While Comcast lobbyists tried their best to slow the encroachment of Verizon FiOS into their hometown of Philadelphia, the Philly city council authorized a citywide franchise back in February (you can read the agreement here (pdf) if you're into that kind of thing). As per the deal, Verizon has around seven years to wire the whole city, though these agreements (as with NYC and DC) often have loopholes that let Verizon extend deadlines or wiggle out of obligations should certain adoption numbers not be met. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, service this week went live in Chestnut Hill, South Philadelphia and North Philadelphia, near Girard College. Additional neighborhoods should come online this year, but Verizon isn't saying which ones. Verizon does keep a PA construction notice (pdf) on their website, but it's quite often outdated.

Given the high costs of deploying fiber to the home, we're starting to see new models emerge whereby if customers really want it, they can share the cost of having it installed (one Norwegian ISP gives a $400 rebate if you dig your own fiber trench). Now Utopia, the nation's largest municipal fiber deployment, is testing a new model whereby communities who want the fiber deployed can share the cost of installation. As more Utah cities look to connect to Utopia but debate how they should pay for it, Brigham City has decided that if users want fiber they can pay for it themselves. 1,600 local residents have already ponied up $3,000 a piece, helping the city install a $5.5 million network while the city itself only puts up about $700,000 of the required cost.

In 2007, UK telco British Telecom called running fiber to the home "premature," instead opting to milk copper for a little longer. In 2008, they announced a widely lauded plan to invest in "fiber" (to the node), though the specifics weren't particularly impressive when you looked a little closer, and the "fiber to the press release" announcement was more about getting a regulatory back rub from the British Government.

As cable companies have been trying to compete with FiOS and municipal fiber builds, one of their favorite tactics has been advertisements that intentionally distort the difference between core and last-mile fiber. Marketing folk assume that since the public is probably too stupid to understand the difference, they can take some of the shine off of fiber to the home by pretending all fiber is created equal.

Earlier this week we noted how Verizon's quarterly subscriber additions for their fiber to the home FiOS service were lower than anticipated. The company added 191,000 new FiOS subs on the quarter, down from the 300,000 added in the second quarter.

Wisconsin-based TDS Telecom (see our user reviews) today announced that the company will soon launch 50 Mbps downstream and 20 upstream upstream fiber service in Monticello, Minnesota. According to the company, the service will cost customers $64.95/month when bundled with local phone service.

1.5 million North American new homes signed up for to fiber-to-the-home service last year, bringing the continent's total to 5.3 million, according to the latest study by the Fiber To The Home Council. According to the group, the number of homes passed (a term that doesn't always mean the service is actually available) with fiber grew to 17.2 million from 13.8 million one year earlier. While there's hundreds of cooperatives, small telcos and municipal outfits deploying fiber, Verizon takes up the lion's share of that 5.3 million total, serving roughly 3.1 million FiOS Internet customers and 2.5 million FiOS TV customers.

Telephony Online explores how two Louisiana fiber to the home outfits are forcing local cable operators to lower prices, something that rarely happens (especially with cable TV) when cable operators are simply facing competition from the local phone company. Cox has frozen the cable rates in Lafayette, after the city deployed incredibly well-priced fiber to the home service early this year. "We figured our citizens saved over $3 million in cable rates even before we could offer them service," says Lafayette Terry Huval. Of course if the local incumbent operator is willing to take a local loss in order to drive these carriers out of business, the fun won't last long.

If you've paid attention, you know the modern "network neutrality" debate took off in 2005, when then AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre proudly, though dumbly, proclaimed that Google got a "free ride" on his network. According to Ed, this unfairness could only be rectified by charging companies who already pay for bandwidth money to ensure their traffic reaches AT&T consumers quickly.

Back in 2006, the 5,500-resident town of Powell, Wyoming decided to spend $4.9 million on a private-public (no taxpayer risk) fiber network. According to the project pricing sheet, the outfit is offering a 10Mbps/5Mbps tier for $42.45 standalone, $39.95 when bundled with voice or TV, or $35.95 when bundled with both VoIP and TV service.

The Pittsburgh City Council today voted unanimously (9-0) to give Verizon a FiOS franchise in the city, after the two sides haggled over local TV funding and the installation of a small local support center. The agreement requires that Verizon deploy FiOS to the entire city within six years, though such agreements generally include plenty of wiggle room for Verizon.

