Senator Tries To Block Frontier's FCC Funding, Citing ISP's Various Failures (arstechnica.com) 34
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Republican US senator from West Virginia has asked the government to block broadband funding earmarked for Frontier Communications, saying that the ISP is not capable of delivering gigabit-speed Internet service to all required locations. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) outlined her concerns in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai last week. Capito told Pai that Frontier has mismanaged previous government funding and seems to lack both the technological capabilities and financial ability to deliver on its new obligations.
Frontier, which filed for bankruptcy in April, is one of 180 ISPs that won funding in the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse-auction results announced last week. Frontier is due to receive $370.9 million over 10 years to bring broadband to 127,188 homes and businesses in eight states. Frontier's biggest payout is in West Virginia, where it is due to receive $247.6 million over 10 years to expand its broadband network to 79,391 locations. Frontier won over two-thirds of the funding that the FCC allocated to West Virginia despite failing to hit FCC deadlines for a previous round of subsidized broadband deployment in West Virginia and other states. Under the previous funding allocated in 2015 via the FCC's Connect America Fund, Frontier was originally required to meet the build deadlines by the end of 2020. Frontier told Ars today that it will now meet that deadline "by the end of 2021."
Capito urged Pai to block Frontier's new funding by rejecting the ISP's long-form application, which must be completed by winning bidders in order to receive the allocated money. "The stakes are simply too high to provide nearly $250 million to a company that does not have the capability to deliver on the commitments made to the FCC," she wrote. Under FCC rules, winning bidders must deploy broadband to 40 percent of required locations in each state within three calendar years, to 60 percent within four years, 80 percent within five years, and 100 percent within six years. Because Frontier won funding in the gigabit tier, it is required to offer download speeds of 1Gbps and upload speeds of 500Mbps along with monthly usage allowances of at least 2TB.
Frontier, which filed for bankruptcy in April, is one of 180 ISPs that won funding in the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse-auction results announced last week. Frontier is due to receive $370.9 million over 10 years to bring broadband to 127,188 homes and businesses in eight states. Frontier's biggest payout is in West Virginia, where it is due to receive $247.6 million over 10 years to expand its broadband network to 79,391 locations. Frontier won over two-thirds of the funding that the FCC allocated to West Virginia despite failing to hit FCC deadlines for a previous round of subsidized broadband deployment in West Virginia and other states. Under the previous funding allocated in 2015 via the FCC's Connect America Fund, Frontier was originally required to meet the build deadlines by the end of 2020. Frontier told Ars today that it will now meet that deadline "by the end of 2021."
Capito urged Pai to block Frontier's new funding by rejecting the ISP's long-form application, which must be completed by winning bidders in order to receive the allocated money. "The stakes are simply too high to provide nearly $250 million to a company that does not have the capability to deliver on the commitments made to the FCC," she wrote. Under FCC rules, winning bidders must deploy broadband to 40 percent of required locations in each state within three calendar years, to 60 percent within four years, 80 percent within five years, and 100 percent within six years. Because Frontier won funding in the gigabit tier, it is required to offer download speeds of 1Gbps and upload speeds of 500Mbps along with monthly usage allowances of at least 2TB.
Doh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Frontiers is clear a very mismanaged ISP. I well managed ISP has contributed enough campaign funding to prevent such outbursts.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, and a well-managed ISP wouldn't have had to file bankruptcy, either. Maybe they should sell their assets to the local communities and give the proceeds back to the shareholders.
Re: (Score:2)
Frontiers is clear a very mismanaged ISP. I well managed ISP has contributed enough campaign funding to prevent such outbursts.
I imagine your statement is accurate... but why do I suspect Ms. Capito's complaint is solely base on some personal issue she has with Frontier?
Re: (Score:2)
Frontiers is clear a very mismanaged ISP. I well managed ISP has contributed enough campaign funding to prevent such outbursts.
I imagine your statement is accurate... but why do I suspect Ms. Capito's complaint is solely base on some personal issue she has with Frontier?
