Ohio regulators on Thursday, Feb. 11, approved Frontier Communications Corp.’s acquisition of Verizon Communications Inc.’s local wireline telephone operations. That will make Frontier the second-largest local telephone provider in Ohio, serving residential and small-business customers in 77 of the state’s 88 counties.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved a deal that consumer advocates and the PUCO staff negotiated with Frontier. It requires Frontier to deploy broadband facilities in 85 percent of Verizon’s current Ohio service area by the end of 2013, based on a plan to be developed by Frontier, the PUCO staff and the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state advocate for residential customers of utilities in Ohio.

“Ohioans in the rural areas served by Frontier will now have the opportunity to gain the benefits of broadband, including the availability of Internet-based telephone services,” said Janine Migden-Ostrander, the state consumers’ counsel.

The Verizon territory that Frontier inherits includes parts of Montgomery, Miami, Warren, Clinton, Darke, Preble, Clark, Champaign and Shelby counties.

The deal also:

• Caps basic local telephone rates in Frontier’s service territory at current levels until broadband deployment reaches 85 percent of the service area.

• Requires Frontier to invest in service upgrades in each of the next three years. The PUCO said Frontier is to make $50 million in capital investments, and must track and report its annual service performance, including how it handles outages.

Frontier has committed to retain nearly 1,000 Verizon employees in Ohio after the deal is closed, the PUCO said.

The PUCO said it will monitor the Verizon-Frontier transaction and maintain full regulatory supervision.

Verizon and Frontier had announced plans for the deal in May 2009, part of Frontier’s planned $8.6 billion acquisition of Verizon’s local telephone operations in 14 states including Ohio. State regulators in Nevada, South Carolina and California preceded Ohio in approving the deal.

The deal does not involve Verizon’s wireless communications business.