Posted on 04/05/2016 1:49:23 PM PDT by Iron Munro
The reviews are in. Five days after the cable TV/Internet switchover to Frontier Communications from Verizon FiOS in the Tampa Bay market, I'm giving Frontier's performance a "C-" with a strong recommendation to improve. Quickly.
I know. Folks and businesses that have no Internet or TV services give Frontier an "F" while those who can't even tell there was any switchover in companies here ask "what's the problem?" while privately expressing thanks for dodging a bullet.
For Frontier, spending more than $10 billion to buy Verizon's FiOS businesses in Tampa Bay, and urban parts of Texas and California is a big deal. Frontier has historically been more of a rural provider, so this step-up into some major metropolitan areas is supposed to be the company's leap into the Bigger Leagues.
Let's just hope they don't get sent back down to the minors.
To be fair, any cable TV/Internet company that takes over a substantial network like Verizon FiOS in multiple markets is going to face some problems and harsh criticism from customers who are growing ever more personally and financially dependent on 24/7 digital access.
For starters, Frontier did the right thing Monday and issued an outright apology for its poor kick-off in Tampa Bay, especially after promising a smooth transition.
"Given the size and scope of this transaction, some of our customers experienced service disruptions," Frontier said in a statement. "This is not the result we intended, and we apologize to our customers experiencing any problems."
Frontier has acknowledged it has hit bumps in all of its newly acquired Verizon markets, from Tampa Bay to Texas to southern California.
However, some of the company's statements haven't sat well with customers, including by regional president Mike Flynn, who told the Tampa Bay Times' William R. Levesque on Monday that "We're all set and in great shape" and "I couldn't be more pleased on this Monday."
On Twitter, customers still suffering through service difficulties — including some who are well-known leaders in the business community — vented.
Even this morning, new and frustrated comments responding to Frontier's difficulties are still appearing on Levesque's latest story.
"To imply that this is a normal outage takes a lot of guts," commented Scott Brown. "During my 10 years with Verizon I do not think there was an outage over 2 hours."
"Hey, Mike Flynn," writes Jay Fluke. "If this is normal I'm going back to Bright House" — the other major cable/Internet provider in this metro area. Of course, Charter Communications is about to close on its purchase of Bright House Networks, so Bright House customers may experience their own transition issues soon.
In east Tampa, aluminum distributor American Metals Supply was losing $10,000 an hour because the phone system, which uses Frontier's Internet service, had failed, according to general manager Kevin Gonzalez. "If customers can't get through to us, they will call our competitors," he said.
Frontier transitions in other states suffered, too. On Friday, the Texas city of Plano tweeted that its website was down due to the switch from Verizon to Frontier. "We will update when our website is back up," Plano said. The city appears to be back in the social media business this week.
As of Tuesday morning, the website downdetector.com, which monitors Internet outages across the country, continues to report ongoing Frontier problems in Tampa Bay, the Dallas area of Texas and parts of southern California.
In size, Frontier is not a big company. Based on market value, Verizon is 37 times the size of Frontier. Let's hope Frontier is not biting off more than it can chew.
So, Frontier. What's it going to be? A rough week or so of transition headaches, then reasonably smooth sailing? Or a prolonged mess that will spark federal regulatory concerns and customer defections or, worse, draw lawyers smelling blood in the water?
I'm betting on the former and praying it's not the latter.
"FR is not down but there is some kind of DNS/Hostname problem possibly related to Verizon/Frontier systems. We're looking into it now:
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/3417469/posts
Thanks,
Jim
We got switched on Monday.
I have FREEREPUBLIC as a bookmark on my toolbar.
It did not work. I entered the address manually then re-bookmarked it.
Appears okay now.
Bump!
I don’t see how that Frontier/Verizon problems could impact the DNS rootservers. The DNS for FR seems to have dropped from virtually all nameservers on the internet. It is still not back on Google:
C:\Users\proxy>nslookup
Default Server: google-public-dns-a.google.com
Address: 8.8.8.8
> freerepublic.com
Server: google-public-dns-a.google.com
Address: 8.8.8.8
*** google-public-dns-a.google.com can’t find freerepublic.com: Non-existent domain
> www.freerepublic.com
Server: google-public-dns-a.google.com
Address: 8.8.8.8
*** google-public-dns-a.google.com can’t find www.freerepublic.com: Non-existent domain
today 1:23pm California time until 2:08pm - location, south SoCal; provider: Time Warner
clicking on my desktop FR icon, home wifi - I get Time Warner search page
went to Verizon cellphone hotspot - yes, I can get FR and yes I can click and post
back to home wifi and it’s search page again
today 2:04 pm after reboot of router, still Time Warner search and no FR
back to phone hotspot and yes, I can get FR
deduction: problem is with Time Warner
I’m also with Time Warner for home internet and T-Mobile for my phone, and I get the respective “not found/search” pages from both devices.
I just added it to the host file. Now I just hope I remember to take it out when the problem is over, LOL!
Could not access FR from my phone earlier today. I wasn’t at home so I didn’t try from my computer.
I have had Verizon FiOs in Pittsburgh since 2008. I’ve never had an outage and have always been pleased. I hope this Frontier BS isn’t coming here
This status code tells your domain's registry to not activate your domain in the DNS and as a consequence, it will not resolve. It is an uncommon status that is usually enacted during legal disputes, non-payment, or when your domain is subject to deletion. Often, this status indicates an issue with your domain that needs resolution. If so, you should contact your registrar to resolve the issue. If your domain does not have any issues, but you need it to resolve, you must first contact your registrar and request that they remove this status code.
At one point, I lost internet service. I rebooted the router and that fixed it. Of course, without internet, we don’t have a customer service number to call, so if it hadn’t I’d had to go to McDonalds or Starbucks to look up the needed info.
