Last week, we noted that Comcast was trying to stall Verizon's deployment of FiOS into the cable giant's home town of Philadelphia, by feigning indignation before the city council over the fact that the telco's FTTH service probably wouldn't reach all parts of the city, and (correctly) noting that the addition of telcoTV to the market probably wouldn't lower TV prices. People used to care about redlining, which is why local franchises used to force cable operators to deploy into less profitable rural areas if they wanted to do business at all.

But this is a new age, and the baby bells have lobbied the FCC and State lawmakers to gut the local franchise system, legalizing cherry picking in most suburban markets. But they've still got to convince many individual cities, and new bendable fiber for apartment installs, mixed with lagging DSL subscriber additions, make doing so a priority. So Verizon this week fired back at Comcast, promising to Philly leaders that they won't engage in cherry picking or redlining of any kind:While Verizon will bring FiOS to much of the city, most of these recent agreements they're signing with cities like NY and DC include plenty of loopholes and very few penalties for failing to stick to their deployment schedule, allowing Verizon to wiggle or buy their way out of obligations. In NYC, where they've promised to have every single home wired by 2014, the franchise allows Verizon to either stall indefinitely or buy their way out of obligations for a few cool million.

Fortunately for Verizon, nobody in this industry (particularly politicians) has very long attention span when it comes to Verizon promises, nor does anybody bother to read the fine print of these agreements, usually hashed out privately between Verizon and city leaders with virtually no public input. All the same, that's very sweet of Verizon to pretend they care about even deployment, and it's absolutely adorable to see Comcast pretending they care about high TV prices.