Frequency regulation in off-normal conditions has been an important problem in electric power system design/operation and is becoming much more significant today due to the increasing size, changing structure and complexity of interconnected power systems. Increasing economic pressures for power system efficiency and reliability have led to a requirement for maintaining power system frequency closer to nominal value. This paper presents a decentralized frequency control framework using a modified low-order frequency response model containing a proportional-integral(PI) controller. The proposed framework is suitable for near-normal and emergency operating conditions. An $H_{infty}$ control technique is applied to achieve optimal PI parameters, and an analytic approach is used to analyse the system frequency response for wide area operating conditions. Time-domain simulations with a multi-area power system example show that the simulated results agree with those predicted analytically.