OK, perhaps a long-con fraud is a better description.
We'll make another company take on a ton of debt to buy our overpriced wireline assets because someone has the brilliant idea that making data go fast through the air is somehow easier than making data go fast through cables, and we'd rather dump billions in capital on radio waves that other people are using already. Yes, we still have to run cables to the multitude of new antennas required to make the new radio stuff work, but never mind that.
The whole wireless thing doesn't turn out to sell as well as we thought, so let's buy that company we sold our wireline assets to for a song since the went through bankruptcy to discharge a lot of their debt and have actually been starting to deliver a decent, modern product that people seem to want.
IDK: I've always found Verizon to be a really shady company. When I used to deal with GTE, it was like dealing with normal human beings, while the VZ people always acted like they were doing us a favor be acknowledging our existence. The prices were always higher than promised, and the service was never as good as promised. I could totally see the upper management deciding to use Frontier as their patsy.