If you live in Oregon and want FiOS TV from Frontier (NYSE: FTR), you're going to have to be willing to pay a hefty price as the ILEC raised the installation cost from $79 to $500. To add insult to injury, Frontier, which acquired about 100,000 FiOS data and video customers from Verizon, has also notified Oregon regulators that it would opt out of franchise agreements.
The opting out of the Oregon franchise agreements and the installation hike follows an earlier move by the service provider to increase its FiOS TV rates--signs that Frontier has no interest in providing TV.
Of course, Frontier's spokesman Steve Crosby said the service provider is not exiting the TV business, but rather is trying to figure out what its next move should be.
"I wouldn't jump to that conclusion yet," he said in a Seattle Times article, adding that "we are still analyzing the business and figuring out what our cost structure is and the best way to treat our customers."
While it will take time for Frontier to evaluate its options, Frontier's move to jack up rates and move customers onto resold satellite service aren't going to sit well with new customers, nor regulators who initially were concerned about the ILEC's ability to serve TV and Fiber to the Home (FTTH) customers.
For more:
- The Seattle Times has this post
- here's FierceCable's take
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