individual officers’ direct extensions or voicemail are instead being diverted into a black hole, as callers are told they will be transferred to an operator that does not exist.

The result of the ongoing, month-long problem is that individual residents are unable to reach officers except through the county’s Facebook page and website.  Emergency calls to 911 are not affected, but calls transferred from 911 to the sheriff’s office are.

Despite weeks of back and forth, Frontier is blaming an outside vendor for the problem, claiming the sheriff’s office needs to order a “part” to repair the all-digital call management system.  That doesn’t seem to impress Wetzel County Sheriff James Hoskins, who wonders why the problem suddenly started the same day Frontier switched away from Verizon’s systems.  Additionally, voicemail messages saved on Verizon’s old system are no longer accessible to the department.

Meanwhile, other service disruptions continue to pile up across the state, along with consumer and business complaints at the Consumer Advocate’s Division of the Public Service Commission.  Things have deteriorated so much, the state’s Consumer Advocate Byron Harris is asking the Commission to hold hearings on Frontier’s poor performance in the state.

Harris told MetroNews the problems have gone beyond glitches.

“In any transition between companies, there are always going to be some glitches, but this has gotten past the point of glitches,” Harris said.

FiberNet uses Frontier’s landline network and, last week, that company asked for a similar review.  FiberNet officials say their customers have been experiencing many problems since the change at the beginning of the month.

“At the Consumer Advocate’s Division, we’ve also noticed a significant increase in complaints, across the board, all types of complaints from customers,” he said.

Harris says customers that are having problems are, in some cases, also finding it difficult to get in touch with anyone with Frontier to report their issues.

But Frontier Spokesperson Brigid Smith says it’s impossible to completely avoid all such problems.

“We are 30 days into a very, very large change which, by and large, has gone very well,” Smith told MetroNews.

“There have been glitches.  We have taken accountability for those.  We are trying to fix a system that has been sorely neglected and we are very, very committed to the state.”

Stop the Cap! reader Janel from Huntington thinks that excuse is becoming the equivalent of a broken record.

“Frontier can’t help but tell people here over and over and over how great of a job they’re doing and how well the transition went,” she writes.  “But there are a whole lot of people who disagree — they just don’t happen to work for Frontier.”

Janel’s cousin lost his DSL service for nearly a week after the transition and after repeated calls to customer service finally learned the company lost his records.

“They deactivated his account and their customer service people, when they bothered to answer, were about as useful as a car in a ditch,” she notes. “They had no record he even had an account and thought he was served by some other company, despite having a phone bill he was willing to fax them showing he had their DSL service.”

Frontier eventually “re-established service” after re-entering his customer information and reauthorized the DSL modem.

Frontier’s unionized employees facing enormous overtime demands are perhaps the best evidence Frontier continues to experience serious transition issues.

Frontier used a provision in its union contract with the Communications Workers of America to demand 70-hour workweeks for many Frontier service technicians working in West Virginia, declaring an “emergency and long term service difficulty.”

With an extremely hot summer underway, line technicians are facing long hours in 90 degree plus weather repairing lines Verizon neglected for years.  Transition issues are also being blamed for long overtime hours as Frontier works its way through a large number of unresolved support requests.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTRF Wheeling Major Concerns With Phone Line at Wetzel County Sheriff’s Office 7-31-10.flv[/flv]

WTRF-TV in Wheeling, W.V., reports on the concerns of the Wetzel County Sheriff’s Office, which is still without properly working phone service a month after Frontier Communications took over phone service in the state.  (3 minutes)