Frontier Communications was a fiber focal point for telecommunication operators this year and sees growing opportunities to take advantage of its infrastructure to help power edge services.

Frontier is primarily known as a provider of fiber-based infrastructure and services helping to power telecommunication and data center infrastructure.

This was highlighted by the AT&T deal earlier this year that calls for AT&T to deploy wireless infrastructure in Frontier’s fiber-focused facilities, which will allow AT&T to add fiber connectivity to its wireless infrastructure in locations where it does not currently own or control its own fiber.

The deal was a first for Frontier, with AT&T becoming the first tenant to rent space within its local offices. It's also built on a previous multi-year deal between the two parties that initiated AT&T’s capability to tap into Frontier’s fiber assets to bolster its 5G and edge deployments.

Vishal Dixit, chief strategy officer and EVP of wholesale at Frontier, explained in an interview with SDxCentral that this deal “set the scene for AT&T being able to use our central offices to deploy their 5G edge compute servers.”

Dixit added that Frontier has since started to see new avenues that take advantage of its infrastructure. He explained this was being conducted under a space the company is calling “Frontier Edge Services.”

“This is effectively bringing new industries and new verticals, which are not necessarily historically part of the telecommunications sector, into our sector,” Dixit said of the effort.

Frontier’s central office infrastructure is key to this effort, which Dixit said “can be quite boring,” and is “just a building with some air cooling power and some server racks inside it.” However, those “boring” components are set on real estate and have access to compute, connectivity and power that is becoming increasingly important to some big players in the telecommunications and data center space.

Frontier’s fiber footprint reaches across 25 states. Most of those assets were acquired through deals with Verizon and to a lesser extent with AT&T.

“These areas together with the fact that central offices are effectively mini data centers and are pretty well set up for localized edge compute facilities already has kind of opened up this new segment,” Dixit said.

5G rooftops and distributed data centers

Frontier’s first success in taking advantage of these assets was an agreement this summer with 5G LLC, which oversees the deployment of wireless telecommunication antenna equipment on rooftop locations. This takes advantage of Frontier’s edge colocation infrastructure to connect those tower assets.

“They have nationwide search rings and property availability that they make available to a whole host of private 5G network providers, the wireless companies and WISPs [wireless internet service providers] and we're basically now integrated as part of and beginning to see some pretty good interest for our central office rooftops,” Dixit said.

Frontier is also using this effort to target support for increasingly taxed data center edge sites. This includes potential support for physical distributed data centers like those being provided by companies like Vapor.io, which are designed to support hyperscalers and service providers.

“They want to drop them in maybe closer to their compute loads or closer to power sources, but they don't really want to retrofit a pre-existing central office, so for them we carve out a space in our carpark, create a zone and connect the power, connect the fiber, and then they're off to the races,” Dixit said.

These locations are tied to filling in the gap of current hyperscaler footprints “and locations that help complement and augment what hyperscalers may already be doing,” Dixit said.

“This is Frontier seeking to innovate not only technically but also in terms of the way we think about who our customers are, who are partners are,” Dixit said of the broader initiative. “We are looking for partners to bring out latent value in assets that we have, but we know are more valuable to those who are adjacent to us.”

Is T-Mobile a future owner?

This value creation is becoming increasingly important for Frontier.

The company is in the midst of a revolt from activist investment firm Jana Partners, which earlier this month sent a letter to Frontier’s board asking that it “engage in a comprehensive review of strategic alternatives to maximize value for shareholders.”

Frontier this summer did close on a $2.1 billion financing deal that it says will allow it to fully fund its ongoing fiber deployment plans and “provides the company with flexibility for future refinancing.”

This drama has played alongside rumors that T-Mobile US has been in talks with Jana about a potential investment or acquisition of Frontier. The rumored acquisition would help T-Mobile power a fiber-based broadband service. That would run alongside the carrier’s increasingly popular 5G-based fixed-wireless access (FWA) service.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert told investors during the carrier’s third-quarter earnings call that it remains on the sidelines in terms of participating directly in the fiber space.

“We like this business model and to the extent we make investments or partnerships in the area our view is it should be capital light, generally off-balance sheet,” Sievert said. “Speculation I know is out there. I can clarify we’re not the partner to Jana [Partners] in the transaction that was rumored a couple of weeks ago. … We remain interested in partnerships like the kinds we have rolled out pilots around and other constructs that are generally capital light, generally off-balance sheet. That’s for a reason. We’re performing really well and demonstrating through our tests as well as our broad-scale performance in 5G home broadband that our brand and our team belong in this space and we can create value.”

Unrelated to the ongoing drama, Dixit for his part stated Frontier remains focused on tapping into its portfolio to create new value-creation opportunities.

"We're pretty confident that some of them will really scale in a meaningful way. Maybe not all of them will, but we think that this portfolio approach will help us really kind of tap and identify the areas that do drive a meaningful impact over the longer term," Dixit said.