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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Frontier Communications is planning to file for bankruptcy within two months, Bloomberg reported last week.
The telco "is asking creditors to help craft a turnaround deal that includes filing for bankruptcy by the middle of March, according to people with knowledge of the matter," Bloomberg wrote.
Frontier CEO Bernie Han and other company executives "met with creditors and advisers Thursday and told them the company wants to negotiate a pre-packaged agreement before $356 million of debt payments come due March 15," the report said. The move would likely involve Chapter 11 bankruptcy to let Frontier "keep operating without interruption of telephone and broadband service to its customers."
Frontier reported having $16.3 billion in long-term debt as of September 30, 2019.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Informative) by shortscreen on Tuesday January 21 2020, @12:31PM (6 children)
I wondered how an ISP managed to fail, was it corporate raiders? Looks like no, they invested heavily in pay-TV and landline phone services https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/10/why-i-hate-frontier-communications-corp.aspx [fool.com]
and later had disputes with the union when they wanted to do layoffs
https://www.wtap.com/content/news/Frontier-workers-still-on-strike-after-1-week-475782423.html [wtap.com]
https://www.theday.com/article/20191005/BIZ02/191009615 [theday.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday January 21 2020, @01:40PM (3 children)
Where I am, they heavily invested in providing services in rural areas where they have no competition. However this mostly didn't work out well - they typically provide such poor service I have had clients in these areas give up on landlines completely rather than deal with Frontier. Every now and then, one of their rivals moves into a place and Frontier is pushed out completely nearly instantly.
The only advantage they have is covering areas nobody else is serving, they lose immediately as soon as there's any competition.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Tuesday January 21 2020, @03:09PM (2 children)
Absolutely. I've maintained a land-based Internet connection because many good reasons, including that I have Comcast and Verizon FIOS available (but only those 2), and cell reception was 1) (very) weak at home, and 2) cost more. I rarely need mobile data, and I find WiFi everywhere, including that I have an "Xfinity" account through one of my clients, and occasionally find a usable Xfinity WiFi signal if I need data.
But cell competition is getting really good, and I'm about to discontinue the land service and put that money into a really good cell data plan.
It's good to see capitalism finally, somewhat, working as advertised.
Sad part is time. It takes time for the economics to work, and in the meantime poor people are getting robbed, and the rich robber-barons (corporate boards, stock holders, VC investors, etc.) get richer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 21 2020, @05:04PM (1 child)
I don't disagree with you in a general sense, although, uh, thats not exactly how bankruptcy law works. Those guys are completely fucked in a bankruptcy like $0 return. There are scammy middlemen making tons of money, its just precisely everyone else in the game except those guys, LOL. The dudes you listed got a pitiful income stream maybe single digit percent at most for a couple years, and all that capital is up in smoke, gone.
Like... you gimme a dollar bill today, and I'll reciprocate by giving you three pennies every year for five years, finally I'll set your dollar bill on fire and we'll call it even... And when this doesn't happen, they gotta squeeze whatever doesn't collapse like this to make money. So they gotta squeeze 85 cents from every other sucka just to break even, and they don't wanna just break even, so say 90 cents, but nobody paying more than 3 cents per so they gotta F over and squeeze maybe 30 other companies.
Essentially the root cause of a lot of pain is low interest and inflation rates. There's not really any systemic risk or systemic corruption or "robbing" going on with 10% rate of return. 10% rate of return means you can handle around or less than 10% of the people playing the game being morons, which seems sustainable and survivable long term. There just aren't THAT many morons and scammers out there. 3% rate of return means 97 players outta 100 absolutely must NOT be morons, or everyone playing is gonna have to get their take outta the hides of poor little old ladies, which is just not sustainable.
Now why is economic growth in some weird perma-depression of dismally low percent? Probably not from being "too free market and capitalist" LOL.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday January 21 2020, @06:00PM
Oh, I don't disagree with you either. I know all about bankruptcy and how things work. I try to be as brief as possible when writing a post, so I assume people know stuff and the backstory. I was referring to cases where company principals get huge salaries and bonuses, then sell off stock before the house of cards begins to fall. "Insider trading"? Maybe, but difficult to prove and prosecute.
It's all a giant pyramid scheme anyway.
This next thing is a very long-term philosophical discussion, like years or more than a lifetime: economics is one thing, but then you have to factor in the layer of finance and interest and things go off the rails. It's so interconnected complex. People make decisions about where to put their money based on return, right? But what if much of the gain is just financing financing, rather than invest in a new medication? Big pyramid scheme.
20-ish years ago I got invited to some financial seminar. I rarely get those things, and I usually assume it's some kind of scan, pyramid scheme, MLM, etc. Probably just pure curiosity, but I went. It was simple. They showed solid numbers for investment returns of CD, savings account, mutual funds, real estate, money markets, futures markets, stock return ranges, etc. Then they showed us the real money: financing credit card debt. It's insane. It's huge money, and if you think about it, someone is financing credit card debt. It's not well advertised, because those who are making the huge returns have been successfully keeping it very quiet.
It's all much too much for my brain right now- much more immediate problems in my life...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 21 2020, @05:27PM
They went bust because they were shitty businessmen who didn't understand how infrastructural businesses work, and forgot to pay attention to their fundamentals.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @11:09PM
Verizon offloaded all of its debt and money losing businesses on them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fliptop on Tuesday January 21 2020, @01:34PM (10 children)
And I can't say I'm surprised. The only good thing I can say about them is when I call customer service, I usually get through to someone quickly and they're a native English speaker. Other than that, they seem to cut corners whenever possible. Their voice service is terrible (I have called at least a dozen times due to excessive static/noise on my landline), their DSL internet sucks (I don't have it but my neighbors have done nothing but complain and I've switched all of them over to one of my clients that provides wireless), and where I live they were sued [fiercetelecom.com] for taking millions in USC funds and not delivering on their promises.
