Frontier Downplays The Landline's Demise

When will this company get there head out of the sand?
Frontier sounds like Iowa Telecom used to and Qwest continues to sound. Upgrade your networks to fast speeds and consumers will stay. If not watch them drop like flies and go to cable (Assuming you have an O.K cable company to go to)

Telecom company's need to relies they need to spend money in order to make money.... duh!

that's the problem. many of the markets that frontier purchased are monopoly markets and thus, consumers have nothing else to go to. There is no incentive for frontier to improve anything when there is no risk of losing consumers

quote:

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Executive doesn't think you need FiOS-level speeds anyway

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Yea . . . 640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Frontier Executives don't know anymore than the Average Person. Verizon is laughing all the way to The Bank, they found a good sucker to buy all their outdated equipment.
Even some people here think that Copper and DSL is good enough. People just have to learn what they are paying, Broadband is a Broad Term.

Frontier DSL Service pricing is abusive. I spoke to a friend of mine served by Frontier. He complained about the quality of his dial-up internet access. I suggested that he consider broadband service. When I checked the Frontier website on his behalf I found that they charge $39.95 per month for 768K and $49.95 per month in Middletown, New York for they say up to 10M, more likely a lot slower speed. For that price he feels that the service is just not worth it.

Here in Lake County, Florida CenturyLink charges $14.95 per month for 768K and $19.95 per month for 1.5M if bundled with a land line. Unfortunately Frontier uses the same pricing model that most incumbent telephone companies use for DSL Service, which is to gouge the customer. The FTC should make it illegal for ISP's to claiming that they are offering broadband service unless the speed exceeds 4Mbps. Otherwise they should be required to call it something else.

I agree there. How about suing the ISP for false advertising since they offer "broadband" when the definition of "broadband" clearly states a 4x1 connection.

I'm sure after a few class action lawsuits the ISP will get a nice wake up call and finally upgrade their last decade crap, but somehow I doubt it. After the past Frontier posts, this company needs to be sued out of existence. Poor customer service, ridiculous pricing, crappy delivery.. I'm surprised they're still operating.

I think the *ONLY* reason they're still around is most of their customers don't have a choice.

While faster speeds are important, Broadband and Narrowband both did have other definitions. 4mb was certainly not the original definition of BBD, especially as the earliest broadband technology was not capable of that speed.

That's like saying you can only call your train a train if it can exceed 200 mph, because that's what reasonable bullet trains are doing nowadays.

Where does it state that a broadband connection is 4 x1 ? At present there is no legally enforceable definition of "broadband". The FCC or Congress may eventually create one, but there isn't one yet. And yes I know the FCC is heading there, but is not there yet.

the FCC really doesn't have the power to create one. They only create "rules" that are only maybe enforceable. Much of what they create gets struck down by the courts as they always have a habit of over stepping their boundaries.

While I agree that a broadband definition is not legally inforcable, broadband is technically defined especially as a comparison to baseband:

"Data signals can be sent over a network cable in one of two ways: broadband or baseband. One good example of broadband signaling would be how you view different channels through your cable box and a signal coaxial cable carrying multiple signals in cable television.

Whereas, baseband signaling only sends a single signal over the cable. This type of signaling is typically used in Ethernet networks, with the exception of 10Broad3 standard (rarely used). Baseband uses very simple transceiver devices that send and receive signals on a cable. The simplicity behind baseband signaling is that only three states need to be distinquished: one, zero and idle. Broadband transceivers are much more complex because they must be able to distinquish those same states, but on multiple channels within the same cable. Because of its simplicity, baseband signaling is used on most Ethernet networks."

Also, whether we like it or not, DSL is broadband.

bingo. Why should frontier worry about trying to please the consumer when the consumer can't go to a different company

The Frontier pricing structure in the newly purchased Verizon area is much better than the original territory. It is $20 for 1M/384k and $30 for 3M/768k when bundled with phone service.

"Of course most of this showmanship on Frontier's part is aimed at investors, some of whom seem to be realizing that a broadband company that plans to nurse last generation technology for the next decade may not be the greatest bet."

If you happen to be an investor in Frontier, well the joke is already on you. Frontier is very good at the old adage of "if you say it enough times, you start to believe in it." They are a pathetic excuse for a "Broadband company"! If they were honest, and owned up to the fact that they are going to indeed milk copper for every last drop, then I would respect them a little bit more. As it is, they lie, they are ambiguous in their press releases and on their website and overall they are a s--- company!

Surewest is getting ready to deploy more fiber connections in south sac. and Frontier is getting ready to lose more customers.

As much as people think that more and more customers will leave them for fiber or other options. In reality that number is very little. look at VZ's numbers and T's numbers. The people that actually change providers is very slim to basically none. People as a whole do NOT like change and that's what it comes down to. Also people don't want their lawns torn up or another line hanging from the pole to their house just to get another provider. And many times it can take an entire day off work to get the new provider installed.

so very true. Everything in your post is sadly true. It is why Frontier stays in business.

This should be fast enough for anyone.

Thanks for putting a smile on my face before I go to work!
Cheers!

I'm old enough in internet years to remember when that WAS fast and when Verizon was still using Frame Relay based DSL!

Now I'm sitting here wishing my 15x15 mbps fiber and 25x5 mbps cable were faster!

