Verizon kills DEI to win FCC approval of $20B Frontier merger

Fierce Network covers a concession Verizon made to clear its merger with Frontier Communications at the FCC: dumping DEI and erasing any mention from its public-facing materials. In a new nadir for hypocritical government overreach, FCC Chair Brendan Carr said Verizon’s killing DEI “will ensure that the combined business will enact policies and practices consistent with the law and the public interest.” Verizon’s “original DEI page from April 3, 2025, no longer exists. The company instead now has a page that states it’s ‘proud of our longstanding commitment to fostering a welcoming and inclusive workplace,’ sans any mention of the word ‘diversity’ or statistics of diverse workers.”

The article mentions T-Mobile made similar concessions to secure FCC’s approval of Lumos.

Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier aims to expand the telco’s fiber footprint; Frontier—through purchases of Baby Bell assets from Verizon and AT&T—has significant buildouts in Connecticut, West Virginia, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, and Texas. Verizon anticipates realizing at least $500 million in annual run-rate cost synergies by the third year after the deal closes, stemming from increased scale, distribution efficiencies, and network integration.

Verizon failed to turn its acquisitions of Terremark ($1.4 billion in 2011) and cloud software startup Cloudswitch shortly thereafter into a successful cloud business. In wireless, Big Red lost ground as T-mobile raced to launch a nationwide 5G stand-alone network centered on its midband spectrum, while Verizon emphasized urban small-cell deployments of upper-band 5G air interfaces, delivering super fast speed to a very limited number of users.