NYC Sues Verizon For Breaking Promise To Make FiOS Available To All Residents (washingtonpost.com) 73
New submitter erickessler writes: 1 million NYC homes can't get Verizon FiOS, so the city just sued Verizon. Verizon wants another four years to cover remaining 1 million households. Washington Post reports: "New York City has sued Verizon, saying the phone giant broke its 2008 promise (PDF) to make its Fios cable service available to all city residents. The city said in a lawsuit (PDF) Monday that Verizon missed a 2014 deadline to extend wire by every home or apartment building in the city -- in technical parlance, "passing" the home. The city also argues that Verizon hasn't installed service for thousands who requested it. Verizon disagrees with the city's definition of "passing" a home and says it has done its job. Spokesman Ray McConville said Monday that Verizon sees "passed" as meaning that it can reach every home, provided a landlord gives permission. Verizon wants to reach some buildings through other buildings. In a letter to the city Friday, Verizon says 2.2 million households have access to Fios, a phone, cable and high-speed internet network. Verizon said Monday that it is committed to expanding Fios availability to the city's remaining 1 million households."
No worries (Score:5, Funny)
Marissa is coming, she will fix Verizon like she fixed Yahoo.
They won't come into my building (Score:5, Insightful)
I talked to the techs about it when they were repairing my POTS copper recently. Corporate figures it's not worth their while as the building's too small and other tenants are already with Time Warner, who renamed themselves Spectre excuse me Spectrum. Heard some horror stories about the local low income high rises getting their FiOS boxes and then residents, some of whom use their net connection for health monitors and are on fixed incomes, being told - FiOS or nothing, here's your much larger bill.
Dealt with their techs a lot over the last couple of years, Sandy for one thing, and the techs are uniformly cool and mostly competent. But Verizon corporate does not intend to put FiOS anywhere they can't make an immediate buck. Then they'll claim that the super won't let them in or something which in my case is nuts as I'm the super.
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Please, please, follow up on this. Your testimony will be very valuable.
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In wealthy areas residents apply for new plans.
In poor areas local residents fill a shopping cart with new network hardware and plan the best way to push the full cart to a scrap merchant.
Until an area has undergone full gentrification existing networks stay in place.
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Full gentrification? That shouldn't be necessary, but maybe you should look at why your country allows its citizens to get THAT desperate.
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Policies which concentrate your poor in the inner city (much of the US) or in the suburbs (much of Europe) seem so obviously foolish, and yet we all seem to do it.
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It just happens because the competency to make something else happen simply isn't there.
I'm curious, what is "something else" when it comes to the most basic problem: the cost of property.
The value of property has ALWAYS gone up near hubs and nice areas. If there was a medieval castle or city walls offering protections and nice things, people flock to it driving up prices. More wealthy people displace less wealthy people, and soon enough all the poorest people are living outside the city walls.
Today city centers get more costly and soon only the most wealthy can live in the valuable core. Po
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So far there are no good alternatives to make something else happen as you put it.
Singapore does a pretty nice job of it. The government "owns" something like 85% of the housing - but they offer 90-year leases. So the government has fine-grained control over pricing and distribution of rent, but since the people buy and sell leases just like property the human psychological mechanisms at play with property ownership and investment kick in. At first, you might balk at the idea of government-as-landlord... but in most of the West we have property taxes which amounts to pretty much the same
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Citizenship and photo ID for services to stop people wondering in and taking advantage of city services for poor citizens.
Then work with the poor citizens. Provide nutrition, education, hobbies, a lot of free sport to take hours in a day away from all the daily negative trapped in poverty options.
With good schooling they can learn a trade, seek further education or find work or just have time to get the help they need. A free bus ride for poor citizens to city f
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That is often true of first-generation immigrant communities, but it does not explain most US urban centers, where the instant someone becomes middle class they get the hell out of the ghetto.
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Heard some horror stories about the local low income high rises getting their FiOS boxes and then residents, some of whom use their net connection for health monitors and are on fixed incomes, being told - FiOS or nothing, here's your much larger bill.
This is where FiOS is a bit confusing to me. Where I live the main telco is going and replacing as much copper as they can with fibre. But that doesn't mean increased bills, only increased capabilities. The telco is selling the service level, not the technology it's on.
For example, If you're on 25 meg internet on xDSL, and switch to 25 meg internet on fibre, your bill stays the same. The only difference is that while 25 meg might have been the highest speed you could get on the xDSL, you now have the option
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And there's the disconnect. Fibre isn't a separate service here, it's a different way of providing the same service. Do if you sign up for the minimum tier, it will be on whatever technology is available. (pay for 15 meg, get whatever your line is capable of up to that speed)
So even if you only had 3 meg before, you wouldn't pay any more for 15 meg on fibre as you paid for 3 meg on copper.
