Frontier Communications will focus primarily on fiber upgrades in Connecticut and Texas in 2021, bringing fiber to the home service to more than 280,000 customers in Connecticut and at least 24,000 additional customers in the San Angelo area of Texas.

Company officials told shareholders it expected to bring fiber upgrades to 495,000 additional locations this year as part of a multi-year plan to scrap portions of its aging copper wire network and bring fiber to the home service to at least six million homes and businesses in its service area. The company previously announced it would focus its fiber upgrades primarily in its California, Texas, Florida, and Connecticut markets.

Frontier has a long way to go to make a dent in retiring its copper network, which currently still serves 11.8 million homes and businesses. Frontier has only committed to upgrade about half of those homes to fiber, leaving the rest stranded on copper or potentially eventually sold off to another provider.

The most noticeable construction activity this year has been in Connecticut, especially in Fairfield and New Haven counties. Customers in the area report Frontier selling 940/880 Mbps fiber service for $79.99 fixed price for three years. Customers can also choose 50/50 Mbps service for $49.99 or 500/500 Mbps service for $59.99 a month for up to one year. The two faster plans include a Ring video doorbell as a sign-up promotion. There are no data caps.

In an era when cable companies love to tout increasing internet speeds, one cable company is headed in the other direction, turning the clock back by announcing dramatic cuts in upstream internet speeds beginning in mid-July.

Altice USA’s Optimum made the announcement quietly in a footnote on their website, notifying new and existing customers that change service tiers after July 12, 2021 will experience upload speeds formerly as high as 40 Mbps cut in half or more. In one instance, customers that used to get 35 Mbps for uploads will now see that speed reduced to just 5 Mbps:

Optimum’s new downgraded speed plans.

This speed change affects customers still serviced by Optimum’s legacy coaxial cable network. Parent company Altice USA has been gradually replacing that older copper wire network with an all-new fiber to the home network, but customers that live in neighborhoods not yet reached by fiber will have to live with slower upload speeds or switch to Verizon FiOS, the fiber to the home network offered by Verizon in much of Optimum’s service area in suburban New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

You would never know about Optimum’s speed downgrades unless you carefully read the fine print.

Altice USA is pushing hard to grab market share away from Verizon FiOS — its biggest competitor in the northeastern U.S., with a new customer promotion that offers a year of gigabit broadband speed for $45/month, as well as a $200 prepaid Visa gift card just for signing up.

To qualify for this rate, you must be a new Altice customer (or a customer that disconnected Altice service for at least 30 days). To get the gift card, you must be a new customer and have not received an earlier gift card from Altice in the last 12 months. This offer is good for residents of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

The Bill Breakdown:

• $50/mo for 1 gigabit service (up to 940 Mbps download/up to 50 Mbps upload) + $5/mo discount for signing up for paperless billing and autopay (total equals $45/mo)
• $10/mo optional gateway modem/router rental fee
• $3.50/mo mandatory “Network Enhancement Fee”
• Your out the door price is $58.50/mo if you use their gateway, $48.50/mo if you bring your own.

Customers can also choose a 500 Mbps tier for $35 a month with similar fees.

If you sign up, you will also be offered the option of multiple TV packages, including a Basic TV package of 50 channels for $15/mo or a Core TV package of 210 channels for $25/mo. Home phone service is also available in this promotion for $10/mo. A bundle including gigabit internet, Core TV and home phone service is priced at $80/mo. There is no installation fee for customers that can manage their own inside wiring if needed.

Some Frontier customers worry the company’s extended service outages are “a matter of life and death.” WSAW-TV in Wisconsin is one of several media outlets reporting on the problems at Frontier.

The Better Business Bureau recently renewed its “F” rating for Frontier Communications, issuing this special consumer alert along the way:

On October 17, 2019 and November 21, 2019, BBB attempted to contact Frontier Communications Corp. regarding a high volume and pattern of serious complaints. BBB received 11,803 complaints in the past 36 months alleging customer service issues, missing appointments, decline in services previously handled by other providers who Frontier has assumed, billing issues including additional service charges for periods once the consumer has cancelled services. The business failed to respond to one of these complaints and 76 others were not resolved through BBB’s complaint process.

