Frontier warns of 'technical issues'

Network operator Frontier Communications appears to be having serious technical problems, and it's not clear what the cause is or when the company will be able to rectify the situation.

"We're experiencing technical issues with our internal support platforms," said a message on the company's website homepage. "Our residential and business networks are not affected by this issue. In the meantime, please call for assistance."

A Frontier representative did not reply to emails and phone calls from Light Reading.

The company is also alerting customers about the issue on social media.

"We're experiencing technical issues and working quickly to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope to be back up and running soon," the company posted on several social media sites, in response to customers' concerns.

"User reports indicate problems at Frontier," according to the DownDetector website, which tracks outages at network operators and Internet sites.

"Frontier's internal support platforms have been down since Tuesday, April 16," wrote the financial analysts at MoffettNathanson in a note to investors Thursday. "The company has not shared a root cause as of the time this report was submitted for publication (Internal issues? Cyberattack or ransomware? Something else?). This is something to monitor in the coming days, as the odds of it noticeably affecting subscriber adds and/or churn in Q2 increase as the length of time without a resolution lengthens."

Frontier, of course, is not the only network operator to suffer technical problems. For example, AT&T is now notifying 73 million current and former customers who had their personal information stolen, according to Cnet. And EchoStar's Dish Network last year reported a "cybersecurity incident" that impacted its ability to install services, take payments and provide customer care for several weeks.

Indeed, on Thursday the FCC said it was looking into reports of 911 outages.