Frontier users have been receiving notices that the company is bumping the cost of their monthly model rental fee for all DSL customers. According to a notice being sent to customers, the company has officially bumped the monthly modem rental fee from $3.99 to $6.99 per month. The new price point means users will now shell out $168 for a modem they won't own over the length of a two-year contract. Somebody has to pay for all the legal fees and ad campaigns focused on getting their Verizon deal approved, and it's apparently you. As our users note, some users can get Frontier to waive the rental fee if they get a modem elsewhere, but your mileage on this front may vary.

Consumer advocates, unions and state regulators are worried that Verizon's plan to sell a massive chunk of their DSL and landline networks to Frontier Communications won't go very well. The $8.5 billion deal, if approved, would infuse Frontier with 4.8 million new residential and small-business phone lines across 14 states, 1 million broadband connections, and 11,000 former Verizon employees. Frontier, who currently has just 2.3 million customers, would become a giant player literally overnight, and fears that they'll struggle with the load seem legitimate.

The fear is the deal will end just as Verizon's Fairpoint and Hawaii Telcom deals did: bankrupt carriers, outdated networks, and shoddy service.

Regulators in both Washington and Oregon see Verizon's sale of their networks in the states to Frontier as a deal that carries "lots of risk, but very little upside," according to The Oregonian. Staffers in both states are recommending that utility commissioners reject the massive deal, which would triple Frontier’s size and impose $3 billion in debt. Frontier tells the paper that they're being "too pessimistic" about the deal, saying they hope to create "a very stable, moderately (indebted) company." Frontier executives have been on a country-wide tour trying to convince state regulators that they won't be another Fairpoint Communications.

Verizon gave us a nudge today to note that the first hurdle in their mega-deal with Frontier has been jumped -- namely Frontier received shareholder approval. The $8.5 billion deal would infuse Frontier (which currently has 2.3 million customers) with 4.8 million new residential and small-business phone lines across 14 states, 1 million broadband connections, and 11,000 former Verizon employees. That huge sudden growth in subscribers and debt is what killed the last two major Verizon efforts to offload their rural subscribers in Hawaii and New England, meaning regulators will be under serious pressure not to rubber stamp the deal.

Back in May, Verizon announced that they'd be selling a laundry list of rural DSL markets in a deal worth around $8.5 billion. The deal, if approved, would infuse Frontier (which currently has 2.3 million customers) with 4.8 million new residential and small-business phone lines across 14 states, 1 million broadband connections, and 11,000 former Verizon employees. Tripling the size of the company has a lot of people worried, given the recent fates of other offloaded rural Verizon markets (see Hawaii Telcom and Fairpoint).

Frontier continues to insist they're ready to shoulder the load, and as such, is busy making promises of a very bright future to anyone who'll listen.