Frontier not offering cable to new customers
Frontier Communications is no longer offering cable television to its new customers, but the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority says it does not appear to be illegal and has rejected the state’s request to investigate the matter.
Burt Cohen, an attorney for the state Office of Consumer Counsel, said Frontier failed to inform PURA about the change in its Vantage cable television product during 2020 hearings on the company’s plans to emerge from federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
“The record ... reflects that Frontier and its parent company represented that the result of the reorganization would have no direct or immediate impact on service by Frontier to Connecticut consumers,” Cohen wrote to PURA in his Oct. 13 request for an investigation by regulators. “Consumers will be irreparably harmed by Frontier’s actions in discontinuing the offering of Vantage TV for many reasons.”
In response, Timothy Jensen, a Glastonbury attorney representing Frontier, confirmed in an Oct. 27 letter to PURA that the company “is not currently offering Vantage TV to new customers.”
“Frontier is not legally required to provide this competitive video service to anyone or everyone in Connecticut,” Jensen wrote in the letter to PURA officials.
PURA agreed, and on Nov. 3 rejected the OCC request for an investigation.
Joe Cooper, a PURA spokesperson, said the OCC request “relies on the assertion that Frontier’s failure to provide its competitive video service to new customers is a violation of law requiring investigation by the Authority.”
“The Authority finds that the OCC failed ... to support a cognizable legal violation by Frontier for not offering its competitive video service to new customers,” Cooper said.
Frontier, which emerged from Chapter 11 on May 1, has not publicly announced ending the service for new customers.
A company spokesperson referred Hearst Connecticut Media to a Nov. 3 thirdquarter earnings call with financial analysts in which Scott Beasley, Frontier’s chief financial officer, said the company “made the decision to stop marketing video to new customers earlier this year.”
“It is important to note that while video generates significant revenue, it generates only minimal profit due to high content costs,” Beasley said.
He did not specifically refer to the Vantage cable television offering in his remarks.
Cohen said OCC is “reviewing our options, but an appeal for a denial of a petition for an investigation is not likely.”
“Our position is that Frontier must offer its Vantage TV to any customer who wants it, assuming of course that Frontier has technical capability to provide that service to that customer,” he said. “PURA is essentially looking the other way as Frontier is now providing its Vantage TV service to households in a neighborhood, but if you are new to that neighborhood, Frontier can deny you that service.”
Cohen said if Frontier’s goal is “to get out of the cable business, it must apply with the agency to do so just as SNET did in 2001 when it sought to cease offering cable service under the name SNET Personal Vision.”
“In the SNET Personal Vision situation, the DPUC (PURA’s regulatory predecessor) had to address the transitioning of the shutdown of the service,” he said. “Frontier never notified PURA about this issue, and appeared to be executing this ‘shut-down’ plan under the radar.”