Frontier Seeks Waiver from CAF Deployment Obligations in Navajo Nation

Frontier Communications requests that the Federal Communications Commission waive Frontier’s obligations under the Connect America Fund (“CAF”) Phase II model-based support program to reach its 80% year-end 2019 milestone in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah because it has not been permitted to build on the Navajo Nation for the past year. Frontier requires the use of the Navajo Nation public rights of way. Frontier’s purchase agreements clearly grant access to the necessary rights of way in the Navajo Nation, and Frontier and its predecessor entities have paid property taxes on and provided voice telephony services using those same rights of way throughout the Navajo Nation since 1970. However, in November 2018, the US Depart of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs (“BIA”) unexpectedly ordered Frontier to stop work on its fiber construction, asserting that Frontier lacks adequate rights of way to deploy the necessary fiber facilities primarily alongside longstanding existing copper facilities and proposing that Frontier and the Navajo Nation negotiate new rights-of-way agreements from scratch.