Verizon FiOS is Ten Years Old Today → 10 years later, still waiting

Verizon still has millions of customers and would-be customers waiting on FIOS. Seidenberg was a visionary for taking on the massive upgrade leap that no other ILEC at the time was willing to take on.

It proved that the technology works and can turn a profit. But no, the Investors literally s### on the party and ended it.

I am still waiting. 10 years after the county signed the franchise mandating service to all areas with density + all incorporated areas. They seem to be skipping my town, even though our CO is FIOS serving, and providing FIOS to subdivisions out of town.

To put things in perspective on how slow Verizon has been with construction, GPON OLT's were put in our CO in 2007. Construction started at the speed of a turtle and the first customer connected was in 2014.

Literally expensive equipment sat for 7 years doing nothing. Good job!

Meanwhile the Copper network continue to degrade, and McAdam sells his LTE dream to us all like we are sheep.

Due to this, Comcast will continue to get my money until fiber shows up at my door. Unlike VZ Comcast delivers speeds above 3mbit/1mbit NOW to me. I could not wait any longer in 2011.

by the 2nd year out - i had adsl from version
(one of their early dry loop isp only customers)
by the second decade i still don't have fios.

Yeah I have pretty much all but given up at this point - in talks with the new town gov now about it and they agree its a problem but will anything happen?

What I have learned is that if you want FIOS you need to move to a new subdivision (VZ builds FTTH for new construction in areas where FIOS did not exist) or move to an area with it.

Overbuilding halted with the departure of Seidenberg. :/

To compare what happened here in the past 10 years Comcast upgraded their plant to 860mhz, increased the amount of fiber, and split nodes down to an average of 42 customers per node resulting in fast service for almost everyone in town. The main complaint is Customer Service.

Verizon needs to learn that you cant keep your customers on hold forever. When I canceled the phone and DSL service the rep did not even try to keep me - they knew they could do nothing.

It's too bad, they didn't finish the job in my area either. Sadly it would only cost them a few billion to run by a few million more people which is nothing compared to the cash they are generating. It almost makes no sense, and it didn't cost $24b to build, that number was also opex which was going on under DSL/copper.

I remember reading a few years ago that even with the build out cost the opex was dropping so much it was barely raising their yearly COGS even in the hyper build years. If they can move away from ATM/PON and to metro-e the cost would plummet even more.

The opex is significantly less then copper. Since my line has been put in over 4 years ago, only a 30 minute retrench two weeks ago when the landscapers sliced the sheath (it was still working). The most interaction I have w/ VZ is the unavoidable billing snafus or to "negotiate" when my promos expire. Man if they spent a few million on their billing system with all these BTL fees we may have a winner.

Yeah, even with the mega construction bump, it was not as big as Verizon claimed. The blue line is actual from IRS filings, Pink is what was claimed.

It seems obvious that once McAdam leaves some pickup will happen with construction.

Having the funds come out of the copper maintenance/construction budget really hurt the rest of the network too. Its a double-hit as those areas impacted most will not be getting the replacement network needed.

I think OPEX is something investors miss when they hear about FIOS costs. Yes it costs a metric shitload to build out, But a total replacement of the copper network nets them a more resilient network. Especially against one of the greatest enemies to good DSL speeds and call quality, Water getting into the lines.

I imagine they have less call quality issues, speed issues and connection stability issues calls for FIOS.

then why is fiber always at the bottom of netflix list compared to coax and even canadian adsl2.
either they are poorly engineering their network or doing it intentionally as Netflix & L3 claim.

Investors are nothing more than leeches of corporate profits and investment. They don't care what is going to happen next year or the following.

You live in what is ALMOST West Virginia. You're in the boonies. I hope you appreciate that you can get broadband at all.

Some of this is beginning to turn around where Verizon meets with heavy copper neglect fines by States.. for the most part, they've been able to lobby away or surcharge customers depending on how much $$ is cost them to push the problem off for as long as it's economically feasible. However, once the FCC & regulators turn up the heat on ATT.. some of that backlash or blowback will smack Verizon upside the head too.. Fallout could be new reforms that let tier-1 into the direct to consumer deploy party... even if those companies are foreign owned. Most likely they can carrot some domestic tech companies first... but if push comes to shove.. There will be new economic incentive to get gigabit internet into places like NYC by a certain year...

