With the exception of major city franchise obligations (and even those have lots of wiggle room), Verizon all but ended their FiOS expansion plans more than half a decade ago. With so many un-served cities still begging to be upgraded Verizon continually has to remind folks that they're simply not interested in upgrading a large swath of their aging DSL markets. If you live in one of those un-upgraded cities like Buffalo, Boston, Baltimore or Alexandria, that's a tough pill to swallow.
Still, Verizon continues to remind folks that if they're holding their breath for a new round of FiOS expansion, they really should stop if they'd like to survive. Speaking to investors at the Deutsche Bank 2015 Media, Internet & Telecom Conference, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo stated that outside of finishing up a few big city builds (like NYC),
FiOS expansion is over.
"I have been pretty consistent with this in the fact that we will spend more CapEx in the Wireless side and we will continue to curtail CapEx on the Wireline side," Shammo said on an earnings conference call earlier this month. "Some of that is because we are getting to the end of our committed build around FiOS, penetration is getting higher."
Verizon has taken heat from consumer advocates from using natural disasters as cover for the company's disinterest in upgrading DSL networks. Verizon's refusing to repair damaged lines and has been pushing unwanted DSL customers toward cable for years, usually with a one-two punch of steep price hikes and service apathy. Verizon executives are for more interested in focusing on far more profitable (and much more expensive) wireless broadband services.
After recently selling all
Florida, Texas and California assets to Frontier, Shammo said the company's happier with their
geographically centralized east coast fixed line presence. Still, that doesn't mean there won't be more fixed-line asset sales on the east coast, as there's plenty of locations Verizon clearly has no interest in upgrading (upstate New York and massive swaths of Massachusetts come quickly to mind).