Frontier Promises Faster Speeds That May Never Come Company Additions Sluggish As Cable Preys on Slower Speeds The cable industry' broadband dominance isn't expected to change anytime soon here in the States, with many more rural-focused telcos (Windstream, CenturyLink, Frontier, Fairpoint) lacking the funds to seriously upgrade to fiber to the home or even broad scale VDSL. Frontier Communications, having gobbled up a number of unwanted Verizon markets and debt back in 2009, continues to tread a precarious path where they're supposed to be a broadband company, but can't offer a compelling next-generation product that seriously competes with cable (or in some cases, 4G wireless). Frontier's most recent earnings report and associated conference call brought a little insight to the company's sluggish plight. According to the latest data from the company, less than 20% of their users have access to speeds as high as 20Mbps. A huge majority of Frontier customers are lucky to see 3 Mbps, and we consistently see posts in our forums by users saying their connection has mysteriously gotten even slower. In their earnings call, Frontier promises that things will improve soon for some users. "We’ll be investing throughout the year to improve speed-reaching capability in all our markets," claims Frontier COO Daniel J. McCarthy. However, most of that investment will be on core network upgrades and the continued expansion in markets like West Virginia to meet regulatory requirements of their deal with Verizon. Overall subscriber additions however remain tepid (9,300 in Q4), which Frontier blames on Verizon "systems conversions" -- not the fact that they offer an inferior market product. Again, the one reason Frontier doesn't go belly up is because they operate in a lot of markets where they simply don't have any serious competitors. That has allowed them to not only lag on upgrades, but to impose obnoxious new fees like their " high speed Internet surcharge," which simply tacks $1.50 on consumer bills -- just because. Despite earnings dropping 8.1%, tepid subscriber growth, significant debt and the inability to field a competitive product (with no funds to do so in the future), some stock analysts still seem to like Frontier stock.
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 | | Can I say LOL LOL Can I say LOL LOL again its not going to happen to frontier dsl because they are having problems right now with there regular dsl with slow speeds and oversold nodes or cant even get connected because there is no available open ports at the CO. | |
|  | | | Re: Can I say LOL LOL 
Frontier is to stinking lazy, stupid, and cheap. That the company is not going to fix the copper plant by removing the BT's and load coils off the customer pair from the CO. or aka(remote). Heck,Frontier is not going to do a sync check at the nid of customer house from the CO side to see if shelf/card/port is working properly. | |
| | |  Smith6612Premium,MVM
join:2008-02-01
North Tonawanda, NY
kudos:22
 ·Verizon Online DSL
·Frontier Communi..
| Re: Can I say LOL LOL They do sync checks... it just depends on the techs you get. In my area they will check the line inside and out if DSL will not work or stopped working before taking a trip back to the equipment, ensuring everything is set there, come back, check the line again and then giving up. If DSL worked, they will keep trying to get it up. | |
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Not in the state of South Carolina and they do not bother fixing their copper plant in the south. | |
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 SuntopPremium
join:2000-03-23
Choteau, MT
·3Rivers Communic..
| Overselling, underservicing It seems to be a common thing. A company oversells a service, and under-serves the speed they claim. This is what makes our broadband so horrid here in the usa. Qworst had crappy service when they oversold the dsl where I was at. There has to be a stop put to false advertising. For the longest time AT&T (now Comcast) did that with cable internet in Washington State claimed it was fast but when you are on it during peak hours the net is slower than molasses in a maple tree in the Yukon.
This is not uncommon as of late, where a company like frontier buys up all the markets for sale and claims they will upgrade it and never do what they promised because they do not get the capital needed. I understand it is very costly but I wish companies would look at the cost of upgrades vs building a new system. For example Tacoma City light was going to buy the then Puget Sound Cable (which Viacom bought) and upgrade it, they found it was cheaper overall to build their system from the ground up and because they did that, they have the fastest cable internet in the area and most wired fiber system in the pacific northwest.
The cable system there is the best in the nation as far as I am concerned. Speed never dropped there are no caps and they allow you to chose one of 3 providers. Unlike everyone else who makes you use their provider. Sad that the under-servicing still happens this day. I remember the days that Covad was struggling with their DSL because the ISPS that used them was not paying their bill (the 90's Speakeasy anyone?).
I am not certain if they are still in business but they had set up with the LECs to "rent dry lines" to have DSL on it. They had the fastest DSL service over Quest in Pierce County. But they did help with upgrading the area as long as the providers paid their bills. Covad never billed us directly we paid the isp. It was 30 dollars a month cheaper overall because with Quest you had to pay for the DSL 39-49+ the basic phone service of 30.00 bucks plus the isp which was another 20-40 bucks depending on the provider. it was 59-79 for Speakeasy/Covad for the same speed.
I think that when these companies do this, they need to make sure they can live up to the promises they make. Strange how this is similar to politics.
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The following statement is true...
The preceding statement was false!!--George Carlin | |
| mlelandPremium
join:2002-12-17
Westwood, CA | I have frontier DSL in a VERY rural area.... I have had it since the day after they installed it to my Remote Terminal. That was nearly 8 years ago now. I was told over the years that 3meg\128k was the limit due to bandwidth from the RT to the main CO. As of mid Jan 2012 they have upgraded things a fair bit. My modem now syncs at 6944k down and 640k up!
This was quite a surprise given the things I heard over the last few years from the local techs for Frontier.
I also happen to have a whitebox from the FCC\Samknows. When I noticed the increased speed I confirmed what day it happened by reviewing the collected data. That data shows much better latency and jitter and also that download tests are averaging about 5.5meg or so.
