Frontier Sets Target to Reach Fiber at 10 Million Locations By 2025

Frontier Communications has accelerated the extension of its fiber network and has set a new objective to reach 10 million total locations by the end of 2025.

Frontier made significant progress toward this objective in the second quarter of 2021, building fiber to approximately 157,000 new locations. Frontier now expects to reach 600,000 new locations in 2021, resulting in approximately 4 million fiber locations passed by the end of the year.

Nick Jeffery, President and Chief Executive Officer of Frontier, said, “The acceleration of our fiber network expansion is clear evidence that Frontier’s transformation is taking hold. Over the past several months, we’ve made real progress in executing our strategy – by adding world-class leadership, introducing a purpose-driven culture, improving the customer experience, and making our operations more efficient and sustainable.

“Demand for high-speed broadband is growing rapidly, and fiber is the best product to meet the needs of consumers and businesses. Frontier is already doing what customers want and cable can’t – delivering symmetrical download and upload speeds with far lower latency than our competition. Early next year, we will start delivering 2 gigabit per second services, further stretching our performance lead to where only fiber can compete. We have hard work ahead of us, but momentum is increasing as we rally the Frontier team around our mission to Build Gigabit America.”

Frontier also reported its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2021.

Regarding the results, Jeffery added, “Our second-quarter results reflect continuing momentum in our fiber expansion strategy, with all key fiber metrics in line or above expectations. In particular, we accelerated our fiber build out, continued our customer momentum with another strong quarter of consumer fiber net adds, and reduced our consumer churn. Taken together, it was another strong quarter that positions Frontier well as we head into the second half of the year.”

Frontier reported consolidated revenue for the second quarter of 2021 of $1.62 billion, a 7.9% decline from consolidated revenue reported in the second quarter of 2020, due to declining consumer copper subscribers and wholesale revenue, and the impact of fresh start accounting.

Frontier’s overall data and internet services revenue of $839 million decreased slightly in the second quarter of 2021 primarily due to declining copper subscribers. fiber broadband revenue was $268 million, a 13.6% increase over the second quarter of 2020, due to subscriber gains and higher ARPU. Consumer fiber net adds were approximately 12,000 in the quarter, the eighth consecutive quarter of positive consumer fiber net adds, resulting in broadband customer growth of 3.3% relative to the second quarter of 2020.