I guess this doesn't mean things will get better for me though. Unless not having my landline completely cut off could be considered "better."
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @05:29PM (1 child)
I'm sure Comcast will treat you as a respected customer once the buyout of Frontier is finished.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday January 22 2020, @02:57AM
Not available where I live, too far from town.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday January 21 2020, @06:08PM (7 children)
Landline? Copper? If so, do they own it, or lease from someone like Verizon, who is trying to disconnect all copper and refuses to fix it due to ridiculous labor union laws. IE: copper "linesmen" are under CWA union, but fiber are cheap scrubs, and Verizon tries very hard to not repair copper problems.
I recently learned of a simple product that seemed obvious that it should exist anyway: a landline hotspot. It connects to cell network, and has POTS RJ-11. I like the idea of 1) using existing infrastructure, and 2) many phones around the house so you don't have to carry cell in pocket, leave it laying somewhere, etc.
Cell reception used to be very weak outside of my house, and house has aluminum siding, so inside phones would cut off unless you stayed at a window. So the above product would have been great, but cell reception is good now.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday January 22 2020, @03:00AM (3 children)
In my state, Frontier bought out Verizon. Frontier owns the copper.
I barely get a cell signal where I live, hence the necessity of having a landline.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 22 2020, @06:00AM (2 children)
> In my state, Frontier bought out Verizon. Frontier owns the copper.
That's interesting. Well, not sure what's going on besides Frontier profiteering.
Have you looked into satellite? IIRC, isn't Space-X, or Amazon or someone putting up more Internet satellites?
Have you looked into cell repeaters and high-gain Yag or planar antennas? Might be a very good investment.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday January 22 2020, @01:04PM (1 child)
I had Dish for a spell some time ago but they limit bandwidth and the latency makes using SSH very difficult. Plus when the weather is bad it doesn't work at all.
One of my clients provides wireless internet, and I get 5 down and 3 up, which isn't great but it's better than DSL. Since they're my client I get it for free. No complaints.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 22 2020, @03:37PM
Good deal!
Again, I get Xfinity through a client, so many WiFi hotspots to be found. With one of my USB WiFi adapters I can connect reliably well, over 30 mbps, at > 300'. Aiming it is touchy though; someday I'll get a high gain antenna.
Yeah, satellite latency is a problem. Years ago one of them (Dish?) had you use a dial-up + satellite and the latency wasn't so bad. The newer ones being deployed- I think it's Space-X (??) will be in a much lower orbit so the latency will be minimal.
I still think you might look into cell repeaters for your home- some are quite inexpensive.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday January 22 2020, @04:57AM (2 children)
I switched from Frontier POTS to "wireless home phone" service on the AT&T network because I was tired of paying for long distance. But I doubt it'd be compatible with a fax machine in a U.S. state whose health department prefers that applicants for health insurance fax in their supporting documents.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 22 2020, @05:55AM (1 child)
There are services, like efax.com, srfax.com, and many more if you do a web search, which will convert an email to fax and then they send the fax for you.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday January 27 2020, @03:50AM
I'm aware of them. But the services you mention also charge a fairly substantial monthly fee, which I admit can still be less than the $1.00 per page that the local public library charges or $2.00 per page that a copy shop charges.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday January 21 2020, @04:51PM (1 child)
There's been such an infinite number of mergers, I wonder if any of my former employers are part of the crashing empire. Shit... maybe?
Its a very stereotypical post modernist problem to have to struggle and google search to figure out if an employer is part of a megacorporate collapse or not, LOL.
I was not involved in the Worldcomm collapse, although their collapse didn't help one of my former employers given the unrecoverable accounts receivables losses from them.
I understand Scott Adams the cartoonist went thru the same stuff I did, where you can sit at the same desk for a couple years doing the same job for more than one new corporate owner per year.
That's a shared life experience for anyone in telecommunications post bell divestiture in '82-'84 ish timeframe.
Honestly stuff like this is why I don't miss working in the telecom industry anymore. ALL telecom companies are a variation on financialization schemes where the company that takes the least insane risks gets bought out or undercut by the more insane risk takers then goes bankrupt, meanwhile the craziest risk taker goes bankrupt, because they're crazy risk takers. Wouldn't matter if there were a happy medium, but most of the companies are in the overlaping venn diagram circles, LOL ! Honestly the whole telecom industry is like a bad board game monopoly except the game is rigged so even the "winner" ends up getting repo'd by the bank eventually.
Arguably its a capitalism problem where nobody can properly price in risk for companies that are highly capital intensive, while also being highly labor intensive services kinda at the same time. Just a huge mess.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday January 21 2020, @07:14PM
I'm also noticing a lot of big buyouts from investment firms, not only when my employer Boston Dynamics got bought out but also lot of other fairly-well-known-in-the-biz aerospace/defense companies.
And what that means, of course, is that those firms gut the living shit out of the companies they buy ("building them up, they call it") to give misleading profitability figures when the investment firm sells them off, leaving the boardmembers (some or all don't know jack shit about technology) to pocket handsomely from the sale. In my case the stakes are pretty low since my living expenses are also low (and I'm spending a lot more time here as a result of mandatory furloughs), but if I had a family or other obligations, I'd bail the second I found out my employer was going to be bought out by an investment firm.
If you think cross-corporate buyouts and mergers were bad, you ain't seen nuthin' yet.