Verizon is yet again in a spot of trouble (but of course not
really), with popular opinion. In 1994,
Verizon made an agreement with the state of Pennsylvania that it would wire up
the state with fiber optic cables to every home in exchange for tax breaks equaling
about $2.1 billion. They promised that
all homes and businesses would have access to 45Mbps symmetrical fiber by
2015. A decade later, the deal was that
50% of all homes were supposed to have that.
As it turns out, 0% did, and some people started to get upset and want
their money back.
Naturally, that never happened. On the bright side, Verizon did learn a very
valuable lesson. It can lie to
governments, promise whatever it likes in exchanges for massive subsidies, then
not deliver on their fake promises, and no one will really be able or want to
do anything about it! Pretty good deal
for them.
Surprise, surprise, they’re at it again! Almost a decade after THAT, an almost
identical situation has arisen in our very own New York City. This time, Verizon actually HAD a fiber
service to offer (the now very well-known FiOS), which is promised to cover
100% of NYC with by 2014. Way back when
this was announced in 2008, BroadbandReports warned that you should take the
promise with a large grain of salt, both because of Verizon’s past failures to
live up to promises, as well as the loopholes hidden in the agreement.
A vague interpretation of the vaguely worded requirement to “pass
all households” can essentially be interpreted as “if it’s close enough to a
building for those residents to connect to, then it counts. Verizon does not have to make that connection
though. Due to this, they claim about
75% accessibility even though the actual number of New Yorkers reporting actual
capability of connecting is about 50%.
Verizon blames the landlords in the city, but going almost
entirely against that argument, as soon as somebody made a big fuss on the
radio recently about the lack of FiOS in his apartment, Verizon contacted him
the very next day, and had service in his apartment in about 3 weeks.
It’s just the case that Verizon seems to be trying its best
to get out of the wired business entirely.
Fiber is a great service, people love it. However, it’s incredibly capital intensive
and there’s essentially no real competition (until Google decides to bring
their glorious service to the entire nation).
Thus, Verizon really doesn’t have to care, and so they don’t. There’s also no reason for investors to care
either because there are no competitors to push back against.
In the end, when asked any questions, the mayor’s office
deferred to the DOITT (Department of Information Technology and
Telecommunications), and the DOITT deferred to the mayor’s office. So it’s business as usual I guess.
They seem really clever when they do stuff like this - as long as they make the trail of something too difficult to follow up on, eventually people will stop caring about it and they won't have to do it. "Oh, if you want information on that, go talk to X, Y, Z", and then X, Y, and Z refer you to someone else, until you lose public interest
ReplyDeleteFor the average user it seems that cable speeds are enough here in the US. In other countries, i.e South Korea there is a much higher demand for the higher speeds which creates the competition needed for the initial investment to be worth it for them. Prices for superior services in this area tend to be far less expensive than their American counterparts, so it leaves only the telecoms to blame. Geography does play a large role in this, but there definitely is more that can be done for the consumer.
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