There are not many telecom headlines that give me an instant smile, but the announcement of Verizon’s offer to buy Frontier Communications is one that did. What amused me was that Frontier grew to its current size by buying cast-off copper networks from Verizon.

Frontier got its start as Citizens Communications but adopted the Frontier name in 2008. Frontier paid a lot for Verizon properties. In July 2010, Frontier paid $8.6 billion for Verizon properties in 14 states that included Fort Wayne, Indiana and West Virginia. In April 2016, Frontier paid $10.5 billion for Verizon properties in Florida, Texas, and California. The company made other acquisitions over the years from GTE, Commonwealth Telephone Company, and AT&T properties in Connecticut.

The current sale is estimated to be valued at around $20 billion. That’s a little less than what Frontier paid over the years for copper networks. However, Verizon is buying Frontier for its fiber portfolio. Frontier had 6.5 million fiber passings at the end of 2023 and has announced plans to add 3.5 million more passings by 2026.

This sale raises some interesting questions. Verizon is clearly interested in having a bigger fiber portfolio. I have to wonder if Verizon will be in favor of Frontier’s remaining fiber expansion plans since much of it is in rural and less densely populated portions of the Frontier portfolio.

Frontier also seems to have a fairly aggressive plan to pursue BEAD grants, particularly in rural areas of its existing footprint. It’s going to be interesting to see if Verizon influences those plans which would come to fruition before the close of a sale.

I’ve always been fascinated seeing ISPs merge and deal with different prices. Prices usually stay the same for a while after a merger, but eventually are brought into synch. Following are the list fiber prices for the two companies. This could mean future catch-up rate increases for Frontier customers.

There must still be many employees at Frontier that came from one of the Verizon acquisitions. It’s likely going to feel really odd for them to end up back where they started.

I’ve heard a lot of folks speculating that the next few years might be full of fiber acquisitions and mergers. T-Mobile recently announced the purchase of Metronet, which followed the purchase of Lumos.

This acquisition brings Verizon close to AT&T’s and would give the company 14.5 million broadband customers, counting at the end of the second quarter of 2024. That’s 7.7 million Verizon broadband customers, 3.8 million Verizon FWA wireless customers, and another 3 million customers from Frontier. The three entities are growing quickly and added 442,000 broadband customers in the second quarter of this year.

Frontier has come a long way since the bankruptcy in filed in 2020. The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2021 with a clean balance sheet, cash to grow, and a new management team.