Frontier’s fiber drives business and wholesale opportunities
Key Highlights
- Frontier's fiber broadband customer base grew by 16.7% YoY, with net additions of 8,000 customers in Q3 2025.
- Business and Wholesale revenue increased by 3.7% YoY, reaching $707 million, driven by fiber growth and higher network access prices.
- Fiber network expansion improved speeds and customer retention, with fiber broadband churn reduced to 1.32%.
- Data and internet services revenue rose 12% to $1.12 billion, supported by fiber and network access growth.
- Declines in copper broadband and voice services highlight industry shifts towards IP and wireless solutions.
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And for more on Frontier, check out these articles:
- Frontier expects fiber expansion to drive its revenue mix
- Frontier crosses 8M locations with fiber in Q1 2025
- Frontier scales fiber customer base with 97K new customers in Q4
- Frontier increases fiber broadband reach and customer base while shareholders approve Verizon acquisition
- Verizon’s CEO sees potential synergies from its pending Frontier acquisition
- Frontier sees broadband deployment savings potential in self-installs
Frontier’s ongoing fiber build-out drive is not just about serving consumers. The telco’s efforts are also having a positive effect on its business and wholesale service lines, a trend that continued into the third quarter.
Driven by growth in fiber-based products and unit price increases in network access services, Business and Wholesale revenue of $707 million rose 3.7% year-over-year.
“Our business and wholesale revenues were up 4% and 3% for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025, respectively, compared to the prior year periods,” Frontier said in its third-quarter 10Q filing. “This increase was driven by increases in data and internet services, partially offset by decreases in voice services revenue, predominantly in business.”
Additionally, the company said the “increase in data and internet services was due to unit price increases in network access services and the continued growth of our fiber broadband customer base with a shift towards higher broadband speeds.”
The fiber effect
At the core of Frontier’s business/wholesale gains is its fiber network.
Frontier reported that fiber broadband customer net additions of 8,000 resulted in 16.7% year-over-year Business and Wholesale fiber broadband customer growth.
The service provider also narrowed fiber broadband customer churn to 1.32% compared to 1.50% in the third quarter of 2024.
“Our fiber expansion strategy has positively impacted data and Internet services,” Frontier said. “Fiber network expansion provides faster, symmetrical broadband speeds and provides both customer and revenue growth opportunities for fiber broadband and network access products like Ethernet. We believe this initiative will create opportunities for us to provide more fiber-based services to our customers.”
Data and internet services revenue increased $116 million, or 12%, to $1,120 million and $320 million, or 11%, to $3,254 million, for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025, respectively, as compared to the prior year periods.
Frontier said the “increase was driven by growth in fiber broadband and network access revenues, partly offset by declines in copper broadband revenue.”
Looking forward, Frontier’s Business and Wholesale segment will benefit from its pending merger with Verizon. From a fiber perspective, Frontier’s existing business customers will benefit from a larger set of fiber facilities, particularly in business buildings, as well as new business wireless/wireline bundles.
Today, Verizon and Frontier are in the top 10 of Vertical Systems Group’s 2024 U.S. Fiber Lit Buildings LEADERBOARD. The 2024 LEADERBOARD includes the ten companies that achieved the new threshold of 25,000 or more fiber-lit buildings. Eight of these companies are engaged in fiber-related acquisitions.
VSG said that “increased capex, M&A, and private capital transactions for fiber infrastructure are fortifying the top providers” like Verizon and Frontier.
Voice, copper services slip
Despite the gains Frontier made with fiber for businesses and carrier customers, the provider saw some softness.
Its copper revenues declined by 4% to $577 million.
It also saw some revenue shifts in its fiber Business and Wholesale revenue mix; revenue declined slightly year-over-year to $328 million. Likewise, Business and Wholesale fiber broadband ARPU of $96.63 decreased 2.1% year-over-year.
Another issue was voice services, a segment where declines continue as consumers and businesses either switch to IP-based services or make their main voice line wireless.
Frontier’s voice services revenue declined $29 million, or 10%, to $272 million and $90 million, or 10%, to $844 million, for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025, respectively, as compared to the prior year periods.
Frontier said the decline “was primarily due to net losses in business and consumer customers and fewer customers bundling voice services with broadband as compared to the prior year periods, all partially offset by higher voice services ARPU.”
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About the Author
Sean BuckleySean Buckley
Sean is the Editor-in-Chief of Lightwave. He establishes and executes Lightwave's editorial strategy across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products. Before coming to Lightwave in July 2023, he served as editor of Broadband Communities. Earlier, he served as senior editor of FierceTelecom and the editor of the former Telecommunications Magazine. He got his start in the optical industry in 1998 when he became the editor of enterprise and optical networks at Information Gatekeepers. He has a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and lives in Dracut, Mass, with his wife, two sons, and his cat, Dove.
