Don’t want blazing fast fiber optic broadband speeds?  Unhappy with fiber optic quality video and want to go back to putting a satellite dish on your roof?  If the answer to either question is “yes,” Frontier Communications has good news for you.

The phone company, which assumed control of a handful of communities formerly served by Verizon’s fiber-to-the-home FiOS network, has announced it will begin marketing DSL and satellite TV services to its fiber customers.

Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter told investors on a third quarter results conference call that FiOS broadband could be too expensive.

Wilderotter noted Verizon would not allow customers in a FiOS neighborhood to buy DSL service, which leaves budget-minded customers behind.

“Now, FiOS starts at like 50Mbps and it’s very expensive. It’s like $50 a month for a customer. So they left a whole host of customers behind from an affordability perspective who didn’t need that kind of capability on broadband.” Wilderotter explained. “We have just over the last 30 to 60 days opened up DSL in all of the FiOS markets to give the customer choice. So the customer can choose whether they want FiOS broadband or they want high-speed Internet service, typically, and in those markets we’re offering around 6 to 7Mbps.”

Time Warner Cable occasionally runs promotions helping customers break free from Frontier's multi-year service contracts.

Of course, Frontier FiOS starts at 15Mbps — not 50, and that costs $50 a month for standalone service.  For $99, ($89 in Verizon FiOS areas), customers can get broadband, cable TV and unlimited phone service.  Frontier’s “Turbo” DSL service is priced at $40 a month for up to 7.1Mbps service.

Wilderotter also noted their FiOS customers can also choose to skip fiber video and go with DirecTV.

“We think that customers should be able to choose what kind of video they want,” she said. “We have aggressive offers in the market for both DirecTV and for FiOS video, but in our vernacular, what we care about is keeping the customer, getting the customer to take more products and services from us and making sure the customer is happy with the choice.”

Wilderotter said Frontier is prepared to tolerate more congestion on its DSL circuits than Verizon permitted, which opens the door to potential traffic slow-downs down the road.

“We’ve opened up in many of these locations the opportunity to sell high-speed service up to 95% capacity on the equipment that we have out in the field. Verizon had set a parameter at 75%,” Wilderotter said.

The company continues to study whether Frontier FiOS is worth maintaining or expanding outside of the Verizon territories where it was originally constructed.

“We are still evaluating it from a financial perspective and a customer perspective, and from a cost perspective and a revenue perspective,” Wilderotter told investors. “In terms of what that does for us overall, what it does for churn, how much does it really cost to extend this capability in the markets that we’re in today — we think that analysis and evaluation will go on through the first quarter [of 2011] and then we’ll be able to make some [decisions] in terms of what we want to do with FiOS from an expansion perspective or a maintenance perspective.”

Frontier Communications CEO Maggie Wilderotter answered questions about broadband expansion and the impact of the fall elections on telecommunications policy in Washington. (11 minutes)
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Frontier's largely rural service areas provide a captive audience for the company's DSL broadband service.

In the near term Frontier has several plans to get more aggressive in the marketplace to meet its target goal of losing only 8 percent of their customers per year — a goal that illustrates legacy phone companies are still on a trajectory towards fewer and fewer customers:

1. Don Shassian, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Frontier reports expansion of DSL remains a top priority for Frontier.  The company is on track to deliver access to 300,000 additional homes by the end of the year.  Verizon delivered access to 64 percent of Frontier’s acquired territories.  Frontier wants to get that number up to 85 percent.  But part of that target is not just expanding service to unserved areas.  It’s also trying to win back customers lost to other providers through promotions and incentives.
2. Frontier plans to resume aggressive promotions in the coming weeks and months, including its “free Netbook” promotion, which provides a Netbook computer to new customers signing up for several packages of services, committing to remain with Frontier for at least two years.
3. Frontier intends to push “price protection agreements” on as many customers as possible.  Their “Peace of Mind” program locks customers into multi-year contracts with stiff cancellation penalties.  Wilderotter noted: “I think, as you know, in our legacy markets, 96% of all of our sales are on a price protection plan and we have close to 60% of our residential customers on a one-, two- or three-year price protection plans. That number is below 15% in the acquired markets. So we’re also driving for price protection plans with every sale that we’re doing in these new markets as well.”  Such contracts dramatically discourage a customer from disconnecting Frontier, because fees for doing so can exceed $300 in some cases.  Frontier has been heavily criticized by some customers and State Attorneys General for deceptive business practices regarding contracts.

