Maine PUC Staff Urges Fairpoint Deal Rejection > fiber

fiber

moose
FiOS is a verizon copyrighted product. Fairpoint cannot offer it. Fairpoint has said they will offer a similar fiber product, but hasn't produced it yet. You will not have a television offering.

So will Verizon force everyone to give back the Verizon DVR boxes for the televisions? And people will have to order comcast again?

reply to mooseman
Verizon is installing FIOS in markets where there is another copper carrier. I think I see the logic in this. Verizon comes in with fiber, converts the customers out and kills the copper business. MOST of the time it's their copper, but not always. Oh the catch, of course, is there will probably be a rate hike after they kill the copper. Since they're not required to 'open' the fiber network, your choice on the fiber will be Verizon or Verizon. It'll kill 3rd party DSL carriers. Nice game eh?

Rest assured - They're not going to remove the fiber from the poles, since they just deployed there and the writing on the wall about their copper intentions were established long before they deployed. They want FIOS customers in dense urban markets and they want to dump the copper network (especially in rural areas) on someone else, in this case Fairpoint.

Basically Verizon will compete with Fairpoint in Southern NH and the tip of Southern ME. Heck, they might deploy more in those areas too, I don't think they're restricted from it. They just made it clear that FIOS is the future, copper is evil (because of openness, amongst other reasons), and they want to get rid of copper.

reply to publius
This is news to me. I'm under the impression that Verizon will continue to offer FIOS (as FIOS) in these markets. It's just unlikely there will be any huge expansion.

As far as I know - Verizon has deployed FIOS in Southern CA markets that are AT&T copper markets. I don't think there's anything preventing them from doing this in Southern NH and the tip of ME.

By the time Fairpoint dreams up their own fiber platform, Oxford Networks will have had Bangor ME covered and started selling to residential (their current focus is their business customers). Considering how badly Fairpoint runs DSL, the concept is amusing anyway. I'm sure they'd find some way to have random disconnects over fiber.

droobie,
It is written specifically in the TSA between Verizon and Fairpoint that Verizon will no longer offer FiOS in Northern New England (with the exception of one contract they have with St Josephs hospital in Nashua, NH)
The only way that Verizon would be able to offer FiOS in those markets again is to come in as a CLEC, install their own FiOS equipment and run their own fiber. The FCC had determined that the phone company has to share copper with CLECs but they do not have to share Fiber with anyone.
Fairpoint would be catastrophically stupid to let Verizon continue to offer FiOS on their existing equipment. (Which on certain levels would not surprise me in the least). But honestly, if Fairpoint were to do that they would effectively take away a huge portion of high paying customers that would not be going anywhere else for internet or tv service.

reply to droobie
Again, I say that Verizon does not own the fiber if the deal goes through. So they CANT compete in southern NH and Maine because they have no network to compete on.

One of the main reasons it has taken so long to deploy FiOS is because it is a fairly expensive option to hang fiber everywhere you want it to go.

Verizon would have to come into those markets virtually empty handed, and have to build the networks from the ground up again (if they plan to use fiber) otherwise they can use the copper all they want.

Thanks for clarifying that. I guess that means that there's going to be a lot of dark fiber on the poles then. There's no way that Fairpoint has the money or resources to establish TV deals, etc. and basically reinvent the footwork Verizon has done already.