CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The largest landline phone and internet company doing business in West Virginia has filed for bankruptcy bringing to a close months of speculation.
Connecticut-based Frontier Communications has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and has entered into what’s called a Restructuring Support Agreement with its bondholders. The company is looking to reduce its debt by $10 billion.
Frontier serves approximately 300,000 West Virginia landline customers. West Virginia Public Service Commission Chairman Charlotte Lane told MetroNews Wednesday the bankruptcy filing would not disrupt service to Frontier customers including county 911 centers.
Lane said she’s hopeful West Virginia customers will ultimately benefit from the move.
“This is a proceeding that will allow Frontier to get rid a lot of the stress about dealing with debt collectors, it restructures and hopefully come out with some cash so that can start putting some more money into the infrastructure in West Virginia,” Lane said.
Frontier’s service has been wrought with complaints in the Mountain State since shortly after purchasing the landlines from Verizon in 2009. The PSC received nearly 2,000 complaints from West Virginia customers last year.
The PSC chose Schumaker and Company last summer to perform a management audit Frontier’s operations. Frontier is required to give its response to the audit’s findings later this month but Lane said Wednesday the company may ask for its response to be postponed due to the bankruptcy filing. Lane said the PSC is not going to let up on the Frontier service issue.
“We will be continuing to monitor what Frontier does, review that report and then come up with a plan for Frontier to address the problems,” Lane said.
Frontier announced Wednesday that it has received commitments totaling $460 million in debtor-in-possession financing that will help it continue with operations. The company plans to go through with the previously announced sale of its Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana operations and assets to Northwest Fiber.
Lane said Frontier has gone into bankruptcy with what appears to be a well-detailed plan. She said that should help West Virginians down the road.
“Since they’ve already got everything pre-planned I’m hoping it will be a quick turnaround. They can come out of bankruptcy quickly and can start addressing the service problems,” Lane said.
Frontier’s current contract with members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) covers more than 1,000 workers in West Virginia and Ashburn, Va. The company also has a number of management employees based at several locations in the state, the most at its state headquarters in Charleston.