Verizon is buying Frontier Communications in a $20 billion deal to strengthen its fiber network.
Verizon Communications Inc. said Thursday that the acquisition will also shore up its foray into artificial intelligence as well as connected smart devices.
Frontier has concentrated heavily on its fiber network capabilities over about four years, investing $4.1 billion upgrading and expanding its fiber network. It now gets more than half of its revenue from fiber products.
The price tag for Frontier, based in Dallas, is sizeable given its 2.2 million fiber subscribers across 25 states. Verizon has approximately 7.4 million Fios connections in nine states and Washington, D.C.
Frontier has 7.2 million fiber locations and has plans to build out an additional 2.8 million fiber locations by the end of 2026.
“The acquisition of Frontier is a strategic fit," Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg said in a prepared statement. "It will build on Verizon’s two decades of leadership at the forefront of fiber and is an opportunity to become more competitive in more markets throughout the United States, enhancing our ability to deliver premium offerings to millions more customers across a combined fiber network.”
There are skeptics of the potential for Verizon's $20 billion acquisition, however.
“The real issue is simply that Frontier’s paltry 3.5% national fiber coverage (again, according to the FCC’s broadband map as of end of 2023) would leave Verizon with a combined fiber footprint that still covers less than 13% of the country, with a path to potentially take that only to about 17% of the country,” Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research wrote. “A fiber footprint covering 17% of the U.S. is nowhere near large enough to be the basis of a strategy for a national wireless operator.”
Verizon, based in New York City, will pay $38.50 for each Frontier share. The deal is expected to close in about 18 months. It still needs approval from Frontier shareholders.
Shares of Frontier Communications Parents Inc., which were halted briefly on Wednesday after a report from the Wall Street Journal about the deal sent the stock up nearly 40%, fell 9% Thursday. Verizon's stock dipped slightly.
FILE - A Verizon retail location is shown in Willow Grove, Pa., Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024. Verizon is buying Frontier Communications in a $20 billion deal that helps bolster its fiber network. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
DETROIT (AP) — Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both pushed Tuesday to energize key constituencies that their allies worry might be slipping away, with the vice president looking to reach Black men and the former president focusing on women.
Harris will appear at a town hall-style event in Detroit hosted by the morning radio program “The Breakfast Club," featuring Charlamagne Tha God, who is especially popular with Black males. Trump, meanwhile, will tape a Fox News Channel town hall featuring an all-female audience and moderated by host Harris Faulkner.
The vice president was also scheduled to stop by a Black-owned business in Detroit. A day earlier, she visited LegendErie, a coffee shop and record store in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she met with the husband-and-wife owners, a local pastor and other community leaders.
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is unveiling his ticket’s plan to improve the lives of rural Americans. It's yet another sign that in a razor-tight race, each side is trying to cut into the other's margins of support with different voting blocs while shoring up traditional areas of strength.
The vice president's “Breakfast Club” appearance comes one day after she announced a series of new proposals dubbed the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men.” The ideas are meant to offer the demographic more economic advantages, including providing forgivable business loans of up to $20,000 for entrepreneurs and creating more apprenticeships. The plan would also support the study of sickle cell and other diseases more common in Black men.
The focus on Black men sharpened last week when former President Barack Obama campaigned for Harris in Pittsburgh and said he wanted to speak “some truths” to Black male voters, suggesting some " just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”
The vice president’s campaign says it doesn’t believe Black men will flip in large numbers to supporting Trump, especially after strongly backing Democrat Joe Biden, with Harris as his running mate, in 2020. They are more concerned about a measurable percentage of Black males opting not to vote at all.
Similarly, Trump figures to do well with rural voters, but team Harris hopes to at least keep things closer. And while Harris' support among women is strong, Trump aims to keep her from running up the score.
Harris’ campaign has also placed special emphasis on other male voters, including creating “ Hombres con Harris,” or “Men with Harris,” a group that is using celebrities and key elected officials to organize events on her behalf meant to appeal to Hispanic men.
As she campaigns in Detroit, Harris faces other potential challenges in Michigan, including Arab activists angered by the Biden administration’s full-throated support for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza. Dearborn, outside Detroit, is the largest Arab-majority city in the U.S.
Still, the vice president's campaign expects to see strong support on Election Day from white, college-educated voters in Michigan at rates that might exceed Biden's in 2020, and she hopes to expand the margin by which Trump lost many of the state's key suburbs four years ago.
Trump, meanwhile, has seen his support among women, especially in the suburbs of many key swing states, soften since his term in the White House. A September AP-NORC poll found more than half of registered voters who are women have a somewhat or very favorable view of Harris, while only about one-third have a favorable view of Trump.
To reverse the trend, Trump has sought to cast himself as being able to personally shield women from various threats, as when he suggested at a rally in Pennsylvania last month that women in America, “will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger.”
“You will be protected, and I will be your protector," Trump said then. He's also suggested that, should he win, women will no longer have a reason to think about abortion, after three Supreme Court judges that he appointed helped in 2022 to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that had guaranteed a woman's right to the procedure.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Trump has an economic speech in Chicago and a rally in Atlanta.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Erie Insurance Arena, in Erie, Pa., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris claps on stage during a campaign rally at Erie Insurance Arena, in Erie, Pa., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem dance to the song "Y.M.C.A." at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