Frontier continues to enjoy a lack of solid cable competition in its largely rural service areas.  Shassian reports Comcast competes with Frontier in only about 32% of homes in some areas, Time Warner Cable in about 23%, and Charter below 15%.  With reduced competition, Frontier often represents the only broadband option in town.

Frontier is also spending an increased amount of time coping with copper thefts, especially in West Virginia where the company is warning would-be thieves it will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.

“Damage to our facilities can affect communications access in an emergency, increase company costs and consumer rates, and disrupt community phone and broadband connections,” said Lynne Monaco, Frontier’s Director of Security. “When network connections are severed by copper thieves, it endangers customers and emergency responders and poses significant risks of personal injury and property damage.”

Just last week, West Virginia state police solved another copper caper that disrupted service for some customers.

The Charleston Daily Mail reports:

Stephanie Burdette of Charleston was arrested in connection with a copper wire theft.

Trooper A.B. Ward from the South Charleston detachment went to the Fishers Branch area of Sissonville last Thursday afternoon when a Frontier worker discovered a section of the communications line missing. The worker found that 300-feet of the 400-pair line, valued at about $5,000, was missing, according to a complaint filed in Kanawha Magistrate Court.

A trooper who had worked on a similar investigation told Ward to check the home of Ervin “Tubby” Page, 49, where troopers had previously found evidence of wire burning. Ward went to Page’s home, described as a Goose Neck travel trailer parked next to the Guthrie Agricultural Center in Sissonville, and found three burn barrels about 50 feet in front of the trailer. One of them was on fire.

Page’s girlfriend Stephanie Marie Burdette, 25, of Cross Lanes, was at the scene when the trooper arrived. Ward spoke to her then checked out the barrels where he found aluminum wrap, which is used to cover the copper communications wiring, and pieces of copper cabling, the complaint said.

Frontier customers are encouraged to report any suspicious activity around telecommunications equipment and facilities by calling the company’s toll free security line 1-800-590-6605. Anyone witnessing a theft in progress should not confront the suspects but should immediately call 911 and then call Frontier. Vehicle and suspect descriptions are very useful. This is a community safety problem, and the cooperation of the public is critical.

[flv width=”500″ height=”395″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WOWK Charleston Copper Thieves 11-15-10.flv[/flv]

WOWK-TV in Charleston covers Frontier’s difficulties with copper wire thieves across the state of West Virginia.  (1 minute)

Frontier Communications is continuing to suffer service outages and problems across many of their respective service areas.  Some of the most serious continue in West Virginia, especially in the northern panhandle region where emergency response agencies continue to complain about sub-standard service from the phone company that took over Verizon phone lines this past summer.

Hancock County officials report their T1 line that connects emergency dispatchers with the county’s dispatch radio system was out of service again early Wednesday evening.  This Frontier-owned and maintained circuit has suffered repeated outages over the past year, and the latest outage comes after company officials promised to inspect the 12,000 foot line inch-by-inch.  Once again, the county’s emergency agency is relying on help from nearby counties and a backup radio system to communicate with at least some of the area’s police and fire departments.