That's possible. I mean, I have a personal issue with Frontier also. A lot of people do.
Re:Doh! (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't. As a resident of WV I can tell you that Frontier is fairly well despised here. Sen. Capito acquired and kept her seat by focusing mostly on trying to drag the coal mining community into the 21st century with broadband initiatives. That and coal miner medical and pension support.
Frontier is a big issue with the people who voted for her, and they're very vocal about it. This is one of her pet issues, and isn't personal to Frontier. She's actually doing her job.
(And I say that as a registered Independent who didn't vote for her.)
Re: (Score:3)
This is one of her pet issues, and isn't personal to Frontier. She's actually doing her job.
That's actually nice to hear.
Re: (Score:2)
She's actually doing her job.
Blocking the funds won't cause more broadband access, it will mean less.
You're being a useful idiot. Her party doesn't even want to spend the money. That's why she's trying not to spend the money.
They promise they love all the children too, even while opposing funding for early childhood education.
You have to weigh their behavior, not their campaign promises; you only note that she campaigned on these issues, you didn't attempt to weigh her actual behavior. Instead, you credulously presumed that whatever he
Re: (Score:3)
No, I didn't. I abbreviated for Slashdot. As a resident of WV I try to pay attention to the actions of my Representative and Senators, also with the scum that serve our State House & State Senate.
Sen. Capito's actions on broadband initiatives have been consistent with her campaigning. Just Google "capito wv broadband".
There's plenty that she does that I disagree with, but this issue she is acting aboveboard. Blocking the funds will allow them to be potentially allocated elsewhere. Giving them to Frontie
Re: (Score:1)
I imagine your statement is accurate... but why do I suspect Ms. Capito's complaint is solely base on some personal issue she has with Frontier?
So she's a customer?
Re: (Score:3)
The entire program is corrupt and mismanaged.
They are getting $371M to provide access to 128k locations.
That is $3000 per location.
A StarLink connection is $499, can be installed way sooner, and provides more bandwidth.
So Frontier should be getting $0. All the other landline ISPs would also be getting $0.
Joe Biden needs to drain the swamp at the FCC.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Starlink is taking advantage of the corrupt system too. They won contracts to provide broadband in places like airports that clearly don't need it.
Re: (Score:3)
It will take a lot to get me on board with this whataboutery.
Starlink has to complete with entrenched incumbents and not taking advantage of public largess while your competitors are doing backstrokes in it is a degree of virtue I don't expect of Musk and Starlink. Musk made serious commitments and took real risks long before he had any certainty Starlink would be awarded any part of a then hypothetical new rural broadband giveway — and he did it anyway. Beyond that I suspect the money Starlink re
Why not just give the money to Starlink instead? (Score:3)
Frontier is at best incompetent, at worst, they're evil.
Re: (Score:2)
Starlink is a satellite operator, you're not going anywhere fast with that, because physics.
Ku band satellite is achieving a half gig download. I'd call that fast, although I guess it depends on what you're used to. Just months ago I had 100 meg down, and I thought that was pretty good. (I recently sprang for gig internet, but mostly because the price was right.)
Where satellite fails is latency, because, physics. That's what stops lots of people, because twitch games suck over satellite.
I don't game, but what stopped me is that the upload speed kinda sucks, and as a content creator, my busines
Re: Why not just give the money to Starlink instea (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Starlink gets around the latency problem because the satellites are in low earth orbit. They are getting latencies under 50ms and claim to be able to go lower as the number of deployed satellites increases. It's a cool concept.
Thanks, I didn't know that. Last time I checked on satellite, latency was a serious issue. Glad to see they've come along. So many older cities are still trying to push internet through hundred year old copper wire and nobody seems to be able to lay new infrastructure. This is very good news.
