Verizon could bring former Fios neighborhoods home by buying Frontier

Verizon’s next big acquisition might be Frontier. Reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg suggest that Verizon is in “advanced talks” to acquire the communications provider, with a potential announcement coming as soon as this week.

Joining forces with Frontier could help Verizon expand its fiber footprint — by clawing back some of its old Fios subscribers. In 2015, Frontier bought Verizon’s wireline operations, including Fios fiber internet connections, across three states for $10.5 billion.

We want to own the whole business, because we like the fiber business. We have our Fios build… We’ve had experience with having a joint venture partner and it’s not always easy to extricate yourself from that situation many years down the line. Our Vodafone relationship is example of that. So if the business is good, we would like to own most of it.

Despite declining to comment on the Frontier rumors during his interview, Sampath also said “To build a sustainable long term mobile plus home play, you need owners’ economics on both the home piece and the mobility piece,” and readily coughed up a stat claiming that bundling fiber and mobility services reduces customer churn by 50 percent for mobility, and by 40 percent for fiber.