Scaling Smart: How Frontier is Building Gigabit America

Through their phones, technicians access real-time, AI-driven guidance that helps troubleshoot network issues and ensure the highest possible quality of service is delivered. AI acts as a dynamic support layer.

Frontier is also layering AI onto performance validation after installs.

“We’re comparing statistics from light levels to performance of the fiber and the ONT in the home to all of our benchmark statistics,” he said. “We’re doing anomaly detection to determine if something maybe is working okay right now, but in the future, is going to result in a truck roll or a phone call from the customer or a bad experience.”

The goal: predict problems before they become problems.

“We’ve just started to scratch the surface,” Mispagel added. “I think AI is going to get much more involved in the planning and design of our network and a lot more involved in correcting issues autonomously.”

Workforce strategy: stability through scale

Even with automation, hiring great people remains an important part of the build. Mispagel acknowledges the strain of labor shortages, but Frontier’s size and predictability have given it an advantage.

“We’ve addressed labor shortages by partnering with our vendors across our footprint and giving them visibility to where we’re going to build and how much and for how long we’re going to build,” he said, “which is a luxury that Frontier has had with our stated 10 million passings program.”

That long-term visibility, he said, gives vendors the confidence to invest in equipment, training and workforce development. “If they know that they’ve got a runway of work, those investments will pay off. And then they’ve got that much more of a labor force to go work for other providers.”

Mispagel says evaluating those vendor partnerships is more of an art than a science. Frontier often uses a blend of national and small local companies and looks closely at early-stage performance.

“We have a ramp-up program where they can demonstrate their ability to establish a logistics hub, whether it be a yard or a warehouse, and start to build a certain amount of locations in a given time frame,” he said. “We typically try to identify any inability for them to be able to keep up with us in the first three to six months.”

Community-driven expansion

That infrastructure growth is grounded in Frontier’s purpose of Building Gigabit America, which aims to connect more people to its fiber technology and the opportunities it offers.

One of the ways that Frontier brings its purpose to life is through its “Broadband for Good” program. As Frontier grows its fiber network, it donates its high-speed fiber internet to community-loved organizations, often driven by local nominations and staff suggestions.

“We have more nominations than we could possibly highlight, which is a great problem to have,” Mispagel said. “We believe very strongly in it because Building Gigabit America is our company’s purpose. And so Broadband for Good really underpins that community engagement that drives why we’re building fiber.”

Mispagel cites statistics on fiber’s socioeconomic impact—home values, education, industry—and emphasizes that in many places, it’s not just about service availability but what that service enables in the long term.

Early buy-in for efficient builds

When it comes to timelines and budgets, delays with permitting remain one of the biggest obstacles. Frontier works to preempt those challenges by starting local coordination as early as possible.

“We try to get six, nine, even 12 months ahead so we can start the dialogue and start to identify what the capacity of that agency’s ability to work with us on permitting is,” Mispagel said. “If it looks like it’s going to take nine or 12 months, then we’ll stay engaged and plan labor accordingly. Or if things are going to move more quickly, then we’ll pull resources from somewhere else to make hay while the sun is shining.”

But it’s not just about moving fast: it’s about working cooperatively.

“In many cases, cities don’t have the permitting staff, or they don’t have the inspection staff to support what we might be able to bring to bear,” he said. “We might be able to put a crew on just about every intersection in a town, but that’s going to overwhelm their abilities, and the residents aren’t going to support that.”

According to Mispagel, that mutual understanding leads to real collaboration. “It’s not all about what we want; it’s what the city wants as well.”

To stay efficient amid weather, permitting or logistical slowdowns, Frontier keeps an extensive library of shovel-ready projects.

“If we hit a snag in an area, we don’t want to miss a beat,” Mispagel said. “And so as soon as we detect any of that change in pace, we’ve got to have projects on the shelf ready to go.”

Award-winning teamwork

In June, Mispagel received the Connect the Unconnected Award, presented by Corning in collaboration with Lightwave, recognizing his leadership in scaling broadband deployment. But he was quick to deflect the spotlight.

“My first reaction was I am humbled to be honored, but really it’s the team that I have and the team that I work with out in the regions that do everything we just talked about,” he said. “We help to try to put them in the most beneficial situation to be successful.”

That team effort extends beyond Frontier’s workforce. Mispagel says strategic vendor relationships, especially during moments of industry-wide strain, have been pivotal in keeping pace.

“Corning is a trusted supplier of ours,” Mispagel said. “They are an industry staple and really an example of what having a great product, a great business strategy, and a great customer-focused operation really looks like.”

During the post-COVID supply chain struggles, as others scaled back, Frontier accelerated its fiber buildout.

“Corning collaborated with us to find out what material we were going to need, and what timeline, and where we would need it,” he said. “It really helped us not miss a beat during those supply chain shortages. In fact, we exceeded our targets during that process.”

Looking ahead, Mispagel emphasized that public and private coordination will remain critical to reaching underserved communities.

“Collaboration across the public and the private sector has got to continue to improve,” he said. “All of these things have to come together and work in harmony for us to be able to close those gaps.”

And while Frontier stands ready to support BEAD-funded deployments, much of its growth continues independent of the program.

“The vast majority of our path to 10 million does not come from BEAD,” Mispagel said. “It comes from our own investment.”