A broken Frontier telephone pole (left). Frontier phone cables left stretched against a tree (right) Images: PUCO

The Public Utilties Commission of Ohio (PUCO) has filed a formal complaint against Frontier North, Inc. (d/b/a Frontier Communications), citing a spike in customer complaints and evidence the company’s landline services have dramatically deteriorated in the state.

The PUCO is concerned Frontier’s alleged poor service may result in safety concerns, such as a customers’ inability to contact emergency services, doctors, and family and friends.

“Customer complaints indicating extensive telecommunication outages are troubling and deserve to be examined,” stated PUCO Chairman Sam Randazzo. “Today the PUCO is taking steps to investigate allegations of poor service quality.”

This is only the latest in a series of actions the state regulator has taken against Frontier for poor performance. The company previously promised to prioritize service outage repairs over new installations, but the regulator reports it received an unprecedented 2,802 consumer contacts regarding Frontier between January 1, 2018 and July 31, 2019.

Most of the problems are occurring in service areas that Frontier acquired from Verizon Communications in 2010, primarily in southern and eastern Ohio. The regulator’s complaint includes 33 citations against Frontier for extended service outages, some that have lasted for months, as well as allegations the company has failed to provide adequate and reliable phone service in its Ohio service areas. The complaint recommends the Commission “conduct a thorough investigation” on the matter.

The complaint:

Frontier’s alleged efforts to repair [reported issues] within 24 hours or Frontier reporting that the issue had been repaired within 72 hours, often times customers’ service would not work within days of Frontier reporting it has repaired the issue.

For example, a [residential] consumer contacted the PUCO Call Center on March 4, 2019 stating her telephone line had been out of service since January 20, 2019. The consumer stated that she contacted Frontier on February 7 or 8, 2019 and that Frontier had committed to making repairs no later than February 26, 2019. When repairs did not occur by February 26, 2019, the consumer stated that she contacted Frontier again and was informed the repairs would occur by March 19, 2019. During Staff’s investigation, Frontier informed Staff that it was notified of the service issue regarding no dial tone on this [residential] account on February 14, 2019 and that service was repaired on March 7, 2019. Repairing an issue on March 7, 2019 is 21 days after it was reported on February 14, 2019, thus 18 days in violation of the 72-hour repair requirement times for instances of failure.

Damaged pedestal (left); Large tree limb left on Frontier phone cables (right). Images: PUCO

From July 11, 2019 to July 23, 2019, PUCO staff conducted field inspections which revealed facilities that appear to lack the proper maintenance, including damaged aerial terminals and splice cases, excessive vegetation, damaged pedestals, and unstable and damaged poles.

The PUCO telephone service areas map shows that Frontier North covers parts of 64 of Ohio’s 88 counties, including Marion, Crawford, Richland, Ashland, Morrow, Sandusky, Ottawa, Coshocton, Muskingum, Fairfield, Pike, and Ross. Verizon itself acquired those service areas from GTE (General Telephone) in 2000.

Nationally, Frontier Communications is in financial distress. The company now serves 4.3 million customers, down 200,000 from the same time last year. Across all divisions, Frontier is losing customers, particularly those subscribed to residential and commercial landline service and its resold satellite TV service. Frontier is also losing large numbers of TV customers in its FiOS fiber to the home service areas. The company has accumulated $17 billion in debt with a decreasing likelihood it will repay that debt on time.

Pedestal Damage. Images: PUCO

Despite the financial difficulties, Frontier is still obligated by law to meet basic service standards. Utility regulators in multiple states are now questioning whether Frontier is still achieving this. For a second time, Frontier spokesman Javier Mendoza signaled the company is burdened with an uncompetitive, high cost business model.

“Frontier takes service quality very seriously. While we disagree with the report’s assertions, we look forward to respectfully and directly addressing the issues raised by staff with the Public Utilities Commission,” Mendoza wrote in an email to the Marion Star. “Issues raised in the report focus on complaints in rural and high cost service areas; yet while Frontier only serves some 10% of Ohio’s wireline phone lines, Frontier bears 100% of the obligation to provide phone service to customers in the most rural, remote, and high-cost parts of its service area. This model creates costly operational burdens that Frontier’s competitors do not bear and is inconsistent with a competitive market.”

“Providing reliable telecommunications and broadband service to our customers is our highest priority. Frontier is dedicated to safety and takes seriously its commitment to serve Ohio customers and support 911 services,” Mendoza added.

