Frontier CFO: We’re Rebuilding Trust to Help Achieve Fiber Goals

Frontier has ambitious fiber goals, which include about 3 to 4 million homes that will probably require government subsidy to reach. CFO Scott Beasley said Frontier intends to be active with government funding programs to do just that. “We want to compete for subsidies on all of that 3 to 4 million homes and if you take a step back and think about our purpose which is build gigabit America, I mean that’s why we’re excited to build,” he said. Of course, Frontier is no stranger to government funding programs for broadband. The company has participated in past programs, including the Connect America Fund (CAF) II, the predecessor to the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). Marc Bianchi of Cowen pointed out that Frontier does not have the best reputation with some of these government-funded programs. Frontier for example, missed CAF II deployment milestones in the past and has been accused of “subpar” network builds. “We’ve had to rebuild trust with investors, with equity holders, debt holders, regulators, government officials, and we’ve seen a lot of success there,” said Beasley about the company's past issues. “Regulators and state officials want us to build as much fiber as possible…yes there are some scars from the past, but I think we’re well on our way to repairing those.”