said by JRW2:Slowing down the pace of conversions would have been a BETTER option if they were looking at the costs.
Agreed. IMO, VZ kicked off a large initial push into FTTH partly as an advertising gimmick. Longer term, VZ might have been better off to slowly deploy fiber deeper into it's markets. A FiOS/Uverse hybrid rolled out over a decade might have been a more fiscally sustainable plan.