Cablevision: Verizon Redlining

"what percentage of households and businesses are likely to want the service"

That does sound like redlining, but Verzion is in business to make money. I am sure when Cablevsion rolled out cable X years ago they went for the higher payer mix 1st too.

Well I suppose that would be the same as cable rates being higher in more affluent areas...

Oh yeah, my bad, the cable industry really doesn't want to discuss rates...

Actually it would be more like increasing cable rates in lower income areas.

Lower income areas are more expensive to service due to non-pays, lower revenue per subscriber and public infrastructure issues.

Raising rates is just one last hurrah before Fios sets in. That way in a year when they are forced to be competitive, they can call it a "sale".

Nothing new, retail does it all the time.

honestly that does make sense, your not going to wire the ghetto for fios, where most people don't have a computer. Verizon is however, treading on very unstable ground.

Well, they're doing it in Delaware. I see Fios equipment going up on the poles in such Wilmington neighborhoods as Eastlake, Southbridge, and the like. Not only are these not affluent areas, they are the ghetto. High crime areas with lower than average incomes.

Sure, a lot of people in the "ghetto" don't have a screaming interest in high speed internet, but they ALL have cable TV. Maybe Verizon sees the opportunity to use the TV service as a way to get the fiber into these homes, and eventually shut down the crappy copper plants in these areas.

And you would be surprised how many people in the "ghetto" have internet access. It's not just for us geeks anymore. You can drop $150 on a used system that will get you on line at this point.

No righteous indignation, or anything. Just an observation. I couldn't get righteously indignant about it anyway, I live in the suburbs..

I don't have ghettos where I live, but we do have quite a few golf course communities. People who live there normally aren't permanent residents and have a bazillion *houses* in other parts of the country and constantly moving...

The state forced cablevision to provide "low income" housing in Brooklyn with discounted broadband access. obviously they are pissed off! I'm sure verizon would like to avoid revenue loss for as long as possible, and wire up decent neighborhoods first. Makes sense. Cablevision is a corrupt corporation anyway; those who worked for that company know what I'm talking about. Not to say that verizon is a saint either... FIOS sure is making cablevision OOL nervous, and that's a good thing for everyone!

I live in an "inner city black neighborhood" in Brooklyn (around 1800 violent crimes a year in my precinct, but going down). We are wired by Cablevision. My opinion is that if they are given permission to dig up all the roads and sidewalks, it is reasonable to require that they wire all neighborhoods, for in the long term this makes the neighborhood more attractive. Though it won't look good on the next Cablevision quarterly statement, the city can bargain like any other business for its own profit.

There are alot of customers using Cablevision, as can be seen by the wires going from the pole to the houses. (Between the blocks houses are back-to-back, with telco and cable strung up sharing the same poles. Telco is a few feet below the cable). Also if you go to the roof of the projects or rent-controlled buildings, you'll see a forest of tv dishes.

In other words, there are plenty of customers in 'poor' neighborhoods, people who aren't going to spend the evening in a sports club or learning piano or whatever it is the 'rich' do with their money.

Yes, but I doubt it will ever happen. The state will not ask, or else verizon would probably just say...

quote:

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"ok we are not going to deploy this new technology in your state. Every other state will have it but yours."

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"Cablevision is a corrupt corporation anyway; those who worked for that company know what I'm talking about."

Care to enlighten the rest of us who don't work for Cablevision?

When you are allowed to collect and keep a levy that is intended to ensure the lower income areas are served...

You don't get to redline.

Verizon is currently wiring the Village and Town of Ossining where there is a very large unemployment issue. There is also a very large minority contingent with lots of day labor's standing on various corners, all looking for work.

This is pretty similar to when Cablevision started wiring for OOL in the beginning. More selective, but still similar.

the unemployeed and low income areas watch more tv then any other group. Its fact, and makes sense. Its actually opposite to what Verizon is stating. I live in a moderate area, and most people dont care about fios. Its just not on there radar. An alternate to cable is a good, they say.

Cablevision: Verizon will only install fios where they know they will get a good ROI waaaaa!!

Me: No shit. You expect them to install fios where they expect to lose money?

But the cablecos didnt have this luxury, they had to install in all areas regardless, and that is the issue.

They put Fios in near me. I am definitely going to dump my ComSpastic Cablevision for Fios and Digital TV (free). My area is affluent (Bucks County, PA) and the nodes are short runs (yet it is almost rural).

Funny, Verizon sent me a "welcome back" deal for $34.95 unlimited POTS calling (local and long distance). That is less than my Vonage (w/phantom number).

