Frontier (NYSE: FTR) has made Illinois its latest broadband investment target with plans to commit over $40 million to expand service in the state over the next year.
Maggie Wilderotter, CEO and Chairman of Frontier, who spent this past week meeting with customers and employees in the Midwest, set an aggressive broadband rollout goal that will give users in central Illinois the same experience they would get in Chicago.
"One of the commitments we have made to the state of Illinois is that we want to get a minimum of 80 percent reach for broadband over the next two years," Wilderotter told The State Journal-Register. "And our goal would be to get somewhere between 85 to 90 percent in a three-year window."
Wilderotter estimated that only an estimated 65 percent of Illinois residents can actually get broadband, meaning that there's a remaining 35 percent who still can't get a broadband connection today.
Frontier's new commitment to beefing up Illinois' broadband availability follows a similar promises Frontier made to both Ohio and West Virginia. The provider plans to spend $50 million each year to bring broadband to 85 percent of Ohio residents by 2013, while in West Virginia it will spend $231 million to improve that state's voice network and another $48 million to increase broadband availability by 2013.
For more:
- see this State Journal-Register article
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