Frontier completes Verizon acquisition

Frontier Communications today formally completed its $5.3 billion acquisition of Verizon rural assets, a move that allows Verizon to focus on its FiOS hotspots and Frontier to emerge as one of the nation’s largest Independents.

The $5.3 billion acquisition was announced more than a year ago, facing criticism from competitors and scrutiny from regulators along the way.

In late May, the service providers announced a voluntary deal with the FCC in which Frontier said it would significantly increase its broadband deployment and both carriers made a series of commitments regarding their wholesale practices, crossing one of the final barriers to getting the deal done.

The acquisition triples the size of Frontier, allowing it to grow to serve more than 4 million customers, mostly in rural areas and small towns.

Those were areas Verizon was more than happy to move away from, as it focused on its strategy of targeting more concentrated regions with its FioS data and video services and emerging 4G long-term evolution network. At the time of the deal, Verizon said shedding its more rural assets would allow it to push the percentage of its territory covered by FiOS fiber architectures to as high as 80%.