Illinois State Headquarters on E. Market St. in Bloomington
Office Located on E. Mulberry in Normal
Location
Frontier has two offices located in the Bloomington-Normal area. The first office, their state headquarters, is located on 109 East Market Street. The second is located on 98 E. Mulberry St.
About
National Headquarters in Stamford ConnecticutFrontier Communications Corporation is a Telecom company in the United States that provides telecommunication services mostly to smaller communities, and rural areas. They are one of the largest telecom companies to provide DSL in the united states. Ranking in at 5th place. Formerly know as Citizens Utilities Company, and then Citizens Communications Company. They acquired 4.8 million landlines available to small business and residential customers from Verizon, and what once was GTE (General Telephone Electronics) in 2009. At one point in time they were one of the largest employers in the Bloomington-Normal area, ranked second, right behind State Farm.. They currently employee over 15,000 people nationwide. Frontier is a Fortune 1000, and S&P 500 Company. Their corporate headquarters is located in Stamford, Connecticut. Their Chief Executive Officer and chairman is Maggie Wilderotter.
Involvement in Local Communities/Investments
Frontier is a very locally involved corporation. They sponsor several local sports teams, such as the Bloomington Thunder, and the Heartland Hawks (Cornbelters Stadium). They are largely involved with the Mclean County Fair, and sponsor a lot of events at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum located downtown Bloomington. Last year alone Frontier Communications donated over $250,000 nationwide. Locally Frontier donated over $10,000 to things such as local scholarship funds, Educational Programs, Read Aloud Bloomington, and various other public services. Keep in mind these are just donations, and this number does not include sponsorships. Their largest sponsorships include Frontier Field, located in Rochester NY, and the Rochester Red Wings that play at the stadium.
In May of 2013 Frontier Communications invested over 3 million dollars in upgrades to their broadband equipment including just over 5 miles of fiber optic lines installed in the Mclean County area. This greatly increased bandwidth, not only for residential customers at 25 Mbps, but for business customer’s speeds of over 40 Mbps are now achievable. This is over five times the bandwidth they could offer before at around 5 Mbps for residential and little more for businesses. Frontier’s General Manager Mike Nelson had this to say about the upgrades “We’re going to continue to be active and support our local market here, and provide the products and services that our customers demand,” There are over 22,000 Frontier customers in the Bloomington-Normal area alone so this investment was most welcome.
Other than just investments in service upgrades Frontier has invested a lot in the form of donations, and sponsorships as mentioned before. Most notably are events they have sponsored at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum such as MMA fights, and Bloomington Thunder hockey games. Frontier also has big air conditioned trailers that they haul around to various fairs including the Mclean County, and Illinois state fairs. Inside these air conditioned trailers you will find, couches, a big TV, and PlayStation consoles. They are free to enter and you get a chance to play some of the newest games, and even test out multiplayer capabilities on Frontiers network. Aside from state fairs and the U.S. Cellular Coliseum Frontier Communication Corporation has also sponsored several games at Cornbelters Stadium. They are also known for giving Cornbelters game tickets to randomly selected customers.
History
Logo ChangesBefore making the largest deal they had ever made with Verizon Communications, Citizens Communications Company was a fairly small landline/DSL (home phone/Internet) provider that employed little over 1,000 people. Founded in 1935 and known as Citizens Utilities they provided home phone services to a small number of rural areas, and spent most of the next decades to come expanding their services and investing in new technologies. It wasn't until 1993 that Citizens Utilities started to swiftly expand their geographical area by purchasing 500,000 rural lines from GTE. Another transaction in December of 1993, saw that they obtained 190,000 landlines in four states from Contel West a Utah based company. The next year in 1994 Citizens Communications purchased another 425,000 landlines from various telecom providers such as, Contel of New York , Contel West , and Alltel. In May of 2000, Citizens Utilities Company became Citizens Communications Company due to an employee poll. In May of 2009 they announced an $8.6 Billion deal with Verizon Communications in which they would purchase a large amount of their landline infrastructure that provides services mainly to smaller communities in rural areas, and small businesses across the United States. In April of 2014 Frontier purchased from AT&T all of its Wirelines in the state of Connecticut. This included all of AT&T's U-verse, DSL, satellite TV, and landline phones in the state. Frontier Communications is currently the fifth largest DSL provider in the United States. Frontier is also the sixth largest local exchange carrier.