That said, fibre is being installed mostly in towns and cities, where most people could already get 25meg or higher serv
Open the floodgates (Score:1)
It's time cities all over the country start suing these leeches. The telcos took billions and billions of dollars of tax money in exchange for upgrades they have no intention of ever providing. Fuck them all. The FCC obviously won't be doing anything now, so it's up to the courts, the only sane branch of government left.
Re:Open the floodgates (Score:5, Insightful)
The telcos took billions and billions of dollars of tax money in exchange for upgrades they have no intention of ever providing. Fuck them all. The FCC obviously won't be doing anything now, so it's up to the courts, the only sane branch of government left.
Seriously, if the courts were going to enforce any of this it would have been fifteen years ago. Bless his heart, Bruce Kushnick [twitter.com] will not let this go, but the telcos used the government to fleece the "ratepayers" and they have no intention of allowing that government to claw any of it back. Whomever needs to be paid, it's a lot cheaper than building infrastructure.
Meanwhile, regulations prevent any effective competition, so that's as good as you're going to get without an Administrative State revolution.
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What language was this Google translated from?
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https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com] (8/15/2014)
The FCC has changed the definition of broadband ( Jan 29, 2015)
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1... [theverge.com]
IMSI catchers from
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... [nytimes.com] (FEB. 11, 2016)
Re: Open the floodgates (Score:2)
It's worse in Florida. ~25 years ago, the Florida utility regulators agreed to let BellSouth basically DOUBLE the cost of local phone service to finance laying fiber to ~80% of customers within 10 years. The deadline came & went, and circa 2010, someone in the state capital who examined AT&T's actual deployment discovered that 99% of the fiber laid by AT&T since ~2006 was serving (... drumroll ...) nothing but AT&T cell towers. AT&T was counting potential wireless customers within range
Upstate (Score:2)
How about upstate? I've got fiber running on the pole outside my house. They dropped a spool off last year across the road, while they were doing work on the lines. The cable was clearly labeled fiber optic. The driver of the FIOS van (two bucket trucks were there as well) confirmed it was fiber, but couldn't/wouldn't tell me what it was for or who's data was running over it.
I suspect GE or SI, as they both have a heavy presence locally. More than a bit irritated that fiber is running about thirty feet from
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Verizon Business (VZB) and Verizon FiOS (FiOS) are different businesses. VZB's fiber does not connect to FiOS customers.
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Or, it could very likely have been metro fiber connecting to a DSLAM cabinet, a cell tower, or a large business. All telcos are building fiber in all markets, but that doesn't mean they're deploying GPON. VZB doesn't lay much fiber. They mostly buy access circuits/services and provide L3+ services over it.
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That is not how verizon works.
Verizon is broken into a few dozen 'verticals'. Very few of them work together. All of the money for building out residential is funding the wireless verticals.
Unless the current CEO leaves nothing will change. They are quickly offloading everything with a wire hanging off it to put wireless in its place.
They are trying to put the genie back in the bottle. The wireline ROI is flat to no growth. Wireless on the otherhand is growing. They have found a way to charge a premium
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That is not how verizon works.
Verizon is broken into a few dozen 'verticals'.
Very true.
Very few of them work together.
Not quite true. Some staff within the various "verticals" want to work with staff in the other "verticals", but issues like government regulations, pricing, and the always dreaded "internal politics" & "management attitudes" can stymie (delay) or even halt any attempt in that company to "work across the verticals".
All of the money for building out residential is funding the wireless verticals.
Actually it is the other way around. Revenues from wireless have been traditionally "funneled" back into the corporate coffers for use elsewhere in the business. The traditional tele
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Hire Sean Spicer to explain them away.
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We are indeed at that stage of civilization where "played one on TV" is counted as related experience.
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Can't they afford somebody more competent?
I think if there is any lesson to be learned from recent history, it is that competency is neither sought nor desired. In fact, competence generates suspicion.
Define your terms, Verizon. (Score:3)
Verizon said Monday that it is committed to expanding Fios availability to the city's remaining 1 million households.
Fine. What does that mean in terms of Who, What, Where, When, and How?
Because "in the sweet bye and bye" in terms of the "When" element isn't really acceptable. You've had since 2014, and it's now 2017. Where were you in 2014, and where are you now? And "passing by" a domicile isn't really helpful if persons in it wish to, you know, use fiber.
Anyway, this is really a non-issue. Regulation/Oversight==bad for business as far as the current administration believes. At this rate, I'm just tickled my milk doesn't have melamine in it or my meat isn't horse meat or my prescription medication isn't just powered lead.
