Frontier Communications Files for Bankruptcy

[harshness]

How long ago ?
If your using PBX still, your about 3 centuries behind.

Last year. Someone else bought the phone system in 2016 and it was based on a 12 year-old design implemented in modern hardware.

I suggested VOIP but it cost about $100 more per station and didn't save much recurring money.

Maybe its me (but its probably Cisco) but VOIP feature phones are stupid expensive and the idea of incorporating desktop computers into the phone system has always given me the willies.

 

[ncted]

About 8 years ago, I had HELL getting landline to our new building. They insisted all locations in Fairfax county had landlines already. There was a temporary drop to our location for construction, apparently done on the sly. I’ve left a lot out about this process


It was finally solved by an executive who had access to senior people at our local teleco. We got OC12, which is what I requested for future expansion. Guy came out, said we already had service, which we didn’t. I said lay the lines now, or we will make a phone call to establish service, which you haven’t even checked.

We never saw him again. But got our OC12, AT NO CHARGE, due to their stupidity. We actually went for a while without any phone service, and were preparing a lawsuit.

I had a similar issue with AT&T (BellSouth). All I needed was a single POTS line for a fire alarm in a building in downtown Raleigh, NC literally right across the street from the AT&T CO. They claimed the service was already in the building, but their techs couldn't find the DEMARC, so nothing ever happened. Everything else was run off a VOIP system that came over a fiber from an adjacent building with another business unit in it. Eventually, I gave up and had TWC Business install fiber (for free) just to get that POTS line. Since we were already a cable customer, it was super-easy.

 

[ncted]

Not really..some are at doing really well..frontier was basically a bunch of castoffs too expensive to convert to fiber

Depends. There is certainly a lot of rural markets they got that fit that description, but they also got a number of growing areas they could have converted to fiber and made big money, including some FiOS markets like North Myrtle Beach. They had all the infrastructure for FiOS here in Durham when VZ sold us to them. They just had to actually roll it out and sign up customers. Instead, there are 2 other fiber companies entrenched now because they never bothered to do more than VDSL2 except in a few neighborhoods. Now they are talking big about FTTH as part of exiting bankruptcy, but the brand is crap, and they will continue to under-deliver on promises.

 

[Juan]

Depends. There is certainly a lot of rural markets they got that fit that description, but they also got a number of growing areas they could have converted to fiber and made big money, including some FiOS markets like North Myrtle Beach. They had all the infrastructure for FiOS here in Durham when VZ sold us to them. They just had to actually roll it out and sign up customers. Instead, there are 2 other fiber companies entrenched now because they never bothered to do more than VDSL2 except in a few neighborhoods. Now they are talking big about FTTH as part of exiting bankruptcy, but the brand is crap, and they will continue to under-deliver on promises.

Frontier didnt buy the database thst contained their fios circuit designs( tirks) from verizon...thats the real issue

 

[ncted]

Frontier didnt buy the database thst contained their fios circuit designs( tirks) from verizon...thats the real issue

SHeesh

 

[EarDemon]

How long ago ?
If your using PBX still, your about 3 centuries behind.

What’s wrong with a PBX? With a PBX I am in control, I’M the one that administers it, MY organizations voice mail gets stored on an on-prem server that I maintain. Not some stupid 'cloud' BS.

Plus VoIP seems like nothing but a rip off. We pay only pay $481/month for a 23 channel PRI and everything else. That the same cost as a whole 12 lines with RingCentral.

My previous boss and I looked at about a dozen different VoIP providers, everything from RingCentral to rinky dink local providers all of them would result in a $2500 - $3000/month voice bill. Sure no or minimal upfront costs, and a ton of features we'd never use, and we'd be so hip and modern because we would be in the 'cloud'. But at 40-50K for a PBX and new end user handsets and with bill of $480/month, after roughly 2.5 years of VoIP we'd be in the hole. I find it very difficult to believe that any enterprise grade solution would come out cheaper than what we pay Charter. My company is a subsidiary of a larger organization with operations in 35 different counties, affordable international calling is a big deal to us. All of the call center type reporting metrics and unified communications that were pushed on us don't mean jack.

