Last week the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against Frontier Communications alleging the company didn’t give customers the internet quality promised. The complaint goes on to explain that Frontier charged customers for a higher-speed internet option but actually gave them the cheaper service instead.
“We’ve known we’ve had a problem with Frontier for some time. I had a community meeting a little over a year ago, just before the pandemic hit, where I took a lot of complaints from people who had Frontier service and how bad they were administering it, how expensive it was, just how shoddy the service was,” says U.S. Representative Ron Kind of Wisconsin, “But I’d also say this isn’t limited just to Frontier, this is other service providers doing the same thing, they come into a community with these grand promises they don’t deliver, they take the money. It’s another reason we need a comprehensive broadband plan for America that works.”
As Kind explained, the issue goes farther than just Wisconsin. The complaint was filed with the attorney’s general in Wisconsin, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, and also North Carolina. “Certainly, with the case now, trying to refund customers money is the ultimate goal, what the attorney generals have applied for. But we need better monitoring and oversight, especially for these bigger providers that just got awarded some big federal contracts for rural broadband expansion, to make sure that they’re adhering to the terms of the contract, and not just taking the money and run,” he explained.
Kind is a member of the National Rural Broadband Task Force who’s working on trying to improve broadband in farm country.