Ceylon City Council Member John Gibeau shows this Frontier Communications cable intentionally laid across the customer’s propane tank. (Image courtesy: Mark Steil, MPR News)

Frontier Communications technicians decided it would be perfectly safe to drape their telephone lines on top of a propane tank, use overhead tree branches as makeshift telephone poles, and leave phone cables laying on the ground — in lawns, fields, and farms — for up to three years in southern Minnesota.

Minnesota Public Radio found a number of problems with Frontier Communications in a special report outlining years of complaints about the phone company’s performance — or lack thereof — in small communities around the state, including in the town of Ceylon in Martin County, located along the Minnesota-Iowa border.

John Gibeau, a city council member, might tell visitors to be careful of Frontier’s phone cables, some that have laid on the ground in parts of town for years.

“There’s three lines there, that are just laying across the ground,” Gibeau told MPR News. “And they run down for probably another 60 yards.”

Frontier laid out the phone cables sometime ago, but they have never seen a day attached to a utility pole.

In another part of town, a Frontier line technician thought nothing about draping a phone line across the top of a homeowner’s propane tank. At one address, there was no convenient utility pole in sight, so the technician used a few trees in the neighborhood as makeshift poles, distributing the line through the tree branches which help keep the cable above ground so vehicles do not drive over it. Gibeau said Frontier has left it that way for almost three years.

Ceylon, Minn.

Another resident deals with Frontier’s phone line each time he mows his lawn. That is because Frontier just dropped the cable on the grass and left it there. He relocated it to a nearby flower bed to avoid an accidental entanglement with the lawnmower. Other neighbors have done their part, attaching Frontier’s lines to the top of fences and fence poles — anything in sight that can get the cable off the ground where it can be ruined over time.

In all these cases, Frontier has refused to fix the problems, despite repeated calls. But that may be asking for too much. At a hearing recently in Slayton, Frontier customer Dale Burkhardt lost his phone and DSL service after a construction crew accidentally severed the phone cable that serves his farm. More than a year later, Frontier’s repair crews have never shown up to repair the line, regardless of the number of trouble tickets and calls to customer service.

“I still don’t have a landline, I don’t have an internet,” Burkhardt said. “I’m getting a little fed up.”

As Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission continues a series of public hearings around the state to hear complaints concerning Frontier Communications, regulators are getting an earful. Nearly 400 people have turned out for the hearings so far. Many report Frontier has not fixed their problems, no matter how often customers complain.

Javier Mendoza, Frontier’s vice president of communications, told MPR the company is listening to customers.

“For us, one customer who is out of service is one customer too many,” Mendoza said. “So, we would thank our customers for their patience. We recognize that from time to time we experience service issues and delays. And for those customers that are affected, we apologize to them.”

Frontier Communications scatters its phone cables on residents’ lawns, across a propane tank, and through tree branches as makeshift utility poles, reports Minnesota Public Radio (3:56)

An undisclosed number of Frontier Communications customers in West Virginia were without phone service during the Christmas-New Year’s Day holidays because of copper thefts and slow repair crews that did not begin repairs for up to two weeks after the outages were reported.

Hardest hit was Mingo County, where multiple copper wire thefts caused significant service outages starting Dec. 20 in Matewan, Delbarton, and Varney. Many customers were without phone service over the Christmas holiday, and some are still without service two weeks later. One of them is Arlene Gartin at the two-month old Mudders restaurant, which depends on pickup and delivery orders.

“This has devastated us,” Gartin told WSAZ-TV. “Seventy-five percent of our business was our delivery and without the calls I’m hanging on by threads.”

In Iaeger in McDowell County, residents on Coonbranch Mountain report their Frontier phone and internet services have been out of service for two weeks. Carl Shrader told WVVA-TV that service went out on Dec. 23 and remained so throughout Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Mingo County, W.V., on the Kentucky border.

“We had a windstorm come through, and up here where the church is, at the top of my driveway, it blew the power line and the telephone line down,” said Shrader. “If you get a fire around your house, and the phone lines is down, how can you notify the fire department? If you have a burglar coming in on you, how can you phone and say, ‘9-1-1, I need help! There’s a burglar here.’ You can’t!”

Cell service in this part of West Virginia is spotty, making landline service very important for many West Virginia residents who live and work around the state’s notorious mountainous terrain.

Customers affected by service outages report long hold times calling Frontier and very little information or updates about outages. Many residents report Frontier’s outages are frequent and often take a long time to fix. Some have been told Frontier’s repair crews are short-staffed and busy elsewhere.

That comes as a surprise to officials at the Communications Workers of America who confirmed Frontier announced a “voluntary” reduction in force program on Dec. 20, seeking employees willing to accept a buyout offer. If enough workers do not take Frontier up on their offer, more than 50 Bluefield-based employees and about 30 in Ashburn, Va., are at risk of being laid off.