I hate to admit it, but I might just move back in with Ma (bell). Till she gets greedy. Again.;)

That was three pro-business, pro-profit, pro-capitalist, pro-intelligent management posts in a row regarding an RBOC. You'd almost think this place wasn't an anti-busineess, pro-regulation socialist hangout..

Almost...



Adam

people are willing to put up with a lot, if someone has something they want, in this case FIOS.

is the fios speed somethin' like 15/2, 10/2, 5/2
not 15/3?

30/5, 15/2 & 5/2 are the speeds offered right now...

Because of the design of the network, it is a SIMPLE upgrade for more speed....

Makes me wanna dump SBC expert 49.99 6/.6 over that. 30/5 is very nice, I doubt too many people have this speed due to pricing.
Correct me if I am wrong. 30/5 = 54.95
15/2 = 44.95
5/2 = 34.95
I'm drooling over 30/5, definitely a pipe dream for me.

I beleive those prices are correct for some Cablevision markets. In other markets (like mine), the 30/5 plan is 179 (or 199 w/o phone)

You don't mean that Verizon would charge underserved areas MORE for the service in order to subsidize service in areas where cable and other competition already exists?

Actually no. I think a 30/5 service is primarily intended for those that have some type of a business that truely needs those speeds, not the average person although they still can get it if they want. In the cablevision markets though with OOL, Verizon had to compete on price to match OOLs offerings.

Yes & no...

OOL ONLY offered 10/1, and was beta testing 20/2. They were rumored to have been testing speeds up-to 100/100 in oyster bay, but I have not seen anyone post that they actually tested this. Verizon IS offering 5/2, 15/2 & 30/5, OOL is now ramping up to give everyone 15/1 and MAY offer 30/2 & 50/50 in six months. OOL is the one who lowered prices to compete with Verizon. Verizon dropped the price on 30/5 in areas served by OOL, but OOL does not, as of yet, have ANYTHING to compete with it...

Correction.

CV is upgrading everyone for free from 10/1 (current) to 15/2 over the next six months. There will also be a new "Boost" service you can add on for $14.95/month more on top of your existing OOL bill to receive 30/2.

-Tzale

OK, yea I got the speed wrong...

But you have to admit that OOL is upgrading to 15/2 to compete with Verizon, not the other way around.:)

I will give you that Verizon dropped the price on 30/5 to stick it to OOL, but as of NOW OOL does not offer anything close to this speed to their residential customers...:D

What do I have to admit? No doubt that Verizon has the better technology and will win the broadband war in the long run. CV released this to COMPETE with FIOS. Some would say that FIOS is competing with CV since DSL was the only option for VZ before, inferior to cable. But I believe that VZ started the competition, CV is the one who needs to catch up.

-Tzale

Fiber to the home is a given. Sometime this century everyone will have fiber to their premisis. It may or may not be fiber installed by Verizon and it may or may not still belong to Verizon when it is finally in.

BUT ... as I have literally hundreds of dialup customers whose POTS service (with Verizon) sucks so bad that the best they can lock up with is 28.8, I seriously doubt that Verizon is going to be delivering those people DSL five years from now, let alone fiber in this decade.

There is your "superior Verizon technology" but in the real world and not some fantasy world defined by 1 percent of the land area of the nation.Verizon is in the fight of their life because they ignored packet switching technology for so long not because they are some cutting edge networking geniuses.

Take that to the bank.

No kidding.

I mean, look at the way my crack dealer treats me, yet I still come back.

Oh wait, that's Comcast, not a crack dealer.

My apologies to the crack dealers, I didn't mean to be insulting...

*My apologies to the crack dealers, I didn't mean to be insulting...*

Wow, simply pathetic...

Yeah, you're really lucky it could be worse, your carrier could be Verizon.

What a maroon.

Verizon has deployed FIOS in here in Irving, TX. Believe me, some of the neighborhoods with FIOS are far from affluent. But why is it so bad to sell with people that have money. It's common sense to me. It's business, not charity.

Verizon business model for FIOS is doomed to fail. Fios patchwork/piecemeal deployment will prevent it from ever reaching the saturation point to make it profitable or competitive with its rivals. By the time Verizon decides to deploy in mass the cable companies and other technologies will have caught up to FIOS from a technological standpoint and some will even be more innovative.

HAHAHAHA!

Well, I like the idea of Fios, especially since I have been paying for the friggin network since 1994 as an Pennsylvanian.