A lot of the outfits we talked to had all in pricing which makes no sense for us. There's no point in paying anything more than a dollor or two per month for the phones we have in our lobbies, conference rooms, training rooms and manufacturing plant that are seldom used.

We have 10 long range ruggedized ANALOG cordless phones that have a one mile range that tie into the PBX and have internal twinning enabled. These are issued to shop supervisors and foremen who are not desk jockeys and need to be available in areas of the building where cell phone reception doesn’t exist. None of the companies we talked to, with their fancy hi tech solutions and marketing buzzword speak could give us what I would consider a decent equivalent.

If I wanted to get our voice bill cheaper I could, we probably could get away with a 13 channel PRI.

 

[ncted]

What’s wrong with a PBX? With a PBX I am in control, I’M the one that administers it, MY organizations voice mail gets stored on an on-prem server that I maintain. Not some stupid 'cloud' BS.

Plus VoIP seems like nothing but a rip off. We pay only pay $481/month for a 23 channel PRI and everything else. That the same cost as a whole 12 lines with RingCentral.

My previous boss and I looked at about a dozen different VoIP providers, everything from RingCentral to rinky dink local providers all of them would result in a $2500 - $3000/month voice bill. Sure no or minimal upfront costs, and a ton of features we'd never use, and we'd be so hip and modern because we would be in the 'cloud'. But at 40-50K for a PBX and new end user handsets and with bill of $480/month, after roughly 2.5 years of VoIP we'd be in the hole. I find it very difficult to believe that any enterprise grade solution would come out cheaper than what we pay Charter. My company is a subsidiary of a larger organization with operations in 35 different counties, affordable international calling is a big deal to us. All of the call center type reporting metrics and unified communications that were pushed on us don't mean jack.

A lot of the outfits we talked to had all in pricing which makes no sense for us. There's no point in paying anything more than a dollor or two per month for the phones we have in our lobbies, conference rooms, training rooms and manufacturing plant that are seldom used.

We have 10 long range ruggedized ANALOG cordless phones that have a one mile range that tie into the PBX and have internal twinning enabled. These are issued to shop supervisors and foremen who are not desk jockeys and need to be available in areas of the building where cell phone reception doesn’t exist. None of the companies we talked to, with their fancy hi tech solutions and marketing buzzword speak could give us what I would consider a decent equivalent.

If I wanted to get our voice bill cheaper I could, we probably could get away with a 13 channel PRI.

View attachment 150201

So, what does your long-distance bill look like? Is the 10,000 minutes long distance or is that a flat rate for all calls or something else?

We saved tons on long distance at a former job when we moved our ancient variety of PBXs to an Avaya VOIP system which used our MPLS WAN to carry the office-to-office calls between the 30+ sites across the US, which represented the majority of our LD calling. It wasn't enough to pay for the new system per se, but we had many sites with decades old phone systems and voicemail that we couldn't get support on any more. It also allowed us to standardize across the enterprise, so the phone support team shrank from having to have expertise at every site to just a small group of people. We also were able to implement 7-digit dialing and unified messaging for everyone.

 

[EarDemon]

The line item for 10,000 minutes for $100 covers international long distance, the entire voice portion of our bill is $481, never a penny more. We have three other offices in the US with two employees each, for the sake of easiness they are on Ring Central, the cost of outbound international calling at got to be out of hand at those locations so I created a DIDs on our PBX at the main office that forward to our headquarters in Europe, and frequently called subsidiaries in the UK, Brazil, Australia and Slovakia.