Outages of 911 service are not just limited to West Virginia.  Illinois Valley (Oregon) Fire District Chief Harry Rich was forced to rely on amateur radio operators and extra staffing in county firehouses to cope with a 911 system failure caused by Frontier service problems in late September.  Rich called a public meeting in late October with Cave Junction Mayor Don Moore, Josephine County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson and Josephine County Commissioner Dave Toler to discuss the implications of Frontier’s outage and what steps the region needs to take to mitigate future outages.

In Greencastle, Indiana a Frontier phone outage disrupted service for DePauw University and the Putnam County Hospital Oct. 20.  In Meshoppen, Pennsylvania an outage caused by a downtown fire on Oct. 24 left 1,200 homes in the community without telephone service for most of the day.  Frontier has also suffered periodic copper wire thefts, particularly in the Appalachian region where illicit sales of copper can bring quick cash for those addicted to drugs.  In Eastern Kanawha County, West Virginia, some 100 customers lost service for at least a day after thieves yanked phone cables right off the poles.

Sandman

In Minster, Ohio village officials have hired a law firm to sue Frontier Communications over a wiring dispute.  Village officials accuse Frontier of being intransigent over the removal of telephone lines from poles to bury them underground.  Village Solicitor Jim Hearn told the local newspaper utility companies should be responsible for the costs of installing underground wiring.

In Wenatchee, a community in north-central Washington state, Frontier’s general manager is going all out to try and assuage customers Frontier will provide better service than Verizon.  Steve Sandman went as far as to hand out his direct number to the local media, inviting residents with service problems to call.  It’s (509) 662-9242.

Sandman promises other changes for his customers, according to The Wenatchee World:

Sandman said all Frontier technicians will be fully trained in the installation of phones, internet and TV. No more modems sent through the mail for the customer to install by themselves, he said.

“We’ll be there on the premises for complete installation,” he said. “And, if the customer needs it, we’ll provide some fundamental training on how to turn on the computer, hook up to the internet and get started using online services. Or give advice on how to use the TV remote.”

But all of these issues pale in comparison to the all-out battle forming in the state of West Virginia over broadband stimulus money awarded to help Frontier extend fiber broadband service to local government and community institutions.  One of their biggest competitors, Citynet, has launched a well-coordinated attack on what it calls “a flawed plan that does nothing to provide faster Internet speeds or lower the majority of Internet costs for West Virginians.”

Frontier will spend $40 million of federal broadband stimulus money on a network that will deliver fiber-fast speeds only to government, educational, and health care institutions.

Martin

James Martin II, president and CEO of Citynet argues Frontier is building a state of the art fiber network very few West Virginians will ever get to use, from which it will profit handsomely delivering service to government entities with which it already has contracts.  For the rest of West Virginian homes and businesses, Frontier will deliver outdated DSL service delivering an average of 3Mbps service at a time when adjacent states are enjoying service 2-4 times faster.

Citynet argues funding would be better spent on a middle mile, open fiber backbone available for use by all-comers.  Martin notes West Virginia is one of the few states in the northeast and mid-Atlantic region almost completely bypassed by the core Internet backbone.  The only exception is a fiber link connecting Pittsburgh with Columbus, Ohio, which briefly traverses the northern panhandle of West Virginia.  Citynet’s perspective is that West Virginia cannot improve its poor broadband standing — 48th in the nation, unless it has appropriate infrastructure to tap into for service.

As an example, Martin points to the community of Philippi, served by fiber to the home cable TV and broadband service.  The community’s fiber network is capable of Lamborghini speeds between homes within Philippi. But the community can only afford a single 45 megabit DS-3 connection to the outside world, provided by Citynet for just under $8,000 a month.  That line is shared among every broadband customer in Philippi trying to get out onto the Internet. The result is that Philippi residents can only buy a broadband account with speeds up to 2Mbps for $60 a month on that all-fiber network. That’s equivalent to being forced to drive that Lamborghini on a dirt road.

Martin says if the broadband stimulus money was spent on constructing a statewide open fiber backbone, they could sell the community a 1Gbps pipeline for around $3,000 a month.

