---
title: "Verizon → Frontier Communications"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/verizon-buy-frontier-communications-2024"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "2024"
---

# Verizon → Frontier Communications

Verizon's $20bn takeover of Frontier, the largest pure-play fibre provider in the US, took back many of the local networks Verizon had sold to Frontier in 2010 and 2016, and needed sixteen months and two regulators with opposite demands on diversity policy before it closed in January 2026.

An all-cash purchase taking Verizon to almost 30 million fibre passings across 31 states.

- **Acquirer:** Verizon (United States)
- **Target:** Frontier Communications (United States)
- **Value:** $20B
- **Announced:** September 2024
- **Completed:** January 2026
- **Sector:** Telecom
- **Deal type:** acquisition

## Why it mattered

Verizon's Fios fibre network had about 7.4m connections in nine states and Washington, D.C., and Verizon wanted to sell home internet and mobile together: customers who took both churned about 50% less on postpaid mobile. Frontier supplied the reach. It had bought Verizon's lines in 13 states for $8.6bn in 2010 and its California, Texas and Florida businesses for $10.5bn in 2016, filed for bankruptcy in April 2020, and emerged in 2021 to replace copper with fibre, investing $4.1bn over about four years. By the deal it had 2.2m fibre subscribers and 7.2m fibre locations in 25 states.

The agreement, signed on 4 September 2024 after a strategic review Frontier had begun in February, offered $38.50 a share in cash — 37% above the unaffected price — and at least $500m of annual cost savings by year three. Glendon Capital, holding about 10% of the shares, argued Frontier was worth an enterprise value of at least $26bn, but about 63% of stockholders voted in favour on 13 November 2024. The Federal Communications Commission, chaired by Brendan Carr, approved the deal on 16 May 2025 after Verizon agreed to end its diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. That created a conflict in California, whose Public Utilities Commission requires large carriers to plan for more diverse procurement; it approved the deal on 15 January 2026 only with added conditions, including a $10m workforce programme, $500m of spending with California small businesses and a compliance monitor paid for by Verizon. The deal completed on 20 January.

## What it left behind

Verizon paid about $9.8bn in cash and assumed about $12.9bn of Frontier's debt at fair value, and by the end of June 2026 had repaid about $12.4bn of that principal. It booked $381m of acquisition and integration charges in the first half of 2026, when Frontier's inclusion accounted for most of a $1.2bn rise in fibre broadband revenue. Dan Schulman, appointed chief executive in October 2025, described the purchase as part of Verizon's "transformation to regain market leadership". The episode shows that a licence transfer can become a vehicle for policy demands unrelated to competition, and that satisfying one regulator can create the problem another then prices; buyers needing federal and state approvals should plan for both.

Source: https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-to-acquire-frontier