Our PBX system is from Avaya, it's an old system that was put in long before I started working for the company, all indications are from 2006 - 2008. For our needs it works fine, the problem is replacement components are now extremely hard to come by. That's why a couple years ago we weighed our options, and there is no way we could justify going with VoIP and having our monthly costs increase x5. The most appealing VoIP provider was actually Charter. Spectrum Enterprise Hosted Voice came to about $2600/month and that included moving the 6 Ring Central lines over.

 

[Juan]

The line item for 10,000 minutes for $100 covers international long distance, the entire voice portion of our bill is $481, never a penny more. We have three other offices in the US with two employees each, for the sake of easiness they are on Ring Central, the cost of outbound international calling at got to be out of hand at those locations so I created a DIDs on our PBX at the main office that forward to our headquarters in Europe, and frequently called subsidiaries in the UK, Brazil, Australia and Slovakia.

Our PBX system is from Avaya, it's an old system that was put in long before I started working for the company, all indications are from 2006 - 2008. For our needs it works fine, the problem is replacement components are now extremely hard to come by. That's why a couple years ago we weighed our options, and there is no way we could justify going with VoIP and having our monthly costs increase x5. The most appealing VoIP provider was actually Charter. Spectrum Enterprise Hosted Voice came to about $2600/month and that included moving the 6 Ring Central lines over.

2006-2008 old.. I just spit out my coffee( it is ancient but so am I lol)

 

[EarDemon]

It does everything we need it to do, so why upgrade?

 

[Juan]

It does everything we need it to do, so why upgrade?

Obsolete

 

[navychop]

Reference the Twilight Zone episode about “obsolete.”

 

[harshness]

Obsolete

If it still works and the alternatives aren't any cheaper or more functional, what's the point of dumping more money into a phone system?

Many of my company's calls were going through their wireless phones and those cost a great deal more both in terms of hardware and phone service. Customer service was somewhat buoyed by having 24/7 access but employee productivity was down significantly and satisfaction in general deteriorated as more customers were ending up in voice mail on personal phones where the greetings were never updated (or recorded in the first place).

I had power issues and it is much easier to keep a PBX or key system up than a typical VOIP system.

 

[Juan]

If it still works and the alternatives aren't any cheaper or more functional, what's the point of dumping more money into a phone system?

Many of my company's calls were going through their wireless phones and those cost a great deal more both in terms of hardware and phone service. Customer service was somewhat buoyed by having 24/7 access but employee productivity was down significantly and satisfaction in general deteriorated as more customers were ending up in voice mail on personal phones where the greetings were never updated (or recorded in the first place).

I had power issues and it is much easier to keep a PBX or key system up than a typical VOIP system.

Just dont try to get any support when it breaks

 

[ncted]

Just dont try to get any support when it breaks

Bah. There's plenty of companies around to support PBXs from the naughties. It isn't like some of the early 90s systems I replaced, where there literally were no parts available anywhere in the western hemisphere. We bought a line card for one from Sri Lanka off eBay just to keep things running until we could get the VOIP system installed.

 

[Juan]

Bah. There's plenty of companies around to support PBXs from the naughties. It isn't like some of the early 90s systems I replaced, where there literally were no parts available anywhere in the western hemisphere. We bought a line card for one from Sri Lanka off eBay just to keep things running until we could get the VOIP system installed.

Exactly

 

[ncted]

Exactly

I think these last-gen traditional PBXs will be supported for a while yet. Especially since so many of them have VOIP upgrades and add-ons to convert from PRIs to SIP.

 

[harshness]

Just dont try to get any support when it breaks

There's tons of knowledge and spares available for older systems and at prices less than 25% of new.

I can't remember the last time I had a component in a conventional phone system fail through other than catastrophic damage.

 

[Juan]

There's tons of knowledge and spares available for older systems and at prices less than 25% of new.

I can't remember the last time I had a component in a conventional phone system fail through other than catastrophic damage.

The older they get...the more they fail

 

[ncted]

The older they get...the more they fail

I resemble that remark.