Philippi's fiber optic broadband is not so fast, thanks to a bottleneck between the community and the rest of the Internet

“West Virginia is at a crossroads,” Martin said in a prepared statement. “We can build a ‘middle-mile’ solution for high-speed Internet infrastructure and create jobs, or we can stick with the status quo and watch West Virginia fall behind once again. The outcome will determine our state’s economic growth for years to come.”

The state, according to Martin, is reneging on its promise to build a broadband network that will deliver improved service to institutional users as well as at least 700,000 homes and 110,000 business in the state.

Instead, the project would only serve 1,000 “points of interest,” he said. The state’s plan would limit Internet speeds and make broadband service unaffordable, Martin argues.

“If the state were to build a true middle-mile solution, then businesses and residential Internet customers would see a significant reduction in price, as well as an increase in quality, capacity and speed,” Martin said. “Regretfully, the state chose to support a plan that relies on outdated telephone lines and a monopoly.”

Of course, Citynet does have a vested interest in the outcome of the project.  As a provider specializing in selling bulk broadband lines, they would be a prime beneficiary of a government-backed middle-mile broadband network.  Citynet’s argument that funding should be spent primarily on that network ignores the reality few new entrants are likely to enter West Virginia’s rural broadband market, with or without the benefit of a robust broadband backbone.  One of the biggest flaws of broadband stimulus spending is that much of the money will never directly provide “last mile” access to individual consumers and businesses that want broadband service where none is available.

Citynet needs to acknowledge much of West Virginia’s broadband is going to come from the phone company or a local municipality that elects to build its own network.  While cable companies deliver service in larger cities and suburban areas, large swaths of the state will never be wired for cable.  In fact, West Virginia is poorly covered even by wireless companies who see little benefit building extensive cell tower networks in the notoriously mountainous areas of the state that serve few residents.  The only existing rural telecommunications infrastructure universally available is copper telephone wires.  Like it or not, Frontier Communications will be the biggest provider of broadband in rural West Virginia.  A fiber backbone network alone delivers minor benefits to those residents who either cannot connect at any broadband speed, or are stuck with Frontier’s current 1-3Mbps DSL service.

Still, Citynet’s campaign is a useful reminder that too many broadband stimulus projects direct most of their money to networks ordinary consumers and businesses will never access.  And so long as local governments, schools, and hospitals “get theirs,” they have little interest in fighting to share those networks with consumers and for-profit businesses.

Citynet produced two radio ads criticizing West Virginia’s allocation of broadband stimulus money, and Jim Martin appeared on a local radio show to explain to West Virginia why this issue matters. (Ads from 11/2010 — Interview with Jim Martin: September 16, 2010) (18 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

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Ultimately, Verizon may get the last word, even after they abandoned the state’s landline customers.  Charleston, the state capital, has been selected as one of the early communities to receive Verizon Wireless’ new 4G LTE wireless broadband network, according to WTRF-TV:

Verizon subscribers in Charleston with devices that are 4G compatible will see changes within the next six to seven weeks. The whole city is expected to be covered by the network by mid-2011, according to company officials. From there, it will be expanded to cover Huntington, Parkersburg, Wheeling, Weirton, Beckley, Clarksburg, Morgantown, Fairmont and Martinsburg by 2013.

The company also plans to expand coverage along the entire Interstate 79 corridor from Charleston to Clarksburg.

The decision to include Charleston among the 39 metropolitan areas where Verizon would deploy its 4G network left many analysts of the industry scratching their heads, although they noted in online posts that Rockefeller chairs the Senate committee that regulates the telecommunications industry.

Should West Virginians find Verizon Wireless a suitable replacement for their landlines, Frontier may have bought themselves a pig in the poke.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/West Virginia Frontier 11-4-10.flv[/flv]

WTOV-TV covers the emergency services outage in northwestern West Virginia in two reports, WBOY-TV covers the Citynet-Frontier controversy, and WTRF-TV covers the arrival of Verizon’s LTE upgrade, starting with Charleston.  (7 minutes)

Frontier Communications continues to alienate customers up and down the state of West Virginia with more service outages, billing problems, and emergency 911 service interruptions.