Caller ID on the TV sets doesn’t work, and of course the apps for devices is only available to Google Play and Apple customers. Amazon customers can pound sand.
The TV onscreen menus still say Verizon, and PPV is not available.
Fortunately, Verizon pushed their email customers to AOL so we at least kept email, although that wasn’t entirely hassle free, as they gave conflicting information about passwords on different parts of their web site.
At this point, I’d give Frontier a C or C+. They don’t have a reasonable way to ask questions, and communications have been horrible. (Like Verizon, they show a chat function on their website, but it didn’t work).
TWs only problem was that they were slow to update their DNS files. Frontier went out this morning. This afternoon I got my hosts file edited, so I’m back on that way. But the problem is probably with FR’s host, or a result of sabotage.
Frontier definitely bungled the transition, which apparently they’ve done before with other purchase transitions in the past. They had more than six months to prepare for this, and still flubbed it. They have been described as internet slumlords.
Is there a link with the official status update on this issue?
Maybe a RCA thread?
Hacking hosts file is good if you know what you are doing but I think many here whom have been walked thru adding FR to hosts will get bitten in the rear down the road when they forget to remove it once things are settled...and/if FR moves to another IP in the future.
There is no official link yet but once resolved Jim Robinson will likely post a message to revert the hosts file change.
Not working on Frontier, but good on Verizon wireless.
From the Way-Back machine:
Frontier Communications Pledges Smooth Transfer Of Bay Area Verizon FiOS And Land Line Services
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
The last time Frontier Communications took over the Internet, TV and landline telephone services of another provider, its executives ended up apologizing for a bumpy transition and hundreds of customer complaints.
We have lessons to learn," Frontier spokeswoman Kathleen Abernathy told Connecticut regulators.
More than a half million Tampa Bay area Verizon FiOS and landline users will become Frontier customers early Friday morning. And Frontier officials pledge that this changeover will go more smoothly.
In 2014, Frontier's acquisition of AT&T's Internet, TV and landline services in Connecticut resulted in a flurry of glitches after the company had promised a seamless transition. Problems included insufficient numbers of trained customer service personnel to handle calls and an incorrect forecast by Frontier of the number of homes technicians could service in a day. The top complaint: interruption of high-speed Internet service. The company offered $10 million in credits to inconvenienced customers.
Frontier officials say they've spent much of the last year preparing for Friday's transfer and are confident it will cause few problems for customers after the lessons of the AT&T transition.
"I would never say we're 100 percent certain it will go perfectly," Mike Flynn, Frontier's regional president overseeing operations in Florida and the Carolinas. "But we're doing everything we can within our power … from the experience we've gleaned from every conversion we have done to make the next one better. So I'd just say we're pretty experienced at it."
He said customers may experience brief service interruptions in the early morning hours Friday, though the company is not expecting that to affect a significant numbers of customers.
Frontier, a Connecticut-based telecom, acquired Verizon's network in Florida, Texas and California for $10.5 billion. Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest mobile phone business, is not being acquired by Frontier.
Existing customers, Flynn said, should notice no changes in their accounts, their bills or even the speed of their Internet service. What a customer paid for service in April will be the same as they paid in March. Contracts remain unchanged, as will channel lineups.
Frontier's acquisition of Verizon's landline and FiOS assets is not the only big telecommunications deal for Tampa Bay residents. Charter Communications' $67 billion acquisition of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable is expected to soon win the approval of federal regulators, the New York Times has reported. Charter says the deal may be finalized in May.
Frontier's regional office will be based in Tampa, and a national operations center in St. Petersburg will monitor Frontier's network.
The company is retaining Verizon's 3,050 employees in Florida and will add 50 additional jobs locally, and eventually as many as 300 more.
Customers will even be familiar with the name of their service — FiOS by Frontier.
Flynn promises strong local engagement with the community. "We'll be out there," he said. "You'll see us in a lot of different places."
One thing customers will be watching closely is Frontier's customer service, which has traditionally been poor in the industry. Frontier has fared worse in surveys than Verizon.
But Flynn noted that Frontier's new CEO has made it a priority to improve the customer experience.
"And he's told his leadership team the customer experience is kind of Job One for us," Flynn said. "And we need to focus more energy and excellence there. We think there's room for a company that stands apart and be noted for a finer level of performance for customers. That's where we're headed. Are we there yet? No."
But Frontier officials point out customers who have been happy with Verizon service should take comfort in the fact that the company is inheriting Verizon's entire local customer care team.
Nice post. I hadn’t heard about the Connecticut fiasco. I believe the one I heard of was a handover in Washington state, as well as several other states. This is maybe the third purchase deal that Frontier has made with Verizon.
Here’s a link describing previous deal in 2010.
http://old.seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2011628025_verizonfrontier17.html
I have Charter and have the same problem, had to enter this today 209.157.64.200
It was different yesterday.
- Enter 208.67.222.222
- press return
- Enter 208.67.220.220
That is the actual IP (Internet protocol) address of the FR server.
208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
Those are the IP addresses of the DNS (Domain Name Service) servers for OpenDNS, which apparently still has the database entry for FR (that "translates" www.freerepublic.com to 209.157.64.200).
I think, no
I was on the phone and chat with TWC all morning. The problem is NOT within their system.... It’s 7 or 8 Internet hops away from them.
All my TWC connections are working now. Earlier, I was able to connect my laptop by modifying my PC host file
During the debacle, I couldn’t log in, even starting at the IP number. I’m surprised Frontier is making it through, that’s what we have here. In a more suburban/rural area, the competition is wireless telephony, but the company doesn’t seem to get it through their heads that they need to be at the top of their game.
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