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mouseferatu
Too many cats, Too many mice
Premium,MVM
join:2004-03-16
Im not sure
clubs:
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Fairpoint Communic..
 ·Comcast
| FairPoint gives us no reason to hope for the best... Old wisdom nags that you should hope for the best, but plan for the worst. FairPoint makes planning for the worst seem like a very good idea.
Nothing in the proposal that they have provided to the northern New England states looks very promising or vaguely realistic. Their proposed backward conversion of fiber to DSL or dial-up is archaic, and the proposed forward conversion of dial-up to DSL is also archaic, and doesn't take into account huge stretches of northern NH, ME, and VT.
FWIW, they haven't set the bar all that high... while the rest of the country goes to fiber, the northern New England states will slowly receive outdated DSL for a percentage of customers, at a high cost.
»thephoenix.com/printerfriendlyB.···id=46012
Most significantly, FairPoint seems to have truly no idea of how huge the state of Maine is, and of how remote some areas such as Aroostook county are. Comparing North Carolina to Northern Maine doesn't cut it, and FairPoint isn't making any corporate waves for innovation there, either.
IMO, if Verizon chooses to pull out of northern New England, they should be forced to drop the Rhode Island/Massachusetts operation of (the former) New England Telephone, as well.
With that profitable piece of the company and its fiber on the table along with the less desirable, it stands to reason that we might end up with a viable solution that doesn't shaft the northern New England states again.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crispy and good with catsup." | |
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TKJunkMail
Enjoy the sun
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Avalon, NJ
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·Comcast
| Re: FairPoint gives us no reason to hope for the best... said by mouseferatu  :Most significantly, FairPoint seems to have truly no idea of how huge the state of Maine is, and of how remote some areas such as Aroostook county are. Comparing North Carolina to Northern Maine doesn't cut it, and FairPoint isn't making any corporate waves for innovation there, either. And why should anyone want to try and wire an area with so few people and no chance of profit? At best they will have to make do with satellite broadband or Wimax if that proves feasible.
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Dr Droo
@1-x.net
| Re: FairPoint gives us no reason to hope for the best... WIMAX wouldn't really work in many of these rural areas due to the mountains, etc.
The solution is to add remote COs and do DSL (since copper telco is readily available), or use 700 or 900mhz wireless-based networks.
There's always Broadband over PowerLine too, but as a ham operator I'm pretty much against that idea because of the amount of destruction to the radio bands it provides.
Satellite is a great last-ditch when nothing else is available. However - I was a former DirecWay customer and it serves nothing for people who would want to play video games online or want to download anything of value (including rentable movies from Vongo, Netflix, Amazon Unbox, etc.). They throttle the speeds of the customers that download excessively (excessively being the benchmark of 100-200mb in the course of a 4 hour period, if memory serves). | |
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mouseferatu
Too many cats, Too many mice
Premium,MVM
join:2004-03-16
Im not sure
clubs:
·Verizon FIOS
·Fairpoint Communic..
·Comcast
| said by TKJunkMail : And why should anyone want to try and wire an area with so few people and no chance of profit? At best they will have to make do with satellite broadband or Wimax if that proves feasible. I do not disagree with you on that- But, respectfully, I think that you miss my main point.
Northern New England is accustomed to "making do" with whatever they can get- I know, as I have a remote three season home in Camden, Maine that is no way, no how, going to be on any main HSI service in the foreseeable future. I knew that many years ago, though, and don't feel in any way slighted.
What I take exception to is another Verizon dump. They bought former New England Telephone to get the profitable areas including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Southern New Hampshire. They are keeping those, with the exception of Southern New Hampshire.
It is an absurd intention to sell the rest of the area to FairPoint, a utility that is in dubious condition, appears to be completely unable to serve the overall area, and can not maintain the fiber that serves many thousands in Southern New Hampshire. That New Hampshire area is primarily in the Boston commuter range, and will be in a world of hurt if FairPoint reverts the fiber to currently non-existent DSL as planned.
FairPoint hasn't presented themselves well at the hearings- I have been to a number in both Maine and New Hampshire. Their promises seem empty, as most of their answers seem to be in the "just take our word for it, it will happen" category.
I am tired of seeing large players like Verizon come into the area, skim the cream, and move out and leave the rest of the area worse off than they were before they showed up in the first place.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crispy and good with catsup." | |
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chiefeyes
join:2001-08-14
Thomaston, ME | Re: FairPoint gives us no reason to hope for the best... Well said mouse  | |
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Dr Droo
@1-x.net
| Camden does have some wireless ISPs that may actually serve your remote home area on 900mhz. Midcoast.com is one such company that serves there, you may want to try them if you haven't already.
I do think that Verizon will keep and maybe even expand FIOS through Southern New Hampshire the rest of the way and then claim, "We're not the dialtone guys, we're just the FIOS guys". Similar has been done in AT&T markets in So Cal, where Verizon offers FIOS, but has never had a copper plant.
In other words, Verizon can have their cake AND eat it too. They don't want a copper business anymore, but this way they'd not be forced to upgrade places to fiber, they just could if they decided they wanted to.
I do agree with your thoughts that Fairpoint's plans seem empty. Also - Fairpoint has made it known they intend to use/keep their rural exemptions in their existing markets as well. That means the largest choice in those markets is "Fairpoint (max 1.5/1.0 DSL) for 79.99". No competition in data or in voice services on those copper networks.
If Verizon wanted to sell these markets to AT&T (though I'm not an AT&T fan in the least), then that might be something to entertain. However, selling to essentially a 'two-men and a truck' telco that is well disliked in the tri-state region completely defies logic.
I have yet to see one Fairpoint customer anywhere in the US that is content or happy with their service. However, I've seen many posts from people in FL, VT, ME that absolutely hate their Fairpoint service.
The standard shouldn't be the empty promises. It should be what Fairpoint has done up to this point. If their past performance is the standard, this acquisition shouldn't be allowed. | |
| | NHpublius
join:2007-05-18
Manchester, NH
| HCT,
Check out the progress that is being made on WiMax and Satellite. They speeds that they currently enjoy are about as fast as the slowest DSL connection. And they haven't been able to reduce the price of installation enough to even start to compete against wireline installations.
WiMax will never get off the ground in mountainous states because too many towers have to be installed to be useful. And satellite is too expensive to cover all but flat areas of the country. | |
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