This time, it’s the community of Marmet that suffered an outage the company described as “temporary.”  Service to the area’s Metro 911 emergency operations center was interrupted Monday and residents knew what to do when Frontier could not deliver landline service that works — they grabbed their cell phones.

In Dunbar, the funeral director at Keller Funeral Home noticed he stopped getting calls from local area customers after Frontier took over operations July 1st.  Michael McCarty told a Charleston television station Frontier initially blamed him for the problems, but later discovered malfunctioning switching equipment was at fault and forked over a $344 refund.  McCarty’s business probably took a bigger financial hit than that when potential customers could not get through — for months.

“People would call, but it wasn’t ringing here,” McCarty told the Charleston Gazette. “There really wasn’t much we could do but wait it out.”

Two dozen complaints about Frontier’s performance are still pending at the West Virginia Public Service Commission.  The state’s consumer advocate says Frontier’s service quality in the state is not improving.  Frontier blames Verizon’s aging and poorly maintained network for most of the problems.

But many of Frontier’s complaints, not just in West Virginia, are about unfair early cancellation fees, inaccurate billing, lost service orders, and lousy customer service.  Here’s a sample:

• “The customer service representative was extremely rude and angry. We called in response to the unfair cancellation fee of $250.00. Last week we were told that we had until 9/30 to opt for other phone service without a cancellation fee. Each representative gives different information. Small business were treated horribly by Verizon and now Frontier. After the rudeness, I will never bring my business service back to Frontier!”
• “I have fought this company for six months because every month they cannot get billing right. They are the absolute WORST I have ever dealt with. They charge for services not wanted. They charge late fees when none should have been charged and then didn’t remove them after admitting their mistakes. If you have any other choice, avoid Frontier like it’s a plague, because it is.”
• “They never processed my order to transfer my service. I called back 4 times in a week to get them to do their job. On the last day, I was left on hold for 2 hours in the morning and then 1.5 hours in the afternoon, only to be told I would have to wait another 3 days for a servicemen to come out. The wait times were nothing less than abusive.”
• “Horrible folks to do business with. Verizon sold my FiOS/Phone account to Frontier and soon afterward mysterious charges for “ID protect” etc. started appearing on my bill. Whenever I call their service, it loops and hangs up. I tried the option for “we will call you back” – when it calls back , it will give another number to call back, where you have to wait again. Can’t wait to get rid of them.”
• “Frontier recently bought out Verizon’s service in my area. The automated phone tree system goes in loops and hangs up on you. Furthermore, once I finally figured out how to get someone on the line (responding to every question the automated system asked with “operator”) and moved up to a supervisor… the supervisor got very short with me when I tried to cancel my service and then hung up on me. When I called right back, I got an automated message saying the offices were closed.”

Some enterprising Frontier customers have learned their hold times will be much shorter if they opt to speak with a Spanish-speaking operator.  “Many of the call centers are in Florida anyway, so you may get a bilingual operator no matter which language you choose,” writes our reader Danielle.  “I cut my hold times from over an hour to less than five minutes this way.”

Meanwhile, one of Frontier’s primary competitors in the state, Citynet, accused Gov. Joe Manchin’s office of wasting $126 million in taxpayer money that will benefit Frontier Communications far more than state residents starved for broadband.

Citynet CEO Jim Martin urged federal officials Wednesday to suspend the grant after the state defended plans to allocate a large amount of the grant exclusively to connect state agencies.

“The state’s response clearly highlights why the federal government needs to suspend the award until there are major modifications to the plan,” Martin said. “It is clear from the state’s letter that little will be done with the federal taxpayer funds to increase the availability of adequate and competitively priced high-speed infrastructure in West Virginia. The current approach will cost the state future job growth.”

