LOS ANGELES — To those of you in California, Florida or Texas that previously used Verizon for wireline circuits (like ISDN) I have some news that might not be so great: According to lightreading.com, “Following a series of financially disastrous quarters, Frontier is reportedly preparing to sell off the landline assets it acquired from Verizon in 2016.”
Frontier bought the systems in California, Florida and Texas for $10.5 billion less than two years ago, and the company has seen its fortunes steadily decline since then. In 2017, Frontier’s third-quarter revenue dropped to $2.25 billion from $2.3 billion the previous quarter, and from $2.52 billion in Q3 2016. The company lost 405,000 residential customers in the first nine months of last year, leaving it with 4.95 million residential subscribers in total. The number of customer numbers went down to 516,000 at the end of the first three quarters of 2016 to 463,000 by the end of Q3 2017.
“All of these numbers just go to show how desperate Frontier may be to improve its balance sheet. The company’s stock price rebounded somewhat on news of a potential sell-off…[however] since Frontier bought the Verizon systems, its stock price has cratered, falling from roughly $82 per share to less than $8 as of [Feb. 6]” according to the same article. Frontier is not alone in its trouble making money with wirelines. The US wireline market has been shedding revenue as a whole since about the same time Frontier bought the Verizon systems.
