Frontier Communications is ready to defend its turf with an aggressive build-out strategy for its own ultrafast Internet network as Google Fiber prepares to tackle the city of Durham and Durham County markets as well as the Triangle.

AT&T is planning as well to take on Frontier Communications in Durham County with a fiber network and says it welcomes more competition.

But the top executive with Frontier in North Carolina says his company’s network is already digging in, winning customers, and is seeing “tremendous response” from customers.

“We are making good progress on the expansion of our existing fiber network allowing us to expand FiberOffice and FiberHouse Gigabit services,” Dennis Bloss, vice president and general manager for Frontier in North Carolina, told WRAL TechWire.

“Significant progress is being made in downtown Durham particularly. We are also actively in discussions with several new developments all over Durham County and have committed to several projects that are taking shape in 2015.”

Asked if sales are meeting expectations, he replied succinctly: “Yes.”

Key projects already in place

Frontier began selling service in October, and its already landed several high-profile projects including:

  • The Frontier center in Research Triangle Park, which is run by the Research Triangle Park Foundation and is a cornerstone of its new RTP master plan
  • The American Tobacco Historic District and Durham Bulls in downtown Durham.

“The Frontier at RTP is very exciting,” Bloss explained.

“We are thrilled to be able to provide the connectivity to support the vision of the entrepreneurs moving into that space. We are equally excited to have committed to the entire 100 Acre redevelopment of Park Center and will be working closely with the RTP Foundation as they begin executing on the redevelopment plan. I believe this project will revitalize RTP in a significant way.”

Downtown, Bloss said the American Tobacco Campus “has been a huge success for us. We are thrilled with the response from the existing tenants and are working closely with the team there to attract and service new tenants as they move in.” [Note: The ATHD is owned by Capitol Broadcasting, the parent firm of WRAL TechWire.]

Consumers signing up

Individual consumers are responding, too, Bloss added. 

“We are seeing tremendous response from subscribers in the areas we initially launched in October,” he said.

“We are very pleased with the response rate and have several areas that are under construction today that customers have signed letters of intent and are waiting patiently for construction to be completed.”

Bloss said Frontier is seeking a mix of residential and small/medium businesses.

“Large Institutions,” he added, “are utilizing our Ethernet Dedicated Internet Access solutions that allow access up to 10Gig [gigabit] in Durham.”

Frontier offers a variety of services and prices at different speeds.

“Starting at 15 Meg and going to 1 Gig. Rather than being forced into paying for more bandwidth than they need, we allow customers to select the speed that meets their needs at a price that fits their budget,” Bloss said. 

Asked about specific buildout plans, Bloss declined to discuss those.

“We have a solid plan but we are also flexible depending on demand,” Bloss said.

“We have already adjusted our build plans based on demand. We continue to receive inquiries to our e-mail box FiberInquiriesDurham@ftr.com. Whenever possible we are grouping requests together and adjusting our build plans to get to the areas of greatest demand as soon as possible.”