When Verizon signed a franchise agreement with Washington DC last fall, the company promised to have the entire city wired within nine years. Yesterday saw Verizon and DC leaders conduct a ceremony to officially kick off the build, which won't be fully completed until 2018. According to Verizon, the first areas to get FiOS TV include the Barry Farms, Brightwood, Columbia Heights, Crestwood, Fort Stanton, Friendship Heights, Historic Anacostia, Petworth, Shepherd Park, Sheridan, Tenleytown, Van Ness and Woodley Park neighborhoods in the Northwest and Southeast quadrants. Like similar agreements in NYC and elsewhere, the franchise deal allows Verizon to extend the nine-year build deadline or wiggle out of it entirely should certain deployment benchmarks be met.

Verizon recently signed off on a New York City franchise that has the company promising to deliver FiOS to every home in all fiver boroughs by the end of 2014. With plenty of wiggle room in the agreement's later stages it's not clear that will ever happen, but with new smaller ONTs and bendable fiber in hand, the telco is certainly going to make a good effort of it. In what's surprisingly the first installation of FiOS in any University housing in New York City, Verizon this morning announced that they've struck a deal with NYU to offer FiOS to faculty residents in the college's Greenwich Village housing units. Verizon hinted last March that they were facing some NYC install delays due to negotiations with landlords.

For several reasons, Verizon had traditionally struggled with installing FiOS in apartment complexes and MDUs (multiple dwelling units) -- where a fifth of their customers live. Given that traditional fiber can't be bent without signal degradation, installs in and around apartment buildings and condos were proving somewhat annoying.

According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the State of Missouri is looking to drastically ramp up fiber penetration in the State while using the first round of Federal broadband stimulus money.. The MoBroadbandNow project is using public-private partnerships to build a fiber-optic broadband backbone that will connect "every cluster of 50 or more dwellings," anchored by schools and municipal buildings. The State is now screening private-sector applicants, which can apply via e-mail at transform.broadbandinterested@mo.gov. As Telephony Online notes, such private-public partnerships increase the chance of being chosen by the broadband stimulus fairy.

Users in our Verizon FiOS TV forum indicate that Verizon has taken the wraps off a slew of social networking widgets for FiOSTV they've been showing journalists and bloggers for much of the last year. The widgets integrate Facebook, Twitter, and ESPN functionality, while also giving users access to a slew of new video content. According to the Verizon press release, Veoh, blip.tv, and Dailymotion will join the new content partnership, dubbed the "widget bazaar," later this month. Other additional "widgets" will be added in the coming months by Verizon and content partners.

After signing citywide franchise agreements with New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, Verizon is now close to signing a citywide franchise agreement for FiOS and FiOSTV with Pittsburgh city officials. According to Multichannel News, the ten year agreement is close to being signed off on, and requires Verizon to wire the entire city within six years. If the agreement is anything like the previous agreements, it will allow Verizon to wiggle out of that obligation once they've covered all desired areas for a small penalty. Verizon will pay 5% of gross revenue to Pittsburgh, the same amount paid by Comcast, who's citywide franchise expires later this year.

According to a new survey commissioned by the Fiber To The Home Council, home sellers who have fiber to the home connections unsurprisingly have a market advantage when it comes to selling their houses. According to the survey, 82% of home buyers who've had FTTH elsewhere rank FTTH as the leading real estate amenity, a number that drops to 70% among those who've never had fiber. The complete list puts FTTH (and broadband in general) ahead of community security, fitness services, pools, golf courses or other amenities -- which aren't to be confused with necessities, like oh -- a roof that doesn't leak. "The message to the real estate market is to put a sign on the lawn and a line in your ad saying, 'This place has fiber,'" said Joe Savage, president of the Fiber-to-the-Home Council.

Charlie Rose this week sat down with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, who talks about Verizon's future, the company's $23 billion investment in FiOS, and developments in wireless and other technologies. Seidenberg carefully skirts over and around most items of particular interest, including when, if ever, an iPhone will be coming to Verizon. According to Seidenberg, whether Apple makes an LTE-ready iPhone for Verizon's LTE launch next year is "Apple's decision." Of course Apple approached Verizon to offer the iPhone before ultimately offering an exclusive deal to AT&T -- Verizon rejecting the offer because Apple's asking price was too high.

Sacramento-based SureWest Communications today announced that starting June 30, fiber to the home customers in Sacramento will be getting free speed upgrades with a price drop. According to the carrier, current 3Mbps ($31 bundled, $51 unbundled) downstream and 1Mbps upstream customers will be upgraded to a symmetrical 3Mbps. Existing symmetrical 10Mbps customers ($41 bundled, $66 unbundled) will be upgraded to symmetrical 15Mbps. Existing symmetrical 20Mbps customers ($70 bundled, $84 unbundled) will be upgraded to symmetrical 25Mbps. Internet speed upgrades in SureWest’s Kansas City market, which they purchased in 2007 and integrated in 2008, are planned for 2010.