Verizon Downplays FiOS Deployment Freeze And plays up the level of market competition... A recent Washington Post article laments the lack of competition in the broadband sector -- and criticizes the FCC's broadband plan for doing virtually nothing about it. Author Rob Pegoraro also takes a moment to mention the fact that Verizon has stopped new FiOS deployments in markets that haven't struck franchise agreements (with the exception of some major cities) -- something we've been talking about for months. Verizon apparently didn't much like Rob's post, the company's Link Hoewing writing a blog post complaining that Pegoraro sees the glass "half or more empty." In traditional Verizon style Hoewing proceeds to insist our cup runneth over. According to Verizon, the market isn't suffering from a duopoly/monopoly logjam -- but is (unbeknownst to many people covering the sector) highly competitive. Hoewing also touches on the state of their FiOS deployment: As a sign that the market in broadband is not working, Rob suggests that Verizon’s deployment of its FiOS technology is ending and that this suggests that another “bright light is dimming.” What? Verizon has multi-year projects currently underway to deploy FiOS in major urban markets such as New York City, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. In NYC, we are the only provider committed to reaching all 5 boroughs. We have the people in place and the resources committed to finish the job in these cities. Of course Link doesn't comment on what happens to a very long list of cities like Baltimore, Boston or Alexandria that Verizon has decided not to upgrade from last-generation DSL. Link also doesn't mention that while many of these bigger cities (NY, DC, Philly) have struck deals to requiring Verizon to wire the entire city -- most of the contracts also include language that allow Verizon to pull away from this obligation if they're not seeing the kind of TV adoption levels they'd like. Also unmentioned by Hoewing? Verizon's plan to sell off huge swaths of rural America they had no interest in upgrading. Update: Pegoraro has an updated blog post responding to Verizon.
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  pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | No Freeze Here In Maryland at least, Verizon has focused development on the most populous areas first. Even after this "freeze" was announced, Verizon continued to post updates to its construction location information for this state. It seems that they have been continuing to expand FIOS deployments well into 2010.
»www22.verizon.com/about/communit···ion.html
And yes, I only know this because I check every month.
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"Net Neutrality" zealots - the people you can thank for your capped Internet service. | |
|  | | | Re: No Freeze Here They're still finishing out some communities where they already struck franchise agreements, but no new franchise agreements are being struck. | |
| | | pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | Re: No Freeze Here said by Karl Bode:They're still finishing out some communities where they already struck franchise agreements, but no new franchise agreements are being struck. In Maryland franchise agreements generally are done by the county, xor, an incorporated town or city (i.e. Chevy Chase, Rockville or Baltimore). Indeed, it doesn't look like any new locations in Maryland have been added for quite some time, but that would have been long before the freeze indicated.
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"Net Neutrality" zealots - the people you can thank for your capped Internet service. | |
| | | | | | Re: No Freeze Here said by pnh102:said by Karl Bode:They're still finishing out some communities where they already struck franchise agreements, but no new franchise agreements are being struck. In Maryland franchise agreements generally are done by the county, xor, an incorporated town or city (i.e. Chevy Chase, Rockville or Baltimore). Indeed, it doesn't look like any new locations in Maryland have been added for quite some time, but that would have been long before the freeze indicated. What is your point? Verizon is no longer expanding FIOS. That's a fact that you have failed to argue. | |
| | | | | pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD |  Re: No Freeze Here
said by sonicmerlin:What is your point? Verizon is no longer expanding FIOS. That's a fact that you have failed to argue. Except for the fact that Verizon has been expanding FIOS in Maryland in the counties listed at the link I provided.
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"Net Neutrality" zealots - the people you can thank for your capped Internet service. | |
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| | PDXPLT
join:2003-12-04
Banks, OR
1 edit | FIOS ahs always been mostly about TV 'makes sense they're concentrating on areas with existing franchise agreements. From VZ's perspective, while high-speed internet was the high-visibility glamour application for FIOS, the main reason they deployed it was to grab some of that lucrative "cable TV" cash cow. People pay upwards of $80-$100 a month for the equivalent of a few megabits per TV, streamed to a handful of TV's. | |
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| | Nice spin "we are the only provider committed to reaching all 5 boroughs. "
Yeah, maybe that's because the territory was divided up all the way in 1998. Verizon, as a newer player to the cable TV game got the benefit of a citywide franchise.
