Verizon is Unmoved By Your Town's Rally Demanding More FiOS Thursday Nov 06 2014 12:01 EDT Tipped by Bill Neilson As noted previously, Verizon's FiOS expansion has been over for several years, with the exception of franchise build out promises for major cities (though some of those deployment promises, like in NYC, probably won't be met). Still, some of the forgotten regions in Verizon's footprint (like Alexandria, Baltimore, Buffalo & Boston) continue to hold out hope that the company will eventually decide to extend FiOS a little bit further. Add Riverhead, Long Island to the list of towns annoyed by the fact Verizon doesn't want to finish the job. The town of 33,506 has been pushing Verizon to expand FiOS, and union workers this week planned a rally at Town Hall to drum up support among locals. While Verizon PR used to issue "let's wait and see" statements to keep optimism afloat, they've long since made it clear any FiOS expansion simply isn't happening: quote:
“It’s a simple no,” said Verizon spokesperson John Bonomo. “I hate to be blunt, but the answer is no"...“Back in those days we reached out to a lot of communities because we were starting to build a business,” he said. “Now we have built that business."
The local unions apparently believe that if they stoke local annoyance at the regional cable monopoly, they can prompt the state PSC to act and force Verizon to expand FiOS. Not happening, proclaims Verizon: quote:
Mr. Gendron said the rally will hopefully influence the Public Service Commission to step in and put pressure on Verizon to expand its service. But Mr. Bonomo, the Verizon spokesperson, said the PSC is a regulatory entity that doesn’t have a say in what business decisions Verizon chooses to make. "Do they have any influence or any ability to require us to build fiber and offer FiOS services in a particular area?” he asked. “No.”
Shortly after FiOS recently passed its ten year anniversary, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam stated he wouldn't rule out possible FiOS expansion, but only in "unique opportunities" (he means high-end developments where costs are low and ROI is high). Everybody else sitting on antiquated DSL or dealing with a cable monopoly waiting for FiOS? Don't hold your breath: Verizon's eye remains focused on the sale of far more expensive LTE wireless services. |
| |
FiOS is a mediocre and overpriced fiber product anyway.If these communities want a fiber network why aren't they building it themselves instead of wanting Verizon to come in and half-ass it like they've done through the rest of the country?
FiOS is a comparably shit service to something like Google Fiber or even AT&T GigaPower.
Verizon has intentionally held back FiOS from its full potential. They could easily provide 1 Gbps speeds but instead of Verizon only provides much lower max speed tiers like 50/50, 150/150, or 300/300, and charges an arm and a leg for them. If you don't want to bundle in TV you're looking at $200+ a month to get speeds 20% of what Google offers for $70 a month.
Verizon's TV service is also subpar, way behind on HD channel adds and way too much over-compression because they have too many MPEG-2 only capable boxes in the field.
Google Fiber's TV service passes through every feed they receive from a network untouched be it MPEG-2 or H.264, unlike Verizon. They have a gold standard TV product just like they have a gold standard Internet product.
Verizon's 50/50 package costs the same as Google's 1 Gbps package.
Verizon FiOS was once an intriguing product but they've sat on their laurels and let DOCSIS 3.0/3.1 cable and Google Fiber, local muni fiber ISPs, and AT&T GigaPower catch up or surpass them.
Verizon's 150 and 300 Mbps FiOS tiers just aren't so impressive anymore with all these 1 Gbps fiber offerings we are seeing and their cable competitors like Time Warner bumping up their speeds to 300 Mbps. | |  PoloDude
VIP
join:2006-03-29
Northport, NY
kudos:3 |
screwed by cwa1108Vz wanted to offer a really nice retirement package. minimum 40k in extra incentive. The company at time had not said no to MAYBE expanding the footprint into Brookhaven.
The union ,Mr.Gendron, said the package had not be offered in all areas. Vz following the existing contract said... "We've invested $20 billion so far. We are done" Vz attorneys have steamrolled over the HACK ones from the union. | |  Zenit
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA
kudos:6 ·T-Mobile US
 ·Xfinity
|
Zenit
Premium Member
2014-Nov-6 2:02 pm
Fuck you, Verizon.My town's CO has FIOS equipment. You built out to unincorporated areas outside town in this year, after letting said equipment sit idle for 7 years. The town asks why you ignore us when we are the densest area right around the CO.
You give boilerplate reasons. "VZ is not looking to build in your area. We are focusing on wireless." You get the county authorities to side with you.
So, no FIOS for us even though GPON OLT's are sitting literally in walking distance from my desk.
Even worse, you leave countless other addresses served by you nationwide totally unserved - no DSL, no FIOS, you wont even hook up an ISDN line anymore. LTE is the solution, you say. LTE. Wireless. LESS.
VZ is a vengeful, lazy, monopolistic relic zombie child of Ma Bell. It has forgotten anything to do with the "Spirit of service".
No disrespect to those that actually do their jobs at VZ and try to provide service to the communities that they work in. You have it tough going up against this management that solely focuses on how to increase the bottom line to ridiculous levels. They leave you with little tools or resources to do your jobs. This anger is directed to those that decide who becomes the haves and have nots. | | | |
Verizon Fios...fare thee well. I move off to an area only fed by, gulp, ComSpastic.
As for Fios...
-Verizon wants to be Fed Pork.
(get the tax money from the government in subsidies and bills...) | |
How about .. |
|
·
·
