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.

Residents of Hawaii, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin will get a slight reprieve on their internet bill starting July 1, as taxes on internet access will end in the few remaining states that have been taxing service since 1998.

The Internet Tax Freedom Act prohibits states and local municipalities from taxing internet access, but seven states already taxing service at the time the law was passed were permitted to phase out the tax over several years. Time is up for those states on July 1st, the first day the internet tax ban will apply in all 50 states.

If providers did not pass taxes along to subscribers, those cable and phone companies will pocket up to $500 million in tax savings annually. If taxes were passed along to subscribers, they could see a lower internet bill starting next month.

The seven states are likely to take a significant budget hit as a result of the lost taxation. Revenue officials estimate Texas will lose at least $500 million a year in tax revenue, while Ohio will take a hit of up to $207 million annually. In Wisconsin, $170 million less taxes will be collected, while New Mexico will collect $81 million less. The amounts in North and South Dakota will be $20-25 million for each state, and Hawaii will emerge relatively unscathed, as their internet tax collects less than $1 million annually.

But a growing number of states hungry for tax revenue might make up revenue shortfalls by implementing new taxes or fees on streaming services instead.

Steve Lacoff, formerly with The Walt Disney Co. and Comcast, is now general manager of communications at Avalara, which provides cloud-based SAAS (software as a service) tax compliance. He told Multichannel News, “You are starting to see jurisdictions impose streaming-specific taxes on things like Netflix and Disney+ subscriptions. Roughly half the states [in the country] are applying sales and use taxes, and seven or eight of them are applying streaming ‘comm style’ taxes.”

Such fees can add 6-10% to the monthly cost of a subscription to services like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, and others.

Lacoff thinks the seven states losing the ability to tax internet service could soon join many others now surcharging online streaming services to find more tax revenue.

“I think that is absolutely an issue that states are actively considering as the tax revenue base continues to decline,” Lacoff said. “Some of these [taxes] are statewide, some are in specific municipalities. For example, Chicago has an amusement tax whose origins, I think, go back to fairs and they have used this as a means to tax streaming service.”

Spectrum internet customers in parts of Central Florida and South Texas are getting twice the download speed they used to receive thanks to a series of quiet service upgrades still in progress.

Customers in parts of suburban Orlando, including Seminole County, first noticed the speed upgrade in April in towns like Lake Mary. Parts of Kissimmee saw a service upgrade earlier this month. Some neighborhoods in Orlando also began reporting speed upgrades as of mid-May. Some parts of Pasco County, north of Tampa, also received a 200 Mbps upgrade, particularly in planned communities.

Charter Communications is gradually upgrading capacity in the area, formerly served by Bright House Networks. Spectrum traditionally does not announce speed upgrades until an entire service area is complete, which will likely happen in parts of Florida and Texas by early this summer.

In South Texas, San Benito is one of the communities between Brownsville and McAllen seeing Spectrum’s usual download speed doubled from 100 to 200 Mbps.

The speed upgrades come without any additional charges and usually appear automatically. Spectrum has been slowly upgrading its national service footprint to offer the new, higher-speed 200 Mbps Standard service tier. For more than two years, customers in many AT&T landline areas in the midwest and south have had 200/10 Mbps service, designed to help keep the cable company competitive with AT&T’s fiber offering. But service remains stubbornly fixed at 100/10 Mbps in just under half of Spectrum’s service area, particularly in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and West regions.

Stop the Cap! expects Spectrum to upgrade all of its service areas to provide 200/10 Mbps service. It remains uncertain exactly when that will happen, however.

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.

Suddenlink is taking full advantage of a lax approach to regulatory oversight in Texas by laying its cables just about anywhere it pleases, and without talking to local officials about exactly what the cable system is doing.

Huntington residents have been complaining to city officials about Suddenlink’s ongoing expansion of its cable system in the city, reporting the cable company is putting cables just about anywhere it wants, often leaving them drooping in yards and roadways. The Altice-owned cable company’s ultimate plans are a complete mystery to the city, because the cable company has said nothing specific about its expansion plans or where exactly the company’s crews are working.

The Lufkin Daily News reports Huntington City Manager Bill Stewart has been hearing second hand about Suddenlink’s expansion since March 2016, but the company has never approached the city formally to share details.

“For the most part, when they finally decided to do it they just started laying lines,” Stewart told the newspaper.

The quality of the construction work is what bothers residents, who complain Suddenlink’s lines are hanging low across yards and even across city streets, with no sign of repair crews willing to fix the problem.

“If they’re going to come in and do something, we expect it will be done right and will be taken care of correctly,” Stewart said. “We want to have a positive relationship with them. But things just need to be done differently if you’re going to come and do something like that. You need to fulfill what you say, and at this point a lot of people are upset because that’s not been done.”

Suddenlink’s response was a general statement:

“Since launching our Suddenlink by Altice broadband, TV, and phone services in Huntington earlier this year, we have seen great demand from residents and have been bringing additional resources to the area to ensure a positive experience for all of our new customers,” Suddenlink media representative Lindsey Angioletti said. “We thank our customers for their support and look forward to serving them with advanced products and services for many years to come.”