New York City officials says they may sue Verizon for failing to live up to the FiOS deployment obligations embedded in the telco's 2008 franchise agreement with the city. A report by the city released back in June found that Verizon has fallen well short of the company's promise to bring FiOS to 100% of the city by 2014.
Of course as
we warned back in 2008, the contract had ample loopholes allowing Verizon to tap dance around (or buy their way through) these obligations.
Fast forward seven years and New York City officials are annoyed, and have been looking for ways to pressure Verizon. That has included actually stopping and taking a closer look at Verizon's contracts with the city.
But the city also now tells the New York Times they may also consider suing Verizon over its FiOS deployment failures:
quote:
“We want them to make it available to everyone in every ZIP code and on every block so that everyone can get online, to do research, to do their homework,” said Maya Wiley, the chief lawyer for Mayor de Blasio. “We need our residents to get online.”Ms. Wiley said that her staff was negotiating with Verizon and that the city would prefer not to sue the company for failing to fulfill its obligation. But, she added, “if that’s what we have to do, then that’s what we’ll do."
For their part, Verizon continues to insist they did nothing wrong, arguing that by "100%" of the city they meant 100% of homes "passed" with fiber (fiber running somewhere relatively close outside), not necessarily "served." Verizon has also repeatedly tried to blame landlords for restricting access to necessary building internals.
Even if some of those excuses are true, as we've seen in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, promising to deploy uniform FiOS in exchange for tax benefits and subsidies -- and then failing to deliver -- is longstanding habit for Verizon.
Still, New York City's problem is that the 2008 closed-door agreement between then Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Verizon contained all manner of loophole language that made Verizon's bait and switch practices perfectly legal. As such, it should be curious to see if this is empty bravado on the part of the city, or if they're really willing to fire up the lawyers to fight for more even FiOS deployment.