WSAZ-TV in Huntington, W.V. reports a significant number of residents in Mingo County have been without Frontier telephone and internet service because of copper wire thefts for the last two weeks. (1:49)

WVVA-TV in Bluefield/Beckley, W.V. reports some residents waited two weeks for Frontier repair crews to show up after a windstorm. (1:49)

An Illinois Senate committee approved a bill in March effectively ghostwritten by AT&T that will end the phone company’s legal obligation to provide wired services. AT&T claims 90% of consumers have already dropped landlines in Illinois, switching to cell phone or Voice over IP services. But the company would not say how many consumers still get wired broadband service from AT&T.

AT&T is laying the groundwork to eventually mothball its copper wire networks. Customers in urban areas would likely be serviced by AT&T’s fiber-copper U-verse network while rural areas would be served entirely by AT&T’s wireless cellular network. The company has already received approval to drop landline service in 19 of the 21 states where it provides landline service. AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza said the company won’t approach the FCC about switching the network off for good until it gets approval in all 21 states.

If AT&T wins the right to pull the plug, it need only provide customers with 60 days notice. The bill also currently qualifies only one company in Illinois to discontinue service almost immediately — AT&T. Despite that, the bill has won support from independent phone companies in the state including Frontier Communications.

La Schiazza complains the government has treated AT&T unfairly by requiring it to provide service while other companies can cherry-pick service areas.

“What we’re left with in Illinois is we’re not guaranteed any customers, we’re not guaranteed any return … yet we still are required to provide an old-style, voice-only telephone line to every customer in our service territory,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “No competitor is required to do that. They can pick and choose whatever customers they want to serve and they can use whatever available technology that they want to.”

A decision by Great Britain’s broadband industry to follow America’s lead consolidating the number of competitors to “improve efficiency” and wring “cost savings” out of the business resulted in few service improvements and a much bigger bill for consumers.

In business, it’s crucial to navigate employee relations carefully. If you’re facing workplace issues related to such decisions, an employee dispute lawyer can offer valuable legal advice and help resolve conflicts efficiently, protecting your company’s interests.

A Guardian Money investigation examining British broadband pricing over the past four years found customers paying 25-30 percent more for essentially the same service they received before, with loyal customers facing the steepest rate increases.

It’s a dramatic fall for a market long recognized as one of the most competitive in the world. In 2006, TalkTalk — a major British ISP — even gave away broadband service for free in a promotion to consumers willing to cover BT’s telephone line rental charges.

But pressure from shareholders and investment bankers to deliver American-sized profits have spurred a wave of consolidation among providers in the United Kingdom, similar to the mergers of cable companies in the United States. Well known ISPs like Blueyonder, Tiscali, AOL, BE, Tesco, O2, and others in the United Kingdom have all been swallowed up by bigger rivals – often TalkTalk. As of last year, just four major competitors remain – BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin, which together hold 88% of the market. If regulators allow BT’s takeover of EE, that percentage will rise to 92%.

As consumers find fewer and fewer options for broadband, they are also discovering a larger bill, fueled by runaway rate increases well in excess of inflation. While consolidated markets in the United States and Great Britain increasingly lack enough competition to temper rate increases, heavy competition on the European continent has resulted in flat or even lower prices for broadband along with significant service upgrades. British consumers now pay up to 50% more for broadband than many of their European counterparts in Germany, France, the Benelux countries, and beyond.

Also familiar to Americans, the best prices for service only go to new customers. Existing, loyal customers pay the highest prices, while those flipping between providers (or threatening to do so) get much lower “retention” or “new customer” pricing. But only those willing to fight for a better deal get one.

In October, TalkTalk, responsible for much of the consolidation wave, raised broadband prices yet again — the second major price hike this year. Customers are reeling over the rate increases, despite the fact they still seem inexpensive by American standards. Landline rental charges are increasing from $25.40 to $26.91 a month, and are a necessary prerequisite to buying Internet access from TalkTalk. Its Simply Broadband entry-level package is jumping another £2.50 a month just four months after the last rate hike. That means instead of paying an extra $7.60 a month for broadband, customers will now pay $11.40. The average British consumer now pays an average of $57.79 a month for a phone line with enhanced DSL broadband service.