Martin is upset that more than half of the grant, $69 million dollars, will be spent on Frontier’s behalf to construct a broadband network for the state government.  The agencies who get access will still have to pay Frontier market rates for high speed broadband access, despite the fact taxpayer dollars were spent to construct the network Frontier will operate.

Manchin

Citynet wants stimulus funding diverted to construct a “middle mile” broadband network that every telecommunications company can access at wholesale rates to deliver improved broadband services to residents and businesses, not just government buildings.

Martin says the Manchin Administration is making “blatantly false” claims that the stimulus money would deliver high-speed Internet to 700,000 homes and 110,000 businesses.  Unless those homes and businesses are stuffed into government agency buildings, it won’t.

According to Martin, all of the benefits will go to only two places — state agencies and Frontier’s pockets.

“It’s a political favor to Frontier,” Martin charged.

“The citizens of West Virginia deserve transparency and accountability from their public servants, and this is even more true given the magnitude and importance of the need for broadband enablement in our state,” Martin said Wednesday. “I was born and raised in West Virginia, and I am aware of the consequences this program could have for West Virginia in terms of job growth and competing for high-paying 21st century jobs.”

Stage two of the nightmare is billing problems, and one West Virginia family discovered a phone bill they couldn't imagine possible.

Frontier Communications’ performance in West Virginia is starting to resemble northern New England’s never ending nightmare with FairPoint, the phone company that couldn’t manage landline service for customers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont and ended up in bankruptcy.  Things have gotten so bad, Frontier Communications now earns an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau, called out specifically for failing to respond to complaints filed against the provider, failure to resolve the complaints they did acknowledge, and government action taken against the company for deceptive business practices.

Stop the Cap! reader Ralph in West Virginia drops us a line to share the latest progress the company is making in his part of West Virginia, or rather the lack thereof, starting with his own personal story:

The afternoon of  Thursday Sep. 2nd, our phones were out of order for awhile but were working by 4pm.  The DSL was still out so I waited to see if they’d get it fixed later that evening.  When it was still out Friday afternoon, I called to report it and asked if they had a reported outage for the area.  Their answer was no, and they proceeded to ask me to reset the modem and perform some additional diagnostic testing.

That didn’t “fix” it so they filed a trouble ticket and told me a technician would be out to check the outside wiring and, if needed, give me a new modem.  Frontier never showed up, so I called again and was left on hold for 30 of the 35 minutes that phone call lasted. I was finally told that it was a known outage affecting 12 people in the area.  No repairs were made on Sunday so I called on Monday and was told the problem now affected 16 people and they had no idea when it would be fixed.  It was finally fixed five days after initially reporting the outage, and nobody bothered to explain why it took so long.  I was later bemused to find an article in the weekly county paper that noted the outage was now up to impacting 20 people.

In your earlier report about Frontier, a spokesman for the company claimed the company follows a protocol about calling customers with service problems to see if the issues were resolved, but that call didn’t come until Sep. 8th, a full 24 hours after our DSL service was restored.  Keep up the good work, maybe Frontier and other providers will realize that the system is broken and we do want and need high speed Internet.

Ralph is not alone in having trouble with Frontier.  Just as Stop the Cap! reported with FairPoint’s failure in New England, service problems are just the beginning of the “fun” for transitioned customers.  Billing problems come next, and Frontier followed through in spades for one West Virginia family.

Meet Johna and Paul Snatchko, who are being billed $671.45 for dial-up Internet service calls by Frontier.  Not only did Frontier fail to deliver broadband service to the northwestern part of the state, now the Snatchko family has had to quit using dial-up Internet as well because the Snatchko’s claim Frontier made accessing the service a long distance call.

“When we switched from Verizon to Frontier, they said nothing will change,” Paul told WTOV News. “Well, there’s change.”

