Frontier Sells 350,000 Lines, 1.7 Million Passings

Frontier Communications is selling the networks and customer accounts of operations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana to WaveDivision Capital and  Searchlight Capital Partners for $1.352 billion in cash.

Those networks have a combined 350,000 access lines access lines in service (business and consumer), $619 million of revenue, $46 million of net income and $272 million of adjusted EBITDA.

The deal essentially values each of the active lines at about $3863. By way of comparison, cable TV subscribers in recent years have been valued at about $4,000 to $5,000 each. Charter bought Time Warner for about $5178 per relationship.

Of course, all of Time Warner’s “lines” or relationships were broadband. Perhaps 29 percent of Frontier’s lines are broadband in a way that compares to cable connections.

Across the four states, Frontier’s network passes 1.7 million residential and business locations, of which approximately 500,000 are fiber-to-the-premises capable. As of March 31, 2019, Frontier served approximately 150,000 fiber broadband, 150,000 copper broadband and 35,000 video connections in these states.