CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The state Public Service Commission will allow Frontier Communications to use around $29 million from two escrow accounts to reimburse the company for improvements its already made to its network, Frontier officials announced Thursday.

The company will use $23.7 million from a service quality escrow account and another $5.4 million from a broadband escrow account, company officials said in a statement.

The escrow accounts were established in 2010 when Frontier acquired Verizon's markets in West Virginia. Verizon funded the service quality account with $72.4 million. Frontier pledged $48 million toward broadband deployment in another account. The PSC is in charge of whether or not to reimburse the company from those accounts.

"Frontier has worked diligently to strengthen our networks and provide our customers with the best possible communications services," Dana Waldo, Frontier senior vice president and general manager, said in a prepared statement. "At the same time, we have extended our broadband network in the West Virginia markets we acquired from Verizon in 2010 from 62 percent of the households to more than 83 percent.

"We appreciate that the Commission, following its ongoing review of our performance, granted us the full amount of the escrowed funds we requested," Waldo said.

Waldo said the improvements to the network helped it to better withstand the effects of storms like last summer's derecho and last month's snowstorm.

"Including the unprecedented impact of these storms, total network troubles for the past 12 months are 22 percent lower than during the year before Frontier acquired the West Virginia service area," Waldo said.