Frontier commits to "aggressive" broadband buildout

In a recentletter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler, Frontier Communications committed to an “aggressive” broadband buildout. The company, whose proposal to purchase landline assets in three states from Verizon is currently under consideration at the FCC, plans to bring high-speed Internet to 750,000 additional households over the next five years. Such an expansion would increase Frontier’s broadband deployment by more than 50 percent.

In the letter, Frontier CEO Daniel McCarthy wrote:

Across the entire Frontier footprint, including the properties we propose to acquire in California, Florida and Texas, I commit to deliver broadband to an additional 750,000 households at speeds of 25Mbps/2-3Mbps by the end of 2020. We will deliver these increased speeds by committing our own private investment and leveraging all currently available technologies, such as VDSL2 (bonded and un-bonded) and ADSL2+ (bonded), and deploying other new technologies as they become commercially available, such as vectoring.

The letter noted that Frontier has delivered on aggressive commitments in the past. Over the last five years, the company increased broadband access for 85 percent of the households in its then-newly acquired property areas. Frontier currently provides high-speed Internet access to 1.2 million households.

Letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (Frontier Communications, Aug. 11, 2015)