}Davoice

An upload speed like that would make a gamer cry, especially ones that play on consoles. A voice chat/party can easily saturate the upload and create a lag fest. I have slightly less download on my Verizon line and that is certainly not enough for today.

.. "the customer doesn't "need" to have......X" ... it's not about what the customer "needs".. it's about what the consumer "wants".. and yes, consumers DO want faster speeds.

But, to my main point,.. as an investor, I know that we are a nation of impulse buyers - there is no arguing that fact.. that's the majority make up. We have impulse advertisements.. we have impulse items by the check stands.. we have impulse "hurry up and be the first" mentality all over the place.. so they should really stop with the "what people need" crap.. it's only a "need" when you force no other options on people. However, there is that line that separates need from want. Most people already have their 'needs' in line.. it's the WANTS that people "have to have" and rush out to buy.

Investors can be about as stupid and idiotic as the undecided voter..

Sorry, but WildRotten is right, even if she's a bit inarticulate as a spokeshole for the company.

The typical consumer does not need or want FIOS speed. The typical consumer is not a power user. They just want their HBO, their ESPN, their Twitter/Facebook, and YouTube equivalents. None of which require any significant bandwidth.

In the last year, I cut a dozen households from 15M to 1.5M when renegotiating their triple-play bundles. Not only was there no discernible change in performance (sorry, but server-side bandwidth is what matters), but there has yet to be a single complaint uttered about the downgrades, even from the most tech-savvy, most-earnest members of each family.

The typical consumer also likes to upload a few photos to their Facebook or Flickr album as well as a few videos onto YouTube. The typical consumer would rather not wait an hour just to do that. With the exception of a few sites, any server could handle well more than just 1.5 Mbps. I've maxed out my FiOS connection on basically every site I've downloaded a large file from.

I wonder how many of those you downgraded called back in a pissed-off mood ranting about how their speed dropped by 10x?

Nope, not a one. While they all have the "Look at me" photo-album-uploading syndrome, upload times of 2-3 minutes do not phase them, even in a post-MTV world.

The most common use amongst all the households is YouTube, which performs just as poorly on a 1.5M service as it does on a 15-50M feed. Server side bandwidth (and protocol) matters.

Other streaming sites (what the school lazily calls "homework") with higher video bitrates work just fine at 1.5M.

Album sharing, Facebook, et al, are fads which will pass, especially when there are enough Natalee Holloway type events tied to the activity featured on Nancy Grace.

The real bandwidth demand you imagine, will occur when we have OTT, 4K, TelePresence, Direct-to-Consumer IPTV, and some new video surveillance standards that housewives will clamor for (probably in response to the aforementioned CNN hysteria.)

None of these are available yet. We're at least 3-5 years out. Plenty of time for at least one disruptive player to cause the "incumbent" ISPs to cut their price-per-bitrate in half, again.

So many of the people that visit this website are out of touch with the rest of the main stream internet community. 15M internet is much faster than most people need. Yes, there are times when a fast connection would be nice.
But, why pay so much more for something that most of us don't need for a large percentage of time.

Internet video is still growing up. It is still a few years away from taking off to the masses. At that time, a speed change will be needed. However, as time passes, technology advances will be to Frontier's advantage. It's a balancing act that all companies must play. Do you invest now, tomorrow, one year from now. At what point do you lose customers vs cost of deployment of technology reaches a tipping point.

Lets not forget, Frontier is in mostly non-competitive areas. The time they can wait, is much longer than AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc.

"Lets not forget, Frontier is in mostly non-competitive areas. The time they can wait, is much longer than AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc. "

Well, I can only speak for the Illinois territory. Comcast is the cable competitor for Frontier in Frontier's biggest Illinois metro(Bloomington-Normal, population of 125K, with a large state university), Peoria suburbs(Dunlap, Morton, Washington-population of 30K+), DeKalb(pop of 40K, with a large state university), and Macomb(pop 20K+, with a large state university). A fiber upstart ITV-3 is coming to Morton, and will compete with both Frontier and Comcast.

Mediacom competes with Frontier in Carbondale-Marion(pop of 42K+, with a large state university), and Chillicothe(6K, home of a regional Mediacom office). Also, large number of small towns in Central Illinois have Mediacom as their cable TV provider.

As far as competition on price/speed, I have not seen much Comcast advertising on it. At my house, Frontier offers 3Mb max. Comcast offers 12/16/20 Mb. Then, the bundling offers start, which make it a little tougher to compare.

Frontier is a dying company. They are milking their infrastructure for every last MB($). The people of Rochester should be familiar with this concept (Kodak and Film).

Maggie’s comments in this article are comical. I can only think that she thinks the average consumer is dumb.

My hope is that we have telecom company come into the Rochester area that can bury Frontier and challenge Time Warner.

"Frontier Downplays The Landline's Demise..."

That was hawaiintelcom's line before reality hit.
"Carlyle Takes Another Hit As Telecom Firm Goes Under"
"Carlyle had put $425 million in Hawaiian Telcom Communications and borrowed almost $1.2 billion to buy the company from Verizon in 2005. But the telecommunications company struggled almost from the start."
»www.washingtonpost.com/w ··· 575.html

"Executive doesn't think you need FiOS-level speeds anyway"
judging by how well fios is doing everywhere its available, how about letting the sub decide what they want[if you build it, they will come]