I live in very rural Northeastern California. The closest I come to "true" HSI would be Windjammer Cable in Susanville, CA. That is over 30miles away.
I could switch to cable but the local provider, Cal-Neva Broadband, seems to be taking its own sweet time to upgrade the HW. They still only have about 50 channels and NONE are in HD. Internet service is 50$ a month minimum for a 3meg\128k account that is capped at 50GB. That is not hardly competition for Frontier. | |
| | | | Re: I have frontier DSL in a VERY rural area.... I Have frontier supposed to be dsl lol im 1 mb down 256 up and 5 miles farther from the co they get 3mb down. Its the only game in town when asked when they were going to replace the box here in the trailer park i live in they said they don't know, but woww they sure are here everyday at that box wish they would get it together. At least it is better than dial-up but barely. And they know they have the market cornered here in WV | |
| | PDXPLT
join:2003-12-04
Banks, OR | I like Frontier Karl continues his bashing of Frontier and his love-fest of Verizon. That fact remains that over 10 years, Verizon refused to deploy any broadband to my neighborhood and millions of other subscribers, all the time their field techs telling us it could easily be done, but their Management wouldn't let them, taking orders from Back East.
So Frontier acquires the territory and a few months later we have broadband. Say what you want about some mythical broadband nirvana, but results matter. And with Frontier, we got results. It's stupid to speculate that the speeds may not be as fast as some theoretical "competition", there is no competition here, just as there isn't in much of the Frontier territory. Higher cable speeds are just some fantasy, if the cable company doesn't run their lines to your territory. | |
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| | remember the 5GIG a month people will switch to other providers if they can.verizon has no caps i use almost 3TB a month with their fios service with their fiostv xbox app and with other streaming service on the xbox.glad verizon is my provider | |
| | | | Re: remember the 5GIG a month Someone looking for DSL as a provider is not going to be in the same competition as FIOS...
DSL is a godsend for people with dial-up, satellite services, WISP or any 3G provider. It's half the cost of most of those, and has considerably better latency and more stable speeds.
An average usage household can use around 5GB a month with moderate usage. That's right around where our bandwidth usage was for most of 2011. | |
| | Reviews:
 ·Air Advantage
 ·HughesNet Satell..
| said by cybercrimes:people will switch to other providers if they can.verizon has no caps i use almost 3TB a month with their fios service with their fiostv xbox app and with other streaming service on the xbox.glad verizon is my provider
that's a big IF. most of frontier's customers are in areas where they are the only provider in town. | |
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| | Frontier can't find their a-- with both hands & flashlight Frontier has no clue what they are doing. True story. Just this past week we had line issues with our business fios that lasted a week. First day of issues I told them that the issue was in their switching hardware on the copper side of their system at their end of the glass. They failed to understand and sent a tech to my office every day for a week just to have him shrug and have no clue what to do. After a week they finally realized that static on fiber lines is really hard to do. The tech called the switch building and found that they had a card toasted and programming was all jacked up. Only took them a week.... Clueless. | |
| ssavoyPremium
join:2007-08-16
Dallas, PA Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| Talk the talk They do not innovate. They try to milk their infrastructure as much as they can. They have one speed option where I am - "$39.99/month" for "1-12mbps". Yes, 1-12mbps is the range of speed they guarantee. I'm sure if I subscribed to that I'd be rockin' 1.01mbps all day long and there's nothing they could do about it.
Meanwhile, I can get 105mbps from Comcast. | |
| Reviews:
 ·ooma
·Optimum Online
 ·Verizon FiOS
| if you're gonna be damned... be damned for getting smarter go bankrupt and wipe the old Verizon debt and start clean..
nobody's going to bail you out of the mess you went into with eyes open..
I'm sure there is a compelling case to be made (for the top 20% of frontier footprint) if cable companies in the area are walking away with millions in TV, Phone and Internet revenue that you'd like a slice of, only if you had no bad debt, and the debt you DID have went towards a FIBER TO THE HOME FUTUREPROOF NETWORK! | |
|  tim_kButtons, Bows, Beamer, Shadow, KaseyPremium,VIP
join:2002-02-02
Stewartstown, PA
kudos:25 | no surprise I don't know, maybe the executive's had bonuses related to the large number of customers they acquired when they bought the Verizon lines. They seemed to be blind to what was obvious to most of the rest of us. They were buying a system with neglected copper plant running to a network on life support. They certainly must have been thinking short term. They still don't have all the assets they need to maintain what they have. A little while ago a Froniter tech contacted me because they had absolutely no one who knew how to work on a particular type of remote terminal. I wish them the best, if they fail then the customers and regular workers get the shaft, the executives will still get their golden parachutes I'm sure.
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RIP my babies Buttons 1/15/94-2/9/07, Beamer 7/24/08, & Bows 12/17/94-10/11/09 | |
|  ztmikeMark for moderationPremium
join:2001-08-02
Michigan City, IN |  Tons of Frontier trucks
So to all the people that bash them..at least their doing more than Verizon ever did. (At least in that area) my city has AT&T so I couldn't comment on their service. | |
| | WilliamPremium
join:2010-04-18
Washougal, WA
3 edits | New Frontier user Just had Frontier since February 23rd, quite happy and satisfied with service, as for speed increases or not, don't really care at this point, especially after using satellite 13 years. | |
| | | | Re: New Frontier user You should be satisfied since Washougal has FiOS - fiber optic to the premises is the best network possible bar none ! | |
| | | WilliamPremium
join:2010-04-18
Washougal, WA | Re: New Frontier user I am 10 miles out of town (have a Washougal mailing address), so don't think that will come my way. | |
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