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Filling in the Broadband Gaps: Your Tales of Connection

Whether it's a cable company demanding thousands of dollars for a hundred yards of coaxial or a telco refusing to provide DSL, customers all over the country work tirelessly to get carriers to put in a little extra effort to shore up connectivity gaps. DSLReports reader pjsutton See Profile shares his story trying to get Verizon to upgrade DSL in Pennsylvania, a state with a rich history of magically forgotten broadband deployment promises.

In this day and age of telephone companies ignoring their copper infrastructure and leaving it to rot in the ground, Pennsylvania has placed pressure on telcos to maintain and actually upgrade those areas of the state that lack broadband access.

Act 183 of 2004 mandates that all 37 telephone companies in the state offer DSL to every access line by the end of 2015, at no construction cost to the customer. Most smaller companies completed the rollout by 2008; CenturyLink and Windstream were finished by 2013. And, not surprisingly, Verizon will not be completed until the end of 2015. The law required a minimum standard of 1.544 Mbps down and 128 Kbps up – not blazing fast by today’s standards, but more than adequate for most use.

Pennsylvania is home to the country’s third-largest rural population, which is what motivated the state Department of Community & Economic Development to come up with a universal broadband deployment plan in the early 2000’s. The legislation finally became law in 2004.

One of the more interesting stipulations of the law gave residents the ability to petition their local telco to upgrade their area first. This is known as the Bona Fide Retail Request (BFRR) program. The BFRR program allows residents to sign petitions indicating their interest in subscribing to DSL. The forms are then submitted to the company and sorted by carrier service areas, which are small subsections of an exchange that currently lack DSL service. DSL will be deployed when a minimum of either 50 lines or 25% of the number of lines in an area, whichever is less, are on file. The company must then provide service within either 12 or 24 months, depending on how “major” the project is deemed to be.

I live in a small development of 10 homes at the very end of the lines from our central office, too far for DSL service; the next house goes to a different CO. Cable service stops a half-mile down the road. Most of us have long abandoned satellite internet and spent our time on expensive, capped 3G or 4G wireless hotspots, which are only as good as the cell network they run on. With so many of us use the local tower, it is often congested and slow. So, I became the “aggregator” for my area and was responsible for collecting all forms and sending them to Verizon.

I contacted Verizon and was given a list of 19 possible customers, of which I only needed to find 3 more (in addition to myself) to trigger the deployment. We were deemed a “major” construction project, so the law stated that Verizon had an additional 12 months to complete the deployment.

It was not hard to find 3 neighbors interested in DSL, so my area reached the required number of forms in October 2012, just a few weeks after first beginning the process. We were deemed a major project, and were “on hold” for the first 12 months. The law allowed Verizon to only actively work on 20 projects at a time. We started as number 47, and had to wait to work our way up to the top 20. Over the past year, I have watched the installation of new telephone poles and a new fiber-fed remote terminal which will provide service to us. Our deployment date is set for October 25, 2014.

Verizon claims they are “ahead of schedule” to complete the requirement, and also states that all of its central offices in PA are DSL equipped. They also state that 96% of their access lines are eligible for DSL, and provide periodic updates at their website, here.

If a state as large as PA can achieve such a feat as universal broadband deployment, and keep large companies like Verizon and CenturyLink in line, I fail to see why other states have had such troubles doing the same thing. If you’re in an area that still lacks broadband, I urge you to contact your local government leaders and start a dialog with them. It can’t hurt to try.

If you’re interested, I have been chronicling the progress over on the Verizon DSL forum here.

If you'd like to tell your story about trying to get your local carrier to provide broadband access as part of this series, please contact us.

Most recommended from 57 comments



Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA
·Comcast XFINITY

2 recommendations

Zenit_IIfx

Premium Member

The key, regulation!

The key to broadband availability in the USA is regulation of the incumbent ILEC and MSO's. PA has done good with the universal DSL law, ensuring that most everyone will have access to some type of unlimited, low latency data connection.

Verizon deserves the punishment of being forced to provide service. Here in Virginia they are a miserable ILEC outside of FIOS areas (which only cover small portions of the Bell or GTE footprint here, only two counties got a full build out)- there are plenty of CO's that are not even DSL capable. Verizon acts like fiber fed SLC-5's cant be retrofitted for DSL, and pretends that LTE is good enough.

Its not that rural areas are impossible to serve, or not profitable to serve, its that they are not as profitable to serve. In my county VZ wired some rural areas with FIOS - but the homes in those places start in the "low" 700's and frequently sell at above 1 million. VZ will build where the Millionaires are for sure, even if its a bit more difficult than wiring up a town or large subdivision.
So while VZ continues cherry picking the most wealthy corners of the state for FIOS, the rest of the Bell and GTE footprint is left rotting away with trash bag repairs and duct tape.

Shame on the politicians that allow deregulation of the telecom industry. Shame on the VA SCC for scrapping the universal service provisions.

Companies like Verizon that have an income of $30 billion in one quarter have no excuse for letting critical infrastructure crumble.