Yesterday we noted that customers of independent ISP DSLExtreme are being told that Verizon has refused to renew their partnership allowing them to offer a re-branded version of Verizon FiOS. The service, launched by DSLExtreme in March of last year, involved offering fiber to the home service at a cheaper price than even Verizon -- which likely means DSLExtreme was working with ridiculously tight profit margins. According to DSLExtreme, the company "made extensive efforts" to renegotiate a deal with Verizon, though Verizon refused.

We reached out to Verizon, who confirmed that the company is discontinuing the wholesale fiber-to-the-home Internet access offering utilized by DSLExtreme -- and other ISPs. We don't imagine that's a very long list given the tight margins and Verizon's lack of CLEC empathy, though we've asked Verizon if they can provide a total impacted ISP count.

"The decision to discontinue the service was a business decision based on the cost of providing and maintaining the service to the limited number of customers that have been generated over the past several years," Verizon's Robert Elek tells Broadband Reports. "After being in market with the service for 5+ years, the service was simply not cost-effective to maintain," he notes.

"It's really that simple," he adds. We're waiting to hear back from DSLExtreme, to see if they concur with the "simplicity" of Verizon's decision.

"We have informed all of the impacted ISPs that we are committed to working with them to ensure an orderly wind down of the wholesale fiber Internet access service over the next nine months." As the letter to DSLExtreme customers notes, users must be offloaded from the fiber service by March of 2011.