Frontier Adds 107,000 Fiber Subs, More Than Expected
The company's fiber footprint passed 8 million locations.
WASHINGTON, April 30, 3035 – Frontier added 107,000 fiber subscribers in the first quarter of 2025, a bit more than analysts were expecting, for a total of nearly 2.5 million.
“We had the strongest start to a year yet, led by continued strength in our fiber business," Frontier CEO Nick Jeffery said in a statement.
The company shed 48,000 copper subscribers, giving a total of 59,000 new consumer and business customers for the quarter. In all, the provider now counts more than 3.1 million broadband subscribers.
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Frontier added 321,000 fiber passings, up from 241,000 last quarter and expanding that footprint to 8.1 million.
“This is roughly in-line with the last couple of years and is a nice pick up from the weak pace” in the last quarter, New Street Research’s Jonathan Chaplin wrote in a research note.
The company is in the process of being acquired by Verizon, and thus didn’t hold an earnings call. The $20 billion deal is still expected to close in the first quarter of next year.
Like the other big wireless carriers, Verizon is looking to expand its fiber footprint as quickly as possible in a bid to offer customers both fixed and mobile broadband. The Frontier purchase is set to help Verizon hit its target of 30 million fiber passings by 2028.
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg implied on the company’s earnings call earlier this month that after the deal closed the company would exceed the annual deployment pace of 1 million locations it had initially predicted.
Frontier reported a net loss of $64 million.
Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr has said he’s willing to hold up mergers if companies don’t roll back diversity initiatives, and the agency has opened a probe into Verizon over the issue. Analysts and the companies haven’t flagged the investigation as a material barrier to the Frontier acquisition ultimately closing.
Pennsylvania residents pressed the state’s utility regulator earlier this year to tack on some consumer protection requirements if it approved the deal. That decision is expected by September.