In France, competition is forcing providers to move towards fiber optic broadband and scrap DSL service. But French consumers are not paying a premium for upgrades necessitated by competition on the ground. While British households pay close to $60 a month, a comparable package in France from Orange known as L’essentiel d’internet à la maison costs only $36.50 a month, including a TV package and unlimited calling to other landlines. But the deal gets even better if you shop around. Free, a major French competitor, offers a near-identical package for just $32.19 a month. In the United States, packages of this type can cost $130 or more if you do not receive a promotion, $99 a month if you do.

In France, providers rarely claim they need to cap Internet usage or raise prices to cover the cost of investing in their networks. That is considered the cost of doing business in a fiercely competitive marketplace, and it forces French providers to deliver good value and service for money. Providers like Patrick Drahi/Altice’s SFR-Numericable attempted to reap more profits out of its cable business by cutting costs, discontinuing most promotions and marketing, and offshoring customer support to North African call centers. At least one million customers left for better service elsewhere in 2015.

In Britain, there are fewer options for customers to seek a better deal, and the remaining providers know it. As a result, marketplace conditions and an increasing lack of competition have made conditions right for rate increases. BT, Sky, Virgin, and Plusnet (controlled by BT) have all taken advantage and hiked prices once again this year between 6-10%, on top of other large rises.

Ewan Taylor-Gibson, broadband expert at uSwitch.com, told the Guardian, “it’s the existing customers that have borne the brunt of the increase in landline and package costs over recent years.”

Many British consumers are afraid of disrupting their Internet access going through the process of changing providers in a search for a better deal. Some report it can take a few days to a week to process a provider change that should take minutes (because most providers rely entirely on BT’s DSL network over which they offer service). Those willing to make a change are about the only ones still getting a good deal from British providers. Customers are starting to learn that when their new customer promotion ends, asking for an extension or signing up with another company is the only way to prevent a massive bill spike that Taylor-Gibson estimates now averages 89%.

BT spent $1.36 billion dollars securing an agreement with Champions League football.

Providers with the largest increases use the same excuses as their American counterparts to defend them. BT claims a reduction in income from providing landline service is forcing it to raise prices to make up the shortfall. Critics suggest those increases are also helping BT recoup the $1.36 billion it controversially paid for the rights to carry Champions League football — money it could have invested in network upgrades instead.

The current government seems predisposed to permit the marketplace to resolve pricing on its own, either through competition among the remaining players or allowing skyrocketing prices to reach a level deemed attractive by potential new entrants into the market. The usually protective British regulator Ofcom also seems content taking a light hand to British ISPs, enforcing price disclosures as a solution to increasingly costly Internet service and making it easier for consumers to bounce between the remaining providers many think are overcharging for service.

Things could be worse. British consumers could face the marketplace duopoly or monopoly most customers in the United States and Canada live with, along with even higher prices charged for service. The Guardian surveyed telecom services across several European countries and found that, like in the UK, most customers are required to bundle a landline rental charge and broadband package together to get Internet access, but they are still paying less overall than North Americans do.

Here is what other countries pay for service:

United Kingdom: Basic BT home phone service with unlimited “up to 17Mbps” DSL broadband costs $31.12 per month, plus a monthly landline charge of $27.35 including free weekend calls. An unlimited calling plan with no dialing charges costs an extra $12 a month. Competitor TalkTalk charges $11.40 for unlimited broadband on its entry-level Simply Broadband offer, plus $26.91 for the monthly landline rental charge.

France: Many Orange customers sign up for the popular L’essentiel d’internet à la maison plan, which bundles broadband, a phone line with unlimited calling to other landlines, and a TV package available in many areas for $36.50 a month. Competitor Free.fr charges $32.19 for essentially the same package.

Germany: Deutsche Telekom offers its cheapest home phone/broadband package for $37.75 after a less expensive promotional offer expires. One of its largest competitors, 1&1, offers the same package for $33.29 a month after the teaser rate has ended.

Spain: Telefónica, Spain’s largest phone company, offers service under its Movistar brand combining an unlimited calling landline and up to 30Mbps Internet access for $46.21 a month. Its rival Tele2 offers a comparable package for a dramatically lower price: $29.11 a month.

Ireland: National telecom company Eircomis is overseeing Ireland’s telecom makeover, replacing a lot of copper phone lines with fiber optics. Basic broadband starts with 100Mbps service on the fiber network with a promotional rate of $26.82 for the first four months. After that, things get expensive under European standards. That 100Mbps service carries a regular price of $66.51 a month, deemed “hefty” by the Guardian, although cheaper that what North Americans pay cable companies for 100Mbps download speeds after their promotion ends. For that price, Irish customers also get unlimited calling to other Irish landlines and mobiles. If that is too much, rival Sky offers a basic phone and broadband deal for $32.18 with a one-year contract.