Verizon Confident Frontier Deal Will Close on Time
California utility regulators are scrutinizing the deal.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2025 – Verizon is still optimistic it will close its $20 billion acquisition of Frontier in the first quarter of 2026, despite some pushback from California’s state utility regulator.
“We’ve gotten the DOJ and the FCC in a really comfortable place. They’ve signed off on the transaction,” said Sowmyanarayan Sampath, head of Verizon’s consumer group. “We have work to do in a few of the states, but it’s typical of any transaction.”
The company needs approval from 13 state utility regulators, some of which have already granted it. But the California Public Utilities Commission was not happy with Verizon’s decision to end its diversity programs to gain FCC approval.
The state requires large telecom providers like Verizon to submit annual plans for increasing procurement spend with minority-owned businesses, but the carrier told the FCC it would cease setting goals for diverse spend. The CPUC said in July it wasn’t satisfied with Verizon’s assertions that it could satisfy both the state requirement and federal regulators.
Still, Sampath was confident. He spoke at a Bank of America conference in New York.
“We know the states well. We’ve worked with them for many years,” he said. “We still remain confident that Q1 2026 is when we’ll close on the Frontier transaction.”
On Aug. 14, Verizon attorneys and consultants, including a former CPUC president, met with two CPUC commissioners to make the case for a speedy approval.
The company said in a filing after the meeting that representatives explained “an approval in 2025 is critical” because Frontier doesn’t have enough cash for continuing its fiber build in the state after the year’s end.
They argued that might lead to Frontier raising prices for its broadband and phone customers if the deal doesn’t close on time. If Frontier wound down its fiber build in the state, the company wrote, it would take time for Verizon to start it back up, “thereby delaying the benefits of the transaction to California and Frontier’s customers.”
The company told regulators it simply had to sunset certain diversity initiatives in order to get FCC approval, and that it was confident it could still comply with state rules. The company said it would continue to report supplier diversity results to the state.
“Verizon emphasized that any company seeking to gain FCC approval for a transaction, including to purchase Frontier, will be required to end its DEI practices,” the company wrote in the ex parte filing.
Its means of complying with the state’s diverse supplier requirements, Verizon said, would be to invest $500 million over 5 years in California small businesses, part of a $5 billion program for small telecom suppliers the company launched in May. Representatives said at the meeting Verizon was “willing to commit” to the $500 million in funding.
The carrier said state data showed small businesses were themselves diverse, 45 percent being minority-owned and 43 percent being women-owned.
Further meetings between Verizon and CPUC staff were scheduled for Aug. 29 and Sept. 5. An ex parte filing detailing the planned Aug. 29 meeting has not yet been posted in the transaction’s docket.
Fiber plans
Sampath said Verizon would, sometime before the Frontier deal closed, share “in a lot more detail” what its long term fiber plans are.
The company has said it plans to reach a pace of at least 1 million new fiber passings per year after the deal closes, and that it wants to hit a total of 35 million to 40 million fiber passings eventually.
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