NEW YORK, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Verizon Communications Inc. on Thursday announced plans to sell $15 billion worth of landline assets and wireless towers across multiple states, with plans to focus its market for Internet and phone services in the mid-Atlantic area of the East Coast.
Frontier Communications Corp. is buying the company's landline operations in California, Texas and Florida -- representing some 3.7 million phone and 2.2 million high-speed Internet connections -- for $9.9 billion and $600 million in assumed debt.
The deal, slated to close in the first half of 2016, would double the size of Frontier, which already provides such services in 28 states, including landline operations bought from Verizon in 2009 and 2010. Verizon will maintain 16.1 million customers of landline phone service and 7 million customers of wired Internet service in nine states, mostly in the mid-Atlantic area of the East Coast.
American Tower Corp. is buying 165 wireless towers from Verizon and leasing another 11,300 for $5 billion.
As a result of the deal at least 11,000 Verizon employees will be transferred to the payrolls of Frontier, which will also gain millions of new customers.
"Together we will ensure a smooth transition for our customers and employees," Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said in a statement.