Living in a county with the highest per capita income of the nation, literally 50 miles from DC is the boonies? Mr. Dingo of the FCC himself can see us from his office window.

My town has 8300 people crammed into 3 square miles of space. The surrounding ZIP code which is mostly serviced by this CO has an average home density of 201 homes per sq. mi.

Areas of Montana where your nearest neighbor is 20 miles away is the boonies, seems like your definition of boonies is screwed up.

The panhandle of W.VA which is nearby is pretty developed, btw. Developed enough for Comcast to serve a majority of homes there. The entire state is not duct tape like people imagine. A lot of new subdivisions and shopping centers are popping up in the vicinity of Charles Town.

Regardless of "boonies" or not, VZ has a binding legal agreement on the table, they agreed to build but they are not following through entirely. Actually, they did build FTTH outside of the town in what is classified as a rural zone due to a new subdivision. Fortunate people nearby who had no broadband were very lucky VZ plunked down an extra GPON splitter to serve them.

Comcast service hugs the areas of densest population, and completely serves incorporated areas, so its not really a miracle I can get internet. There was Cable TV here since 1989.

And the Cable TV system here is pretty modern - 860mhz, low ratio of customers to node (avg 42 people per node), deep fiber.

As long they paying there not going to turn up the heat.

No he doesn't. He's closer to Northern Virginia area than west Virginia!

Oh I agree with you, I've driven through the area when I lived in NoVa and Washington, DC. It's certainly country.... ....and I thought you all would certainly have good broadband because of the wealth in the area, but I found out otherwise. The population isn't as dense as other places where better service is offered. I understand your pain though, I'm just saying that it's good that you have any broadband considering how far you are from the DC metro area. 50 miles from any metro area is the boonies. Cross into West Virginia and see how bad it can get.

I'm sure Charles Town, WVa doesn't have the broadband options you do.

The panhandle actually has on average the highest speeds out of all of W.VA. I do think its due to being "blessed" to be served by Comcast - the speed plans are the same as they are in VA, DOCSIS3 and all.

I would rather deal with Comcast than Frontier, or a small regional cable MSO.

Charles Town has a similar selection but no future in broadband. Comcast for cable, Frontier ADSL.

At least I can continue to hope VZ builds out FIOS as mandated, the damn CO has the equipment, and surrounding areas are fed from it. W.VA got cheated out of FIOS by VZ.

Totally agree on all counts. Comcast has been very good for that area. Now, my experience with Verizon WIRELESS in Charles Town and the surrounding area driving from there TO Purcellville and then back into the DC metro area wasn't too hot in W. VA. I took a lot of back roads to do this, so I'm not surprised. It was VERY rural. Yes, I know you're closer to Leesburg and Ashburn and probably have NO problems with wireless, but just a short drive further West from you and everything goes wonky. I like my FiOS, but they're not perfect, BUT you deserve options.

Totally agree - W.VA wireless is pretty horrible. I am on T-Mobile so its even worse than AT&T/VZ/Sprint out there as T has only 5 towers in the entire state it seems (all near I-81 Martinsburg/Charles Town).

As for west of Loudoun in VA Clarke and Fredrick are decently served. Both actually have more dense deployment of Comcast than Loudoun. Fredrick has little tiny pockets of FIOS in new subdivisions only (and apparently some new pockets of FIOS within Winchester city???) , Clarke has no FIOS.

Fredrick County did a much better job with their cable franchise - Comcast serves some very rural locations over there.

Wireless over the mountain in the valley is OK - I-81 ensures a corridor of good coverage from all carriers.

If FiOS is going to offer FiOS in the area so spotily like that, then they should just server their entire footprint.

I had it when I lived there, but I lived in Prince William County; everyone I knew could get it. Oh well. Maybe they'll wise up.

It seems to me that VZ thinks they can hold the abandoned copper customers hostage to force them to LTE if they cant run to cable. If VZ sells off its rural CO's they dont give a shit about, DSL will be deployed by the next ILEC that owns it. Which means crushing McAdam's LTE overage dreams.

Its really twisted what they are doing.

Ha! Funny comment at the end. It is true. I wonder if they realize how twisted what they're doing is?