Frontier stepped up during storm
The June 29 storm created widespread property damage and resulted in enormous discomfort and inconvenience for hundreds of thousands of West Virginians. The storm also led to some confusion about telephone service during an extended power outage.
Shortly after the storm, more than half of Frontier Communications’ 230 Central Offices in West Virginia did not have commercial power. During that emergency situation, Frontier personnel provided electric power through generators and batteries to Central Offices and other critical communications facilities that lost commercial power.
As a result of that work, the vast majority of Frontier customers had phone service even if they had lost power. Those customers needed only to plug an inexpensive corded telephone into our network to maintain telephone service during the lengthy power outage. The Suddenlinks and Comcasts of the world cannot match our phone service reliability during extended power outages.
I would like to make one additional point about our network: Frontier has invested more than $200 million in West Virginia during the past two years to strengthen our network and make it more resistant to severe weather. Our investments have paid off. The vast majority of our customers had access to telephone service following one of the most severe storms we have seen.
We encourage our customers to have corded telephones in their homes or places of business or employment. They can provide critical connections during emergency situations.
Finally, I publicly want to thank our employees for their commitment to strengthen and maintain our network the past two years and also express my sincere gratitude to our customers for their loyalty.
Sincerely,
Ken Arndt
President-Eastern Region