Nice spin though! | |
|  Romney2012Defeat Obama 2012-Chg we can believe inPremium
join:2002-03-03
USA
kudos:4 |  Deployment clauses in contracts with cities makes sense
contracts also include language that allow Verizon to pull away from this obligation if they're not seeing the kind of TV adoption levels they'd like. That is a logical clause to have in a contract. It costs money to deploy and if the customers aren't signing up for services that cover the costs of deployment, then the promised deployment is slowed down.
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Are you happy with your rep in Washington, DC? | |
| |  cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:5
 ·Frontier FiOS
| Re: Deployment clauses in contracts with cities makes sense said by Romney2012:That is a logical clause to have in a contract. It costs money to deploy and if the customers aren't signing up for services that cover the costs of deployment, then the promised deployment is slowed down. It makes sense, but it also needs to have limitations or specifically detail what "not seeing the kind of tv adoption levels they like" really means. It would be easy for them to justify cherry picking and blame not deploying to less desirable areas on poor adoption rates (whether justified or not).
If a utility is going to to commit to serving a geographical area and seeks approval from some governing body, it needs to be for an entire area serving all people within that area, not just select portions of it. If they don't know what adoption rates are going to be or whether it's economically viable or not, perhaps they should start with several smaller test markets and build up to the largest cities in the country if you are going to deploy to a city as a whole (or borough by borough). | |
| | | Romney2012Defeat Obama 2012-Chg we can believe inPremium
join:2002-03-03
USA
kudos:4 | Re: Deployment clauses in contracts with cities makes sense said by cdru:said by Romney2012:That is a logical clause to have in a contract. It costs money to deploy and if the customers aren't signing up for services that cover the costs of deployment, then the promised deployment is slowed down. It makes sense, but it also needs to have limitations or specifically detail what "not seeing the kind of tv adoption levels they like" really means. It would be easy for them to justify cherry picking and blame not deploying to less desirable areas on poor adoption rates (whether justified or not). If a utility is going to to commit to serving a geographical area and seeks approval from some governing body, it needs to be for an entire area serving all people within that area, not just select portions of it. If they don't know what adoption rates are going to be or whether it's economically viable or not, perhaps they should start with several smaller test markets and build up to the largest cities in the country if you are going to deploy to a city as a whole (or borough by borough). That is why there are 2 sides to a contract. The municipalities involved have lawyers to watch out for their interests.
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Are you happy with your rep in Washington, DC? | |
| | | | cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:5 Reviews:
·Frontier FiOS
1 edit | Re: Deployment clauses in contracts with cities makes sense said by Romney2012:That is why there are 2 sides to a contract. The municipalities involved have lawyers to watch out for their interests. Right. But there are instances where utilities pressure, bully, whatever the city into too lax of a contract or agreement, or at least lopsided in the utilities favor. I'm not saying that Verizon did this here or anywhere else, but just in general. | |
| | | | | | Don't be ridiculous. The municipalities are at the whim of Verizon. Aside from the lobbyists, the local governments have no other options. If they turn aside Verizon's demands they're left with aging, last-generation DSL that is slowly falling apart, stunting their community's growth. Because of lobbyists they can't even initiate their own muni fiber projects. | |
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| | Verizon Tell me why is it again that you are not competing in Houston TX? Oh right, because the DUOPOLY of Comcast/ATT (that you say doesn't exist) is the only people doing business here in my neck of the woods.
Jeez I miss competition... | |
| | | | Re: Verizon Everyone is always crying about competition. Then when some rolls out, everyone cries that it costs too much or is not competitive and then they do not sign up. Company then freezes roll out as it is costing them too much. I think i am starting to see a pattern here. | |
| | | | | Re: Verizon said by trythisfirst :
Everyone is always crying about competition. Then when some rolls out, everyone cries that it costs too much or is not competitive and then they do not sign up. Company then freezes roll out as it is costing them too much. I think i am starting to see a pattern here.