Frontier Retail Store
In June of 2013 Frontier Communication Corporation opened up a brand new retail store at their office on the corner of Market and Main. Mike Nelson General Manager of the area had this to say about the stores opening “We just want to provide better service to our customers. If they have a bill they need to review, or new residents or new customers who want to review packages,” An open house was held on June 13 of 2013, from 3 to 7 p.m. The event featured food, prizes and several appearances including those of State Representative Dan Brady, Bloomington’s Mayor Tari Renner, Corny the Corn Belter Mascot, and Reggie Redbird the mascot for ISU’s athletics department.
U.S. Workforce
Frontier Communications has a 100% U.S. based work force. This means that even all call centers are U.S. based, no more tearing your hair out whilst trying to understand what a CSR is saying on the other line.
CEO
Maggie WilderotterFrontiers CEO and Chairman is Maggie Wilderotter. Fortune considers her to be one of the 50 most powerful women in business. She has been with the company for 11 years, since 2004. Prior to her work at Frontier Mrs.Wilderotter served as chairman for the companies of Microsoft and McGraw Cellular. She currently also serve on the board of directors for Proctor and Gamble, as well as Xerox.
Planned Broadband Expansion
In 2010 Frontier Communications Corporation promised to spend $40 in broadband expansion in the state of Illinois alone. At least 1/8 of these funds will be spent in the Mclean County area as it is Frontier's third largest market. This would greatly help out the over 640,000 customers it has within the state. With this plan Frontier’s CEO and Chairman Maggie Wilderotter had this to say “we will bring the same telecommunication services to rural America that Chicago or other big cities have” She also states that this is three times the investment Verizon Communications would have spent prior to Frontier’s acquisition of their wireline services. Frontier along with this expansion has pledged that over 85% of its Illinois customers that only have home phone service available will have access to broadband. All of this expansion was completed post 2012.
Frank- Mascot
Frontier has adopted a Mascot of sorts. They call him Frank, and he is a Buffalo (bison). His given name is Francis Abraham Buffalo. Frank’s slogan is “You can’t get BS from a buffalo”, and according to Frontier’s frank fact’s page on their website, no the BS does not stand for Bull Shit. Here is a quoted explanation from a Frontier web page directly “If we were to talk about it, we'd use two separate words: B and then S. So that is not what we are talking about. We are using the word BS as one word, the definition of which is, according to dictionary.com, "nonsense, lies or exaggeration." And there's none of that here” You can also find on this page some interesting facts about the American Buffalo (Bison); They can jump 6’ vertically, run 30-40 MPH, head and body lengths range from 6’.6”- 11’.5” long, shoulder to height range is 60” to 70”, their horns can grow up to 2’ long, and they can weigh anywhere from 700- 2,200 pounds.
Largest Local Outage
In September of 2014 over 50,000 Frontier Communications customers lost internet and home phone services in the areas that reach out as far a Jacksonville Il. This is a direct explanation of what happened directly taken from the Pantagraphs website archives:
“A contractor doing high-speed rail upgrades along Old U.S. 66 near Elkhart in Logan County cut a fiber-optic line about 11 a.m., cutting service as far away as Jacksonville.
Around noon, a road crew working at Northtown Road and Linden Street on Normal's north side severed another line, cutting service to about 5,000 customers in north Normal, Hudson, Gridley, El Paso, Kappa and Lake Bloomington.
About 3 p.m., another road crew working on the Eureka Blacktop just south of Eureka took out a line serving Eureka, Morton, Goodfield and other communities as far away as Earlville in LaSalle County, Princeton in Bureau County and Cuba in Fulton County.”