My one gripe with the whole deployment plan is that the underserved areas that they ignored with DSL are still being ignored. Now they have 10 more years of being ignored before they are in line for Fiber. How can there be new customer growth for broadband when companies continue to go after the same old customers?

How ironic.. Cablevision themselves practiced the exact same technique when they were rolling out Optimum Online in the NY Metro area..

It's a shame cable can't compete on their merits and must resort to defamation, threats to sue and predatory pricing.

This is business, not common sense or what someone feels is the right thing to do. It's pure business. If it was the other way around, Verizon would be doing what they could to stop Cablevision from moving into their space.

Replace Cablevision with Company A and Verizon with Company B and we see the same battles every day. Nothing new here... move along.

Put FIOS in an area where you wont get a return on your money?

geezzzz all i see is that guys blond hair lol .

Let me guess verizon is the tall one and Cablevision is the short one lol.

So they expect them to make FIOS available everywhere before they start selling it? It takes time to deploy entire cities and towns. Cablevision is about to start offering the 30/2 boost service but they decide to start in LI which happens to be the richest area they serve. Is that redlining or smart business? Just makes sense to start offering it in wealthier areas first. As long as there are provisions in the franchise agreements that they will have to serve entire towns or cities within a reasonable amount of time, I have no problem with the way they are deploying. Again cv did the same thing with digital cable, started in wealthy areas of LI and expanded later into less affluent area in the NYC metro area. So whats the difference?

and most of those communities have the money. They spend it on very expensive LI Wireless....

Verizon is just incompetent...they don't really do anything on purpose....they just do.

Face it... they're whining. There's nothing masterful at all in the whine. Just groping at straws. It's natural to build first in the areas that spend money (demographically) on the service, then subsidize the rest of the build with revenue from the (hopefully) more profitable first stage. I suppose the first generation cable TV builds of the seventies were in Hooterville and Mayberry? Sure, right.

Things might differ, and we might even find ourselves sympathizing with the yet-unserved areas, if it weren't a 100% system wide build out, meaning you get it now or you get it later, but you get it, period, eventually. Of course, put yourself in CV's shoes... if you could get Verizon grinding their wheels putting fiber up in an area where POTS is around all the typical home has, the cable guy has more time to try selling a cable commitment to the folks over where 86% of homes have or want high speed internet. In other words, it's incompetent to NOT build out the heaviest service areas, and work out from there.

Hey, didn't they try this whine, before, coincidentally? Isn't it comical, hearing them accuse someone of "social discrimination" on Long Island... while people in the Bronx and Brooklyn and Harlem and Queens and... well, you get the idea... wait for the new services, too?

It's not that they're masterful rhetoricians, if you ask me, they're masterful Red Herring fishermen... I can think of a few questions I would like to ask regarding deployment strategy, if I could get a top manager from Verizon in an interview, but, "why aren't you starting in the most lower middle class section of town, first, then, with a few billion down a dark rathole, trying to whistle up financing to put in the network in the affluent suburbs --- from investors who will, by that time, already think you're off the wall barmy nuts-o for deploying expensive systems like that?"

In the end, it sounds like they should be saying, "the guys in the areas you deployed to can use "us" for high speed internet and TV, you should serve areas where they have to use your DSL for HSI, and somebody else has the cable franchise..." Not a difficult between the lines read, is it? If there were a mandatory truth in marketing law, what Cablevision would be saying, should be saying, is "you're building in our service areas, and we don't like that... go build in somebody else's service area!"

WRONG!

Verizon stated as much in the employee newsletter last winter. They do NOT plan to do a 100% replacement of their network; some subscribers will not be served by the new network:

quote:

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Q: Do you envision the wireline copper network being eliminated in the future?
A: Our FTTP (fiber-to-the-premises) program envisions that much of our outside plant will be replaced by an all-fiber network, but we do not contemplate the elimination
of all copper-access plant. In some situations that would be extremely expensive with relatively little return.

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As to Verizon's reasons for alledgely 'redlining', legally it doesn't matter. If you have procedures, whatever they may be, that result in discrimination against a protected group, then those procedures are illegal, period. It doesn't matter if the procedures are done for the reasons of seniority, maximimize ROI, or whatever else the company says they're doing.

That said, i don't know what VZ is doing back East, but here they're deploying in lower-income and minority areas.

