said by PGHammer :

Define cherry-picking, please.

I live in Prince George's County, MD (a majority-minority county). FIOS is available in over half the county (in terms of area); in fact, it's been available in some areas of the county for over a year. I live in an area where FIOS has been available for over a year (no, I do *not* have the service myself, though I know of no less than four people that do in this subdivision, including my neighbor, who just had FIOS installed Saturday), and we had *no* DSL penetration prior to FIOS. Not merely *very little penetration*, but *no penetration at all* (the DSLAM servicing us was never equipped for DSL). However, FIOS penetration here is fast headed to the point of saturation (as it is, we're one of only six households on this street that *doesn't* have FIOS). No single provider has ever garnered over half the households on any street in this subdivision for either HSI or video/TV (the video providers servicing the street are FIOS TV, Comcast, D* and E*), and some households have multiple providers for video (the mutliple-provider households usually have a mix of D* and FIOS TV). FIOS Internet penetration has already exceeded that of CHSI by far (even though CHSI has been available in the development for six years plus, and DSL hasn't been available at all). How is this *cherry-picking*?

said by hottboiinnc :

Telocity was bought by DirecTV not by Covad. But VZ wants to kill DSL's line sharing so they don't have a reason to build out FiOS/ FTTP. That's why they cherry pick. Not everyone is going to get FiOS and they know it and everyone else does to. So the markets that don't get DSL and the rates raised if VZ got what they wanted.