Despite selling the Snatchko family “unlimited long distance” service, Frontier still charged every call to their ISP at the regular long distance rate.  Why use dial-up in the first place?

“In this part of West Virginia, you’re very limited in your service,” Paul explained. “Dial-up is it for us. We’ve tried everything else. The only thing we could get was dial-up.”

The family also endured another Frontier specialty — the constantly changing promotional offers that are poorly explained by the company’s customer service representatives.

“They said it doesn’t include their package deal with the computer,” Johnna said, referring to a common Frontier promotion for a free netbook in return for a bundled package of services on a two year contract. “The first couple months it did and now it doesn’t include it.”

Frontier Communications earned an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau

Frontier’s spokesman for the area, Bill Moon, made yet another TV appearance to try and explain it all away.

“There are billing problems that can happen anytime you have a switch over like that,” he told WTOV. “It’s probably a simple mistake on this particular customer’s bill, something that can be rectified pretty easy.”

Apparently not. Frontier told the family they have received two credits already and that is the last time the company is willing to provide them.

Despite the increasing frequency and seriousness of complaints now becoming a staple on the nightly news, Moon said incidents like this are rare.  He told the station out of more than 60,000 lines of service, they’ve had about 10 problems at most.

West Virginians are also waking up to the realization that Frontier’s promised “fiber upgrades” are little more than bait and switch, and they’ll never be able to directly access the fiber the company is installing.  As Stop the Cap! has reported previously, Frontier’s residential customers are more likely to encounter beneficial fiber in their morning breakfast cereal than from Frontier Communications.

The Charleston media is abuzz about the fact taxpayers are footing the bill for a $40 million fiber network that the company will own free and clear, and charge top dollar prices to access.  Citynet, one of Frontier’s competitors, blew the whistle over Frontier’s much-ballyhooed fiber expansion that is actually intended to serve public institutions, wholesale customers, and Frontier’s “middle-mile” network — not directly benefit consumers:

[…]Once Frontier spends the $40 million of taxpayer money to expand its network, it will be the sole owner of that network and the State will have no ownership rights. Thus, Frontier’s monopoly in the State of West Virginia will have been financed with taxpayer money.

Frontier will then sell services to state entities such as schools and government offices at the existing exorbitant prices. Those prices will never decrease, because no competitor can afford to spend $40 million or more of its own capital to build out its network.

Citynet, however, has provided the state with a plan for the expenditure of the taxpayer money that will expand broadband access in the state while at the same time lowering the cost of broadband access by 70 percent to 90 percent.

It is true that competitors, like Citynet, have existing contracts with Frontier for access to fiber facilities, but given that Frontier’s new network will be built with your money, it is Citynet’s position that those facilities should be made available to competitors at a nominal cost so that competitors can make their services available to the public at large at much lower prices.

Frontier has flatly refused Citynet’s proposal and intends to require competitors to pay inflated prices for access to fiber facilities it built for free.

As currently structured, the state’s plan for expanding broadband will do nothing more than expand Frontier’s monopoly, and will not address the fundamental problem of the high cost of broadband access.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTOV Steubenville Speaking Too Soon – Frontier’s Customers Still Complaining 9-15 and 9-28-10.flv[/flv]

WTOV-TV thought Frontier’s problems were behind them when they ran the first of two stories about the company Sep. 15th.  But then they met the Snatchko family and learned they spoke too soon.  Last night, they tried to determine how a West Virginia family could be charged nearly $700 for dial-up Internet service.  (4 minutes)

Frontier's Maggie Wilderotter escapes reality

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.”

This kitten is not an iguana.

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:

So much for Wilderotter's claim Frontier's Wi-Fi network was free for all Frontier broadband customers.

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.”

Comparing Prices: Frontier's pricing doesn't look as exciting as Wilderotter would have you believe, as the West Virginia Consumer Advocate discovered

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.