Frontier has promoted AJ Burton Jr. to vice president of federal regulatory affairs, replacing Mike Saperstein, who was recently named VP of Law and Policy for USTelecom.
Reporting to Group VP Ken Mason, Burton is currently the director of federal regulatory affairs for Frontier.
During his tenure as Frontier’s director of regulatory affairs, Burton was responsible for the telco’s regulatory advocacy before the FCC on issues including broadband deployment, video rollout, communications infrastructure, universal service and regulatory parity.
Burton has advised the company regarding business considerations and compliance with FCC regulations and regulatory developments on all issues, including net neutrality, privacy and video. Additionally, he led internal teams in responding to enforcement complaints, investigations, data requests and informal consumer complaints. He also worked with state and legislative teams regarding interaction of FCC proposals and regulations with state and legislative proposals, regulations and laws.
By being promoted to VP of regulatory, Burton assumes an expanded role in these areas.
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Before coming to Frontier, Burton was an attorney at Hogan Lovells. He also served as a visiting Law Clerk for the Honorable John D. Bates, and was an attorney with the State of Connecticut’s Division of Public Defender Services.
Burton’s experience will come in handy as the service provider continues to allay concerns from state & local and federal regulators that the troubles it had in its new CTF markets it entered through a Verizon acquisition are behind them.
He will also be a key voice in shaping new policy for the 3.5 GHz wireless band changes, one that Frontier would like to use to address harder-to-reach rural areas with broadband access. Frontier has joined Consolidated and Windstream to advocate that the FCC preserve census tracts in rural areas for 3.5 GHz spectrum—including a hybrid approach that allows large license sizes in urban areas. They said this will enable them to expand their rural broadband deployments further.