Frontier Communications is cutting about 1,000 jobs across its 29-state footprint amid a reorganization that follows the company’s acquisition of Verizon’s wireline operations in California, Texas and Florida in April.
The workforce reduction, which includes cost savings, is also coming alongside a reorg in which Frontier is creating commercial and consumer business units.
“On Tuesday we announced a restructuring that is a meaningful and necessary next step toward realizing the full potential of our increased scale following the recent Verizon transaction,” Frontier said in a statement. “We are focusing our field staff on operational excellence and centralizing other support functions. These changes will unfortunately impact approximately 1,000 valued Frontier employees across our 29 state footprint—employees who have made significant contributions to the organization. Impacted employees will be notified over the next several weeks.”
Daniel McCarthy, Frontier’s president and CEO, noted on the company’s Q3 call on Tuesday (Nov. 1) that Frontier, prior to the Verizon wireline asset acquisition, had been organized around a regional structure, with each having its own resources for areas such as marketing, finance, engineering and human resources.
According to a memo from McCarthy posted by DSL Reports (a Frontier official validated its contents), the new structure, which will include seven geographic operating areas each led by an SVP of operations, becomes effective December 1.
Per the memo, those SVPs will report to Ken Arndt, EVP of customer operations, succeeding John Lass, who intends to retire in 2017 and will lead a centralized Commercial Sales team on an interim basis. Cecilia McKenney, meanwhile, will head up Frontier’s centralized sales team focusing on consumer and small business.
“Our focus in the consumer market has not changed,” McCarthy said. “We will pursue opportunities aggressively in all of our Fios markets,” he added, noting that Frontier is expanding its Vantage product footprint and working toward a relaunch in legacy Fios areas.
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On the video side, Frontier expects to roll its Vantage TV product to three markets and 150,000 homes this year. Frontier has initiated a plan tolaunch IP-based video service to more than 40 markets, representing about 3 million homes, over the next three to four years.
Frontier lost 92,000 video subs in Q2, giving it a total of about 5.07 million. It also shed 99,000 broadband subs, for a total of 4.4 million.
Frontier posted Q3 revenues of $2.52 billion, down $84 million versus the previous quarter.
Its revised annualized cost synergy target is $1.4 billion, up from the $1.25 billion outlined in its Q2 report.