BBB notified Frontier Communications Corp. about the pattern of complaints and asked the business to voluntarily cooperate in eliminating the pattern by providing a written response outlining the specific steps it would implement in order to avoid similar complaints in the future. BBB also requested general information including copies of refund policies, the names & full contact information of the business’ principal officers and responsible management, copies of its promotional and advertising materials, the physical address of its principal office, copies of required competency licensing and a completed BBB Standard Business Questionnaire.

In response to the pattern of complaints, Frontier Communications Corp. provided the following response:

Frontier’s primary value is putting our customers first. Our fiber network and large rural copper network serves more than 4M customers.

Despite these assets and the dedication of nearly 20,000 employees, we have disappointed customers, primarily due to two very large acquisitions. The first in Connecticut with AT&T  and the second in California, Texas and Florida with Verizon. As the BBB points out, many of the 11K (as of December 2019) complaints made on this platform resulted from the transition of services in those two transactions.  We have worked diligently to address the issues raised and restore credibility. Issues related to those transactions have been resolved.

We have a new President and CEO who is a true champion of customer satisfaction, and in just a few weeks he has crisscrossed the country to hammer home the need for accountability and reliability and flawless customer service. We need to keep things simple and deliver on our commitments.

Some improvements include updated our website to include more information about how to resolve concerns and whom to contact. Frontier has invested in product and operational innovations that are driving more improvements in our service. Our internal resolution task force continues to remain engaged, reviewing customer service processes and acting on lessons learned to become better guides for, and providers of service to our customers and communities.

No customer service for you.

“The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again.”

When Altice USA/Optimum customers discovered their TV and internet service stopped working Friday night in parts of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, many called the customer service number printed on their monthly bill and discovered it was “disconnected or no longer in service.”

Outraged customers took to Twitter to express their displeasure.

“Since you shut off your Customer Service line, we all deserve a hefty credit to our accounts. ‘We’re always here to answer your questions.’ NO clearly you’re not, otherwise we’d be able to call you when there’s a sudden outage across multiple cities & no one knows why,” Nathalie Levey tweeted in frustration.

With the widespread outage affecting at least tens of thousands of customers across three states, some found other phone numbers to reach out to Optimum, but those lucky enough to get through were left languishing on hold “for hours,” according to the Connecticut Post. More than a few decided calling 911 was a better idea, much to the consternation of local police departments across the northeast that asked them to stop.

For some reason, Optimum phone service still worked for some, but not others. But it proved useless for reaching the cable company, with a recorded message asking callers to try again later. But calls placed from mobile phones or landlines still managed to get through, sometimes.

…when it works

It was an outage made to frustrate, in part because shortly after Altice acquired Optimum from Cablevision in 2016 as part of a $17.7 billion dollar acquisition, Altice promptly closed down Optimum’s call centers in Shelton and Stratford, Conn., employing nearly 600 workers.

An Altice spokesperson curtly described the outage as “power related” and left it at that, refusing to indicate if customers would be given a bill credit for the outage.

“We still don’t know, because you can’t reach these people on the phone at all and the people at the local cable store tell you that you have to call in, so they are also useless,” complained Sally Davis, an Optimum customer near Litchfield.

There may be another way to ask for a refund, but there is no proof it will actually result in a future bill credit:

The company maintains a general website where customers can request bill credits as noted by Hal Levy, chairman of a regional cable TV advisory council that keeps tabs on carriers and the quality of services they provide. The website on Monday directed customers to telephone, online chat and Twitter for follow-up on requests for bill credits.

“In past instances of widespread outages when the company was owned by Cablevison, automatic bill credits were issued to subscribers,” Levy wrote in an email to Hearst Connecticut Media.

The newspaper notes the outage hit just two weeks after Altice USA tacked $5 onto the rate for Connecticut customers who subscribe to its “Premier” TV package, raising the monthly charge to $110 on par with the rate for a “Gold” plan the company discontinued, while transitioning those subscribers to “Premier” status.

“Who are they kidding?,” Davis told Stop the Cap! “Optimum treats its customers to ‘PoS status.’ I wish we had FiOS.”