The FCC this week announced that Verizon will be paying $5 million to settle an investigation into the company's failure to investigate and repair rural phone call completion issues. According to an FCC investigation, Verizon failed to respond to a spike in call completion complaints during a several month stretch in 2013. Verizon has agreed to pay a $2 million fine, and spend another $3 million on shoring up the company's internal reporting systems. Verizon has increasingly been looking to offload rural POTS and DSL users it's not interested in upgrading, and this effort frequently involves trying to pretend these users (or the employees that support them) exist.
For VZ, this is 'part of doing business' until they can offload POTS/DSL. Drop in the bucket compared to what they can/do/will make off of the sale, and use of wireless.
They make far more than this when failing to provide or live up to agreements, it's actually sound business policy to break rules when the fines are so powerfully small.
how about fining them twice the amount they got in USF that year. they are being paid to keep them up with the USF. if they are not doing that take the money back. for defrauding the fund make it at least double.
Verizon is notorious for adding "regulatory recovery" fees onto customers when things like this happen.. they've been left to their own devices in states like NY where similar battles go unnoticed... all you have to do is dig into the legal tariff filings of Verizon in NY state. (and rulings/decisions by the NYS PSC over the last several years).
btw, people don't live in WV for the broadband.. mainly it's for the jobs paid for by mining coal.
how many years will customers sing the same tune? it certainly won't come from a Veizon spinoff company
And coal mining is dying as power companies are being forced to use cleaner sources of energy like natural gas. Then West Virgina's biggest economy will be retail and fast food like Massachusetts when industry left the state. Another big money maker here is social services. There is no industry left in this no good state of Massachusetts. That's the only benefits of over regulation and its coming to a state near you.
Might as well jump on the bio fuel bandwagon now.. oil wont't be dirt cheap forever (just waiting for a trigger to jack it back up). Bio fuels and other renewables such as wind turbines, and solar will be good sources of power in the future. Also hybrid electric/multi fuel vehicles will become mainstream by the time children born today can drive.
Unless something changes.. WV will still have majority copper networks serving the public around that same time.
When is it ever going to happen that companies that make millions in a day (hypothetically, I think) get fined according to what they CAN'T afford so easily?
This is nothing but pocket change for Verizon and something they've already just blown off!