This goes under the “what are they thinking?” department. Verizon is mostly a wireless company, with a FTTH as a sideline and a copper infrastructure they’d rather get rid of. But they are buying Frontier for the FIOS network they divested themselves from about 10 years ago. FIOS is the only thing keeping the “wireline” side of Verizon afloat, as nobody is keeping the copper side going. And what little bit of copper they have they’re S-L-O-W-L-Y moving away from TDM to packet switching. But that’s moving at a snail’s pace. So I’m just very surprised they actually care about FTTH and literally buying it back from Frontier. But I assume the aging copper plant is going along with it?
And keep in mind, even Frontier has a reduced footprint than before. They sold the aging copper plant and the little bit of fiber plant to Ziply Fiber in four states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana) so that’s even less FIOS FTTH than before. Ziply, on the other hand, has ripped out pretty much every TDM switch they had and replaced it with packet (probably Metaswitch) and going full bore with their FTTH installations.
More info here: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/verizon-is-reportedly-near-a-deal-to-buy-broadband-provider-frontier-communications-210317747.html