I think I'm seeing a pattern here. You provide absolutely no data for your claims while defending Verizon and blaming people for not buying Verizon's price-inflated product. | |
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| | ... quote:
I happen to remember those days pretty well, and yes, there were many providers of dial-up access service fourteen years ago. To the degree that some of those providers offered value-added services, I would agree that they were beneficial for consumers, but the fact is that scenario was extremely unusual. The vast majority of dial-up services were not differentiated in meaningful ways for consumers. In other words, dial-up was a commodity service. The only differentiator for most people was price, and as can be expected under those circumstances, only the most efficient providers can survive.
This gives very instructive insight into the mindset of modern corporate "capitalists". These people really don't like capitalism. Having offerings from many different businesses that commoditize products and services, which destroys the pricing power of any firm is what capitalism does well in a healthy competitive environment in which there aren't enormous barriers to entry.
Corporations have never believed in competitive free capitalist markets. They have always sought carefully controlled markets with pricing power.
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Of course, we now know that is exactly what happened.
This is dishonest. Certainly fierce price competition wipes out many of the more inefficient operations but the reason why the competitive dial up market died isn't because price competition killed it. It is because broadband access become the norm and the nature of broadband service, combined with deregulation pushes, led to a drastically different market environment in which, unlike carefully regulated voice lines, the incumbents used their control of the pipe to dominate internet access services over the pipe. If there had been the same deregulation of phone lines there would never have been a competitive dial-up isp market to begin with.
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Moreover, as I recall, the typical Internet service at that time offered speeds of 28.8 or 33.6 kbps. Yes, those were the days of the “World Wide Wait.”
This is true and I'm sure no one wants to go back to the technical limitations of dial-up. Let's understand, though, that before the robust dial-up market led to massive growth in internet connectivity high speed connections were available but they were extremely costly and viewed by the telcos as only appropriate for the enterprise environment. Without that precursor dial-up market there would never have been high speed access for residential and small-business users. We would still live in the world of voice service for the little people and extremely costly T1-T3 services for the business world. The telcos were quite content with this world. It was predictable and highly profitable.
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Jumping forward to seven years ago, Rob says we were enjoying Internet access service from a variety of DSL providers, but again, there wasn’t meaningful differentiation among providers.
Again the concern with avoiding being commoditized.
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If things broke it was very difficult to figure out where the problem resided (the copper line? The DSL wholesale unit? The ISP? The DSLAM? The customer DSL modem
How much of this was a result of technical complications and how much was a result of game playing for political advantage?
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82 % of U.S. homes have a choice of at least two broadband technologies, and that competition encourages infrastructure investment.
So he says duopoly is a problem and you say duopoly is wonderful.
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via 4G wireless and satellite service not to mention the fact that three or more 3G wireless service providers serve 77% of the U.S. population
And who controls most of the wireless market? Oh, that's right, it's ATT and verizon, the telcos that are also one half of the cable/bell duopoly.
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Rob uncharacteristically sees the glass as being “half or more empty” and focuses on service problems with Internet access. Yet, the FCCs own consumer survey (see here and here) conducted in October/November of last year found that 92 percent of those online are somewhat or very satisfied with their current Internet service at home.
Which proves what about how robust and competitive the market is or is not? Nothing.
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As a sign that the market in broadband is not working, Rob suggests that Verizon’s deployment of its FiOS technology is ending and that this suggests that another “bright light is dimming.” What? Verizon has multi-year projects currently underway to deploy FiOS in major urban markets such as New York City, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.
I give verizon credit for having the foresight to roll out fios. Still, is the company denying that it has scaled back its plans and is not as aggressive with its deployments as it was previously talking about?
"Bright light dimming" may not be the way you would put it but it doesn't seem like an unreasonable way to characterize what is happening.
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|  batterupI Can Not Tell A Lie.Premium
join:2003-02-06
Netcong, NJ | Ma Bell is dead;  and yet the people bitch. | |
| | Reviews:
 ·Optimum Online
·Verizon FiOS
| Re: Ma Bell is dead; said by batterup: and yet the people bitch. AT&T and Verizon, and Qwest (three stooges?) are *MUCH* better telcos.
/sarcasm, reality & irony rolled all into one | |
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