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Verizon Misses NYC FiOS Deadline, Often Falsely Blames Landlords

As we noted yesterday Verizon is going to miss the company's deadline for providing FiOS to all of NYC, something that shouldn't surprise you if you actually understood the loophole-filled deal, closed-door deal Verizon and Mayor Bloomberg signed back in 2008. That agreement allowed Verizon to conflate the terms "homes served" with "homes passed," as well as wiggle around certain deployment obligations with some lawyer elbow grease.

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As the deadline has gotten closer we've noted how Verizon was making it very clear they were largely going to blame stubborn landlords for the missed goal, even though Verizon knew full well the promise was a hollow one -- since they designed it that way.

That's not to say that there aren't some unreasonable landlords (it is NYC after all), but John Brodkin at Ars Technica dug into some of the feuds between landlords and Verizon and found that a suspicious number of Verizon claims of blocked access by landlords were just Verizon being incompetent:

quote:
In one case, Verizon wrongly identified an ophthalmologist named Tammy Chu as the owner of a building. When Chu received a complaint from Verizon in December 2013, she informed the company that she was not the owner of the building and therefore had no authority to deny or permit any installations inside the structure. Yet two months later, she received another letter from Verizon in the form of a petition for orders of entry, she wrote in a letter to the State Public Service Commission and Verizon.

"Verizon should do some research to confirm the names of the building owners before making accusations," she wrote. "Such erroneous accusations should not be inconsequential. This experience indicates how incompetent Verizon is."

In response to another petition from Verizon, Sequoia Condominium attorneys wrote in April that Verizon "failed to properly seek access to the subject premises prior to the commencement of this proceeding." The building operator "has made numerous attempts to schedule access for the installation of the fiber optic network with various Verizon representatives." The condo superintendent met with a Verizon contractor to determine next steps, but "thereafter, no further communication nor any additional attempt to access the subject premises for the purpose of the installation of the aforesaid fiber-optic network was made by any Verizon representative."


Brodkin also had several landlords tell him that Verizon refused to install FiOS in their apartment buildings unless the landlord managed to get all tenants to agree to lock themselves into an exclusive five year deal with Verizon, something Verizon claims is a "misunderstanding." There's scattered other examples where Verizon wasn't easy to contact, or just didn't respond to requests (even if landlords were willing to pay the lion's share of the install costs).

Again, that's not to say some landlords didn't get in the way (some already had exclusive deals with other companies, or didn't like the damage FiOS installers did to buildings), but if you've followed Verizon and Bell Atlantic's MO over the years (New Jersey, Pennsylvania) you start to see a pattern: agree to provide broadband in exchange for a laundry-list of perks, subsidies and tax cuts, then bring out the lawyers and excuses when people notice you failed to deliver years later.

Most recommended from 29 comments



rit56
join:2000-12-01
New York, NY

4 recommendations

rit56

Member

Landlord

My landlord's family owns over 20 buildings, mostly in Manhattan and downtown. They gave Verizon written authorization to wire all their buildings in 2008. Verizon has not done one, not one. They have no interest what so ever and it is all them.
shmerl
join:2013-10-21

2 recommendations

shmerl

Member

It's pointless to blame landlords

When Verizon didn't even start putting fiber optical cables in many areas in NYC. So such excuse is lame. They didn't even "pass" many streets yet.