Verizon Secures FCC Approval for $9.6 Billion Frontier Acquisition

The Federal Communications Commission has approved Verizon's $9.6 billion acquisition of Frontier Communications, valuing the Dallas-based company at $20 billion including debt. The approval comes after Verizon agreed to scale back diversity initiatives to comply with Trump administration policies.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who previously threatened to block mergers over DEI practices, praised the deal for its potential to "unleash billions in new infrastructure builds" and "accelerate the transition away from old, copper line networks to modern, high-speed ones." The acquisition positions America's largest phone carrier to expand its high-speed internet footprint across Frontier's 25-state network. Verizon plans to deploy fiber to more than one million U.S. homes annually following the transaction.

Verizon is like the T1000....

[MikeDataLink]

Go blown to bits and is slowly going back together.

yeah except

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon was already wildly overindebted due to the purchase of Vodafone's stake in Verizon Wireless, and being so cash constrained is why their capital investments have been so low, which in turn is why they have fallen to the bottom of US wireless carriers. Verizon needs more debt like it needs a hole in the head.

Wait what?

[doubledown00]

Didn't Verizon sell its FIOS division to Frontier just a few years ago? Now Verizon is buying it back?? What the hell?

Re:

[kriston]

That's exactly what happened.

Re:

[CommunityMember]

Didn't Verizon sell its FIOS division to Frontier just a few years ago? Now Verizon is buying it back?? What the hell?

Verizon sold a number fiber and copper assets to Frontier, and transferred some employees. Now that Frontier (through bankruptcy) has eliminated some of the worst of the debt and legacies (and some employees), Verizon gets to purchase the remaining good Frontier assets (on the cheap).

flip flop

[awwshit]

Well Frontier has been dogshit. Back to Verizon can't be worse.

Re:

[alcmena]

Not going to lie, a few years ago I'd agree. But I've been a FiOS customer for almost 8 years now and in the last 4-5 years, their service and support has been pretty fantastic.

Re:

[awwshit]

My FIOS from Frontier was recently out for 5 days. Frontier took that long to get there. It broke on a Saturday and I got my much too late appointment. I had Spectrum out on Sunday to install a cable modem, the very next day.

Re: flip flop

[Fortnite_Beast]

Spectrum always gives me the cable modem at the store. Then I go home and install it myself. Why did they make a tech drive to your house for this?

Racist Fucks

[Anonymous Coward]

"We won't hire Black people or women! Please let us merge Grand Wizard Trump!"

Prices for everything are going up

[rsilvergun]

You can expect absolutely no pushback on any merger from the federal government for the next four years. The state governments will fight but it was a miracle they prevented the Albertsons merger. They don't have a chance against a telecom merger.

The internet of course will be flooded with people complaining about how this is not what they voted for. Bullshit. This is exactly what you voted for.

wtf?

[Anil]

So much WTF here.

1. How can the FCC legally block this just because they don't like the company's hiring practice or internal training?

2. Verizon sold a ton of stuff to Frontier. Now it is buying them. That's more funny than WTF; as it isn't totally uncommon. Sell a business for millions, buy it back for pennies.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> because they don't like

Because it's illegal. Criminal under CRA.

Why would they approve a merger including a lawless corporation?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The law doesn't mean shit when the president is a lawless, white supremacist clown. DEI isn't illegal, discrimination is. I wager that anti-DEI has done nothing more than erode civil rights.

AT&T

[bill_mcgonigle]

Can we just get a Verizon / Cox / Comcast merger and call it AT&T again? /s but it's close.

Verizon unloaded union employees to Frontier

[iamnotx0r]

If you look now, Frontier assets are valuable to Verizon cause they have about 50% less union. There is a lot more to this sale than that, but the union was a huge problem for Verizon when they sold years back.

NO fiber, People getting fired, no 1,000,000 new..

[gavron]

Seriously we've heard it all before but to hear it parrotted by the feckles toadie Brendan Carr, in the pocket of Verizon and AT&T's lawyers instead of working for the taxpayers is disgusting.

Verizon already sold off fiber services. They are now trying to move people to wireless (you know that neurosurgery-lifesaving 5G). This is just a "growth for market sake" move and instead of servicing 1,000,000 new subs a month they'll cut services in underperforming areas, fire duplicate call-centers and shut t