With the exception of major city franchise obligations (and even those have lots of wiggle room), Verizon all but ended their FiOS expansion plans around five years 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 their fixed line networks any more. If you live in one of those un-upgraded cities like Buffalo, Boston or Alexandria, that's a tough pill to swallow.
"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," Verizon CFO Fran Shammo stated during the company's
earnings call last week. "Some of that is because we are getting to the end of our committed build around FiOS, penetration is getting higher," noted Shammo.
In fact, in many DSL markets Verizon is willfully neglecting users and raising rates in the hopes of driving them to wireless services or even cable competitors. The company took significant criticism for using 2012's superstorm Sandy to simply leave many DSL users disconnected. Like AT&T, Verizon's interest is in the oodles of money to be made from capped wireless plans.
For a few years the company left it open ended as to whether they'd return to a meaningful FiOS build out to locations like Boston, but the answer to that question these days appears to be a resounding no.