A Look at Verizon's Decimated NYC Network

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The photo to the right shows the copper feeders just chopped off and capped, raising questions on how this impacts any CLECs that may have been using that infrastructure for access.

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So Sandy was a conspiracy by Verizon to run the CLECs out of business.

Anyone seen my tinfoil hat?

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The photo to the right shows the copper feeders just chopped off and capped, raising questions on how this impacts any CLECs that may have been using that infrastructure for access.

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People whine and complain about Verizon NOT replacing copper with something better... and when they do... they complain about these lamer CLECs who never built out their own network in the first place?

Sucks to be them. Shrug.

It doesn't claim conspiracy. It simply asks what happens to the CLECs who shared that infrastructure, which is a legitimate question. Do you have the answer?

Maybe they want to reduce CLEC's but keep in mind that converting to fiber is the smart thing. Copper had its day. The storm only hastened the movement, there is no conspiracy.

Telcos will offer CLECs if it's good for their bottom line. Look at MVNO in cell co's. The market is robust and growing like gangbusters. FIOS has been marketed as premium, so once saturation hits Verizon will need to go after the mid-market and the way to do that is to offlabel or offload to "CLECs". Since they are bulk reselling (making a tidy profit), they don't have to incur the high SGA costs with the brand label, and at the same time utilize the network (the more it's used the more profitable).

I'm sick of the whiny nature of every post. It's like the entire mission of companies is to screw people constantly. Companies don't exist without customers. Now one has to look to government picking winners or losers..a la our current and past administrations..and that is the problem not the open competitive market.

Who's whining? I'd like to know what happens to those CLECs? Verizon doesn't share access to FiOS facilities as far as I know. What happens to the existing business relationships with CLECs?

I would love to see more pics...

Equipment maybe. These are access trunks. It doesn't change out the POP and VZ still has contracts with CLECs. The DSL DSLAMs are still owned by Verizon, and they will need to replace if they are damaged.

I don't know what VZ runs in NYC (probably ATM), so they just upgrade the line cards to optical.

What happened to Earthlink when Time Warner moved to HFC? Nothing, except better speeds and quality.

Yes, because whining about whining (that doesn't seem like whining to me since it was just a question asked) is so much more productive.Actually growth on wireless and wireline has slowed immensely, and me thinks calling our uncompetitive broadband market "robust" is way too kind.

Lets stop the foolishness, no one said it was a conspiracy! It was a legitimate question which still stands. The CLECs existed because it was possible to conduct business as a CLEC and was a business relationship which brought additional money into the coffers of Verizon. CLECs provide services and also jobs and as a result the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy has and continues to have a negative impact on their customers and employees.

You fail to realize that Ma Bell was broken up for it's very anti competitive nature. SMH.

I wouldn't be surprised if the contracts have some clause that lets VZ say "too bad" in case of plant destruction or other "conditions beyond [their] control."

They might as well upgrade their destroyed networks. Compare that to a transit agency (PVTA, MBTA, NYC Transit) fixing an aging fleet of buses (that are breaking down more and more often) to buying brand new, more fuel efficient vehicles.

What I don't get is why are the capping the copper stubs. I would think they would of drug out the cable and slid fiber back in the same hole. Plus gotten some scrap value in the copper to help deal with helping CLECs get back up, since this is clearly outside VZs control what happened. I'd like to know why they are leaving that copper behind vs scrapping it.

One of the goals of any business is to make as much money as is legally possible. If you want to call it "screw", fine but whatever the term, the concept is the same.

I don't think Karl is suggesting a conspiracy. He simply asked a question regarding competitive use of the destroyed infrastructure. If the new infrastructure causes competition to decrease, those that remain may have an opportunity to increase profits. It's also possible for profits to increase because the replaced infrastructure will be less costly to maintain. If some portion of those profits are regulated, that could translate into savings for consumers. If profits are not regulated and sufficient competition doesn't exist to cause an equalization, profits will go up and more "screwing" will occur.

Somewhat surprised that they still had paper insulated copper wiring in service in this area.

Them new-fangled plastic insulation has been around for a while.

And I assume they will eventually pull the bad copper and recycle, but the crews that do fiber don't do copper, so I would think this will occur once the crisis is over.

If it's profitable to extract it, they will. If not, it makes sense to leave it. I know that seems messy and wasteful but customers certainly don't want to pay to extract it unless it's necessary or profitable.