Thanks... seems to at least vaguely contradict the releases they gave to the business press around a year back... very interesting, appreciated your sharing that. At any rate, and whether "100%" means "100%" or "something around 100%", what I guess I'm saying is the same you are. I don't see them deliberately targeting "affluent" areas, here, either, as much as targeting areas where the CO is ready to go, and there's a demand for services... if that coincides with affluence, in some areas, that's not something that "astonishes" me, or makes me think Verizon's deliberately "redlining" neighborhoods. They're building plant where they can put it to immediate use and start recovering costs... and that's good business, not discrimination. You don't build a Bloomies in a Macy's town, after all... or a Macy's in a Walmart neighborhood, for that matter. "Build it and they will come" only applies where you're dealing with fantasy league baseball, after all. Build fib-op in a lot of Pittsburgh neighborhoods, for example, and you won't get a lot of HSI subscriptions and TV accounts, you'll get POTS over fiber, and the most up to date dialup internet carrier going.

... which, of course, if I were Verizon's competition, would be precisely the areas I would just love to see them service, first. It would slow deployment and cost recovery by what would seem like centuries in the areas where I had my best customer base. Great for me. If I could make the people think I was doing it "for duty and humanity" instead of for "pure self-interest"... even better...

... if they can demonstrate that Verizon's using considerations other than good business sense, fine. I don't see it, and tossing out conclusions without supporting evidence really doesn't impress me. Like the old woman asked, in the old, classic Wendy's commercial that betrays my age, "where's the beef?"

Thanks, again. Hmm. I wonder if they mean that in a long term sense? From the hype in the business press, last year, it was pretty much fifteen (or so - - I am, after all, a realist) years, everything fiber. Interesting, indeed.

I live in what is known locally as "Condo Canyon," so the population density is fairly high and given the price of real estate, the affluence ain't bad. Where's my FIOS?

Waiting on more condo assocations to give VZ permission to rewire, I guess...

-SC

They arent doing multiple dwelling units[yet].

Installing only in affluent neighborhoods?! Considering the fair market prices for homes, county and school taxes, community after community, and home to highly paid NYC workers as well as wealthy individuals I don't see how anyone can call any part of Westchester poor. Besides, CV more than likely wired dense & affluent areas with services first too. Those small little nodes on their network, like mine are last to get any new services or upgrades. Considering some believe that the ROI for FiOS won't happen as fast there's no reason why not service areas where you can get local approvals fast and a good amount of customers.

FiOS has been installed on my block this week and i can tell you NOBODY on this block is rolling in cash.

It took CV to get OOL up and running 3 years after the other towns.

Hey, I always loss the url of that site that people report all their FIOS findings, I live in bucks, pa. I heard they are doing some stuff here, but that was 6 months ago, want to know what's happening now
thx

So they stopped work in Yonkers, big whoop!, Finish the work in NASSAU, BEFORE IT SNOWS schmucks, you can't build in places that are cablevision strongholds, and expect big profits right away. Besides couldnt the mess with Yonkers have been prevented if you didn't have a jackass as project planner to work with the municipality on placement of the equipment? Then if there's some disagreement on the construction you can lay it at the hands of the municipality, and also use some COMMON sense. This is why progress has ground to a halt, its verizon's own doing since competition is more 'friendly' in place west and south, why bother if they get frustrated, people can still get verizon dsl, now at it's lowest price ever!
Also, there better be good solutions to APT buildings in 2006 or ELSE suffer the slings and arrows of redlining in NYC!

I am a business owner running a technology consulting firm out of my home. I had to use CV to get Internet access up until recently because I was too far from the CO to get DSL. I have always run servers from my home office without issue until one day I stop receiving email into my server.

Amount a year and a half ago CV decided to shut down port 25, fine I was on a consumer plan. After going around in circles with CV they told me I needed business service at $110 per month just to get port 25 opened, no static IP no port 80. Coincidentally this occurred about the same time VZ was rolling out their extended distance service. At the time VZ couldn't provide a public IP so I was still stuck with CV.

Finally about 4 months ago VZ was starting to deliver Business DSL. Didn't even think twice about changing. When I called to cancel CV they asked why and I told them. At that point the were willing to cut my rate down to their, then, introductory rate of $79 per month, but still no static IP no port 80, thanks, but no thanks! Now it turns out they're offering the $79 rate permanently.

Bottom line is that I'm with VZ DSL now and not looking back. CV is starting to get nervous with VZ extending the 18,000 foot limit, offering DSL for $14.99/mo (yes, I know it's slower) service and reselling DirecTV service to get people hooked into VZ for all three services. Now they're doing all they can to slow down the competition, they will do anything to maintain their monopoly.