Landline Complaints
Four years after Frontier communications took over Verizon’s landline operations in West Virginia; it has registered a huge reduction in customer complaints. The company has expanded internet access to 176,000 homes in the region, as well.
This means that Frontier has been keen to follow the instructions it received at the time of the acquisition in May 2010. The state public Service Commission when approving the deal insisted that the company had to invest about 280 million to improve the quality of its services to the public and also increase the deployment of broadband by the end of 2013. It was also expected to ensure that at least 85 percent of homes in the network it took over from Verizon have broadband access by the end of 2014.
To monitor whether the above goals were being met, the commission expected Frontier to submit annual reports to them. The company has achieved this already, and in the reports it files at the end of January this year, it indicates that it has achieved and exceeded the goals set for it. For example, when it acquired the network about 62 percent of the homes in the network had broadband access, but now it says that the percentage stands at 88 percent.
Frontier Invests Over $370 Million To Meet FCC Targets
According to the general manager of the company’s operations in West Virginia, the company has invested upwards of $370 million to ensure that it meets the targets set by the commission. The result is a dramatic improvement in broadband service availability and access to telephone services in the region. According to a representative of Frontier this investment in upgrading the broadband and telephone services in the network has reduced the number of complaints it is getting from customers asking for assistance. This is indicated by the fact that it had logged 1,446 calls in the year before the takeover and calls in 2013 had dropped to 460.
Other improvements by the company include the completion of a 2,600 fiber optic network designed to provide high speed Internet services as well as improve telephone services and voice over internet protocol services. The company also increased its Ethernet switches from nine to 150 to allow businesses to create high speed communication networks.