WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission and six states filed a civil lawsuit Wednesday alleging internet-service provider Frontier Communications FYBR 1.07% misled consumers by providing slower internet speeds than promised.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in California, seeks changes to Frontier’s alleged practices and money on behalf of customers who paid for speeds the company allegedly didn’t deliver.
Since at least 2015, “Frontier has in numerous instances advertised, marketed, offered, or sold DSL Internet service at tiers corresponding to speeds that Frontier did not, and often could not, provide to consumers,” FTC and state officials alleged.
Frontier denied the claims, saying the suit “includes baseless allegations, overstates any possible monetary harm to Frontier’s customers and disregards important facts.”
A company spokesman said Frontier offered internet service in some of the country’s most rural areas “that often have challenging terrain, are more sparsely populated and are the most difficult to serve.”
Frontier recently emerged from bankruptcy. It currently provides residential DSL Internet service to approximately 1.3 million consumers across 25 states, according to the lawsuit.
Network limits imposed by Frontier keep numerous customers from receiving the speeds they pay for, the lawsuit alleged. Physical factors, such as long distances between Frontier’s networking equipment and consumers’ homes, and technical factors also contributed to slower speeds, the FTC and states alleged.
The lawsuit said a management consulting firm concluded in 2019 that 30% of the Frontier subscribers it analyzed were potentially oversold on tiers of internet speed that exceeded the speeds they were provided.
The Supreme Court recently curbed the FTC’s powers to recover ill-gotten gains on behalf of consumers, but the states’ involvement in the case provides an alternative route for seeking restitution or refunds if the plaintiffs prove their allegations.
The states of Arizona, California, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin joined the FTC suit against Frontier.
The Wall Street Journal in 2019 reported that broadband providers in some instances had pushed to have unflattering data omitted from speed tests to boost their scores. The Journal also found that households tended to pay for higher speeds than they needed.
Write to Brent Kendall at [email protected]
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Appeared in the May 20, 2021, print edition as ‘Internet Provider Sued Over Its Claims Of Speed.’
