According to foreign media Light Reading, Frontier, an American telecommunications company, plans to raise $750 million and use this funds to repay debts, invest in fiber optic infrastructure, and migrate copper wires.
Frontier stated that these bills will be guaranteed by certain fiber optic assets and related customer contracts in North Texas. Last July, Frontier issued approximately $1.05 billion in debt with fiber optic assets and customer contracts in the Dallas area as collateral. This number was later raised to $1.6 billion.
These funds will be used to fund Frontier’s plan to lay fiber optic cables in 10 million locations. Frontier increased its fiber coverage by approximately 322000 in the first quarter of 2024, expanding the total to 6.8 million, which is 68% higher than its target. The company expects its fiber optic home coverage to increase by 1.3 million throughout 2024.
In addition, the company is undergoing a formal review to explore multiple options, including optimizing operations and financial conditions, exploring strategic partnerships, joint ventures, asset divestitures, mergers, and other business combinations.
New Street Research speculates that Frontier may form a joint venture with a financial partner to transfer its Wave 3 assets, similar in structure to Gigapower, a fiber wholesale service joint venture formed by AT&T and BlackRock. Wave 3 refers to approximately 5 million locations within Frontier’s footprint, which are currently not covered by the 10 million locations covered by the company’s Wave 1 and Wave 2.