Some of those trunk cables have probably been there since they wired NYC back in the early 1900's.

Did you click the link? First 2 words of the article. A bunch of pics plus a video...

/M

You do realize that version used federal money to build the network in the first place right? So I bet replacing the copper lines with fiber would still have the same strings attached. Since they would be replacing the federal governments lines.

They will probably not pull any old copper to scrap unless it is very easily accessible. As valuable as copper is, it would cost more to have crews pulling it up at union wages.

I would like to point out that just because the copper will be replaced by fiber does not mean they can stop offering the clecs service. If its the Government funded network that's being replaced then they still have the right to use it.

I am on long island and we have telephone service through earthlink business. We have an old very thick Verizon copper line coming into the building and a Verizon fiber line coming in.

The last time we renewed our contract erthlink business moved out t1 from the old copper line to the fiber line coming in. They used a cisco box to emulate the copper service.

I would think Verizon is going to do this. Lay down the fiber to every affected building and use equipment in the basements to connect the copper equipment in the buildings to the newly run fiber.

Will probably take a lot less time to do it that way.

Just because they remove the copper between the C.O and buildings, doesnt mean all copper service is gone. We are on an old oc3 fiber ring with a ds3 mux, with t1's broken out of that, so we have around ~15ft of copper before it goes to fiber. Legacy services from anyone (CLEC inculded) could be easily serviced like this if needed.

Having worked in that cable vault around 1978, I can verify that a lot of those cables date to the late 1940s. When it still works, you don't replace it. I also know that Verizon has been in the process of replacing a lot of that old infrastructure and moving to fiber for quite a few years. Bottom line always suggests that you do it in phases and it would have taken years to get all that replaced. Now with this disiaster and the use of insurance money, the job will get done a lot faster. As of today, a lot of that traffic has been rerouted away from this area but that still leaves a bunch of folks out of service. There is also a large effort being made to set up and use temporary microwave links to help with the situation

Well the assumption on here is that whatever costs they are incurring is being covered by insurance or some government assistance. I would just think it would make sense that once whatever facilities that cable pair was switched over to, that copper then gets yanked out to be scrapped, freeing up more space that could then let the CLECs run their own fiber, since I get the impression the FCC might make VZ either install fiber to restore the CLECs or put new copper for the CLECs once enough CLECs start bitchin about VZ abandoning the copper and moving it all to fiber.

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Equipment maybe. These are access trunks. It doesn't change out the POP and VZ still has contracts with CLECs. The DSL DSLAMs are still owned by Verizon, and they will need to replace if they are damaged.

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The DSLAMS are not being repaired in NY. The Verizon customers are being migrated to FIOS instead.

only to replace it with fiber.. don't worry.. Verizon's already broken so many deals-- don't think the NYS PUC won't have something to say about giving CLECs access to fiber infrastructure once they rebuild with government assistance..

if there was over $5 million for time warner for upstate fiber runs, then verizon's good for at least that much in manhattan. hint.. they might want to run water-tight conduit as they do in underseas cables. then you won't see a saltwater excuse the next time around.

It was a joke, hence the fine print comment about my tin foil hat. That is, unless you really think Verizon has that much clout that it can conjurer up a hurricane.

Thanks for the info. So, yes, there are real questions to be asked here about what happens next for CLECs. Readers yelling that asking a question about this is "conspiracy" apparently need hobbies.

Not in prepaid which would be analogous to CLECs....

Prepaid has added over 15 million subs in the last year. In the US that is now over 100 million, which puts them in the league of AT&T or Verizon. Granted its many companies, but the top three have most of them. In fact American Movil is about the size of Tmobile in subs now, and yes I know they run on their networks...

My point is that there is a mid-market need and this is where the growth is happening. Back in the day you were a scrub if you had prepaid (I guess that means me because I have had prepaid for 5 years), but now with say the Nexus 4 that is planted squarely in the prepaid market.

30 minutes to sell out should say something about the scrubs....

As a point of disclosure, I use Verizon for my phone (corporate) and the bill with myfi is like $250 a month (5GB on each device and Canada Plan). The other phone is TMO straighttalk which is $45 a month. My third phone is PPC (burner phone), $70 for the year. My verizon phone is iphone 4s which I really hate, because the screen is small, ios in general does not play well with exchange, and I am stuck on slow 3g. And I'm only 7 months into a 2 year contract. Hence why I hate contracts...I'm stuck with this marginal device for another 17 months.