Frontier bullish on customer premises equipment

Frontier Communications sees big potential in the customer premises equipment market, the company’s Associate Vice President of Product Management Rob Pettiford told Connected Planet. An important step in that direction, he said, is Frontier’s agreement with financial solutions provider TAMCO, announced this week, that will offer enterprise customers a range of options for financing equipment upgrades.

Financing options

“Today it’s PBX systems, routers and Internet access devices,” Pettiford said. “In 2011 there will be some additional video equipment.”

Frontier pursued the partnership with TAMCO after the company conducted a series of focus groups with customers and learned that many customers felt they needed equipment upgrades but were concerned about capital expenditures.

Under the new program, customers will have the option of spreading equipment cost over time with or without maintenance bundled in. They also will have the option of purchasing equipment on a managed services basis.

A new focus

Customer premises equipment was a fairly important business for Frontier until about 2005 but wasn’t a big focus for a few years after that, Pettiford said.

“In 2009 we created a dedicated group focusing on CPE,” said Pettiford. “We expanded it this year and named a few key executives. It’s a focus area. It’s something we think over the next years we can quintuple.”

Pettiford noted that many companies upgraded equipment a decade ago in order to prepare for the turn of the new millennium, when some older equipment would no longer function properly. Today, he said, much of that equipment is “pushing toward obsolescence.”