Yet, anyway. Who knows what it'll be when the FDA is closed as has been promised.
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By their records, it's "available" to everyone.
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What's wrong with horse meat?
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What's wrong with horse meat?
Absolutely nothing nutritionally. I just don't want to eat it and pay the price of "prime beef", plus I don't want to eat horse. It's a personal preference. It's like how some folks don't want to eat goat or pork. Some times it's religious, sometimes it's just preference.
Why Doesn't the New Jersey AG do the same thing? (Score:1)
New Jersey has a similar arrangement with Verizon regarding Fios deployment, yet NJ is giving Verizon a pass on this issue...
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I kind of wish they would sue, the bastards. I waited for FIOS for roughly 12 years all in all, poking along on DSL. A few years back I saw a Verizon tech working on a pole in my neighborhood. When he came down, I asked him about the FIOS rollout, and he told me point blank, but consolingly, "It's never going to be available here, you'll never have it". So, Comcast/Xfinity was my only choice for true broadband.
why (Score:2)
Not a promise, a contract. (Score:3)
Verizon had signed a contract with the city [wordpress.com] and failed to hold up their end of the contract. Naturally, there are provisions for what happens in this case.
15. DEFAULT AND REMEDIES
15.1. Defaults. In the event of any breach, default, failure or other noncompliance by
the Franchisee in the performance of any obligation of the Franchisee under this Agreement
(each such breach, default, failure or other noncompliance being referred to herein as a
“Default”), which Default is not cured within the specific cure period provided for in this
Agreement (or if no specific cure period is provided for in this Agreement then within the cure
period described in Section 15.3 below), then the City may:
15.1.1. cause a withdrawal from the cash Security Fund, pursuant to the provisions of Section 15.11 herein;
15.1.2. make a demand upon the Performance Bond pursuant to the provisions of Section 15.9 herein;
15.1.3. draw down on the Letter of Credit pursuant to the provisions of Section 15.10 herein;
15.1.4. pursue any rights the City may have under the Guaranty;
15.1.5. seek and/or pursue money damages from the Franchisee as compensation for such Default;
15.1.6. seek to restrain by injunction the continuation of the Default; and/or
15.1.7. pursue any other remedy permitted by law, or in equity, or as set forth in this Agreement, provided however the City shall only have the right to terminate this Agreement upon the occurrence of a Revocation Default (defined hereinafter).
I'm pretty sure Verizon is going to claim they are blameless in court per the Rules of Acquisition..
#17 "A contract is a contract is a contract... but only between Ferengi."
ALL the telcos had a contract (Score:2)
Do you remember when we gave all the telcos money to build out ADSL? Pepperidge farms remembers. They didn't build out shit, $250M down the drain. When are we going to sue those slimy fucks for that?
Is this the right approach? (Score:3)
Is this really the right approach? I get that Verizon used taxpayer funds and government brute force to obtain their state sponsored monopolistic market dominance. But then, how would suing them achieve anything? This lawsuit will result in them writing a fat check to Blasio rather than them actually rolling out fiber to anyone. If you want fiber grab your metamucil new yorkers because this isn't the way to get it.
In Soviet New York... (Score:2)
In Soviet New York, evil greedy KKKorporation$ do not want your money.
I wonder, why...
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That's simple, their accountants have determined that the cost to provision the service is likely to exceed the revenue generated from doing so.
That's not a good excuse for breaking their contract, but that's likely what's happened.
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Indeed, but why? NYC is a very thickly settled area — which is normally a dream for Internet-service providers. The high population density is usually cited as the reason for better Internet-service options [gigaom.com].
So, why is NYC an exception?
Well, they entered into it under an obvious duress — so I wouldn't blame them too mu
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high population density helps, but that's on an overall basis, not a case by case basis.
If they can look at individual apartment buildings and decide that the demographic living in that building is too poor, or too likely to chose the competition, they can decide it isn't worth their while.
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Well, that would seem like a perfectly normal line of reasoning — why sue them over it?
But I doubt, that's the full reason. In the suburbs of NYC they are perfectly willing to hook-up individual standalone houses — a proposition that seems costlier, than wiring even a small share (like 10%) of apartments in a building. They are willing compet
Insult to injury (Score:2)
Couple of years ago, Verizon ran ads in the Boston metro area showing happy shiny pop stars standing in Boston's Copley Plaza (local equivalent of Times Square) and extolling their FiOS service. As it happens, FiOS isn't available in the city of Boston, and--to all appearances--is never going to be.
When the mayor of Boston called them out on this, Verizon responded with some clueless marketing gobbledygook.
Long overdue (Score:2)
Regulations? (Score:2)