Re: (Score:2)
Other satellite providers have theirs in geosynchronous orbit, which is approximately 33,000 miles above the Earth's surface. Lightspeed is 186,000 miles per second, so accounting for the round trip distance you are looking at least a 1/3 of a second of latency from that alone.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless you're an astronomer or concerned about LEO getting filled with a bunch of commercial satellites when there are better earth bound solutions available if not for lobbying.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Frontier was promising me upgrades from my 6Mb/.75Mb connections for years. Now, I am being held hostage. I pay for a landline that I don't use to keep my dual aDSL internet. On top of that, if I were to cancel and then re-enroll, my connection will be dropped to 1Mb. I hope you are wrong about Wave (now Ziply Fiber). Their promises have gone into overdrive with their local advertising. To their credit they are adding service into poorly served parts of our nearby town, but I am still too far in the
Re: (Score:2)
this is a surprise to me (Score:3)
I realize I'm only one data point and the situation here was different from building up new infrastructure, but I was satisfied with Frontier up to the point they sold off the business to Ziply. Now that wife and I are both working from home, reliability is paramount, and the infrastructure that Frontier was maintaining and Ziply is maintaining now has been pretty robust. We've had one issue this year, which wasn't an outage so much as a severe slowdown.
In our case, Frontier had some years ago purchased the fiber infrastructure from Verizon, when Verizon got out of the business, and perhaps that's why we've seen better results than others have. Honestly, I had no idea they had filed for bankruptcy.
I guess you never know.
The only two choices for broadband in our area are Ziply (fiber to the house) and Comcast (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) on cable modem. I'm thankful every day that Ziply seems to be holding things together, because going back to Comcast would be intolerable.
Yeah, Frontier is worthless (Score:4, Informative)
Frontier bought at&t's U-Verse service in Connecticut back in 2014, and then promptly left it stagnate without any upgrades for the next 6 years. It's basically been running the same outdated VDSL lines with their maximum 100Mb/s broadband speeds during that entire time, while Comcast's and Optimum have more than doubled their broadband speeds during the same time.
What's particularly sad about this is that Frontier is headquartered in Connecticut. They can't even provide modern broadband services in their own home state, so what makes you people think that they would do a better job in West Virginia?
Call me crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I think the outcomes would be highly variable. If the community happens to have politicians who are both honest and reasonably tech-savvy, then sure, they'll know and do what's best for their communities. If they're ignorant and/or crooks, on the other hand, then probably not so much.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
You get what you vote for, and the people (especially rural) in most states have voted for representation that handed over telecommunications infrastructure to corporat
Huh (Score:1)
Theyâ(TM)re still in business???
Frontier is a bucket of dicks (Score:1)
Frontier is a bucket of dicks, seriously. You can't even get a DSL line in most parts of Jefferson County, WV because their DSLAMs are full and they have no interest in even adding new capacity. Even if you do manage to get a connection, you're luck if you're getting 3mbit/s down.
Thankfully I can get Comcast here and get gigabit speeds. Some folks in the rest of the county aren't so lucky.
I usually think Capito is a nutter, but for once she's got the ass of the citizens of West Virginia.
Why is anyone questioning this? (Score:1)
Under the previous funding allocated in 2015 via the FCC's Connect America Fund, Frontier was originally required to meet the build deadlines by the end of 2020. Frontier told Ars today that it will now meet that deadline "by the end of 2021."
Seriously, I can't help but imagine whatever spokesperson is delivering this little message fidgeting around and scratching their arms and neck the whole time. I assume when telling the FCC they were quite clear that they all they need is some money and they will totally be able to get their shit together, honest, it won't be like before.
The easy solution (Score:2)
The easiest solution to this would be to tie the funds to actual results. Instead of laying out what is expected, tie the funds to the actual results. So if they do not meet the numbers, they must pay back the money. So they get the money and if at 3 years they have no met the 40% goal, they must repay all of the money, at 4 years if they are not at 60%, they must repay 50% of the money, etc. This should be how all government grants and tax breaks work. Don't tell them what is expected, but what they must d