Frontier Communications is acquiring AT&T (News - Alert)'s fixed network business and statewide fiber network in Connecticut.

As part of the deal, Frontier will acquire 415,000 data, 900,000 voice, and 180,000 video residential units sold by AT&T in Connecticut, as well as AT&T's local business connections and existing carrier wholesale relationships.

Assuming all those roughly 1.5 million product units are purchased, on average, by dual-play households, the deal might represent 747,500 retail customer accounts. That overstates the case since there are perhaps 600,000 business units of service sold in Connecticut.

Assume 63 percent of the voice lines are sold by AT&T to consumers. That suggests 567,000 residential voice lines, and 333,000 business voice units.

At least some of the video accounts are resold satellite connections, and some are U-verse connections.

But Federal Communications Commission data for 2012 shows there are 600,000 incumbent-supplied fixed network lines in service in Connecticut, plus 620,000 lines supplied by competitive (non-ILEC) providers, plus 460,000 business lines supplied by all incumbent carriers in Connecticut.

In Connecticut, competitive providers provide no less than 44 percent of all access lines, the FCC (News - Alert) says.

That suggests a universe of about 1.7 million fixed network access lines in service. According to the FCC, about 840,000 total Connecticut fixed access lines are provided by competitors.

By way of comparison, the FCC also reports 3.4 million mobile accounts in service in Connecticut at the end of 2012.

AT&T and Verizon are the incumbents in Connecticut, while Comcast (News - Alert) and RCN are the larger competitive providers.

Frontier will pay AT&T $2 billion in cash for the assets.

As one of the two biggest independent local exchange carrier operations in the United States, Frontier’s latest deal is the biggest since it acquired 4.8 million access lines from Verizon (News - Alert) Communications in 2009.