Decades Of Failed Promises From Verizon: It Promises Fiber To Get Tax Breaks... Then Never Delivers

[think]

Decades Of Failed Promises From Verizon: It Promises Fiber To Get Tax Breaks... Then Never Delivers

by Mike Masnick
Thu, Oct 17th 2013 9:46am

A decade ago, we wrote about how Verizon had made an agreement in Pennsylvania in 1994 that it would wire up the state with fiber optic cables to every home in exchange for tax breaks equalling $2.1 billion. In exchange for such a massive tax break, Verizon promised that all homes and businesses would have access to 45Mbps symmetrical fiber by 2015. By 2004, the deal was that 50% of all homes were supposed to have that. In reality, 0% did, and some people started asking for their money back. That never happened, and it appeared that Verizon learned a valuable lesson: it can flat out lie to governments, promise 100% fiber coverage in exchange for subsidies, then not deliver, and no one will do a damn thing about it.

Because here we are about a decade later, and basically the same damn thing has happened in New York City. At least this time, Verizon actually had a fiber service to offer -- the well-known FiOS -- which it "promised" to cover 100% of NYC by 2014. Back when that was announced in 2008, Karl Bode at BroadbandReports correctly warned that you should take that promise with a large grain of salt, both because of Verizon's past failures to live up to promises, as well as the loopholes hidden in the agreement.

It looks like he was right on both accounts. As the account (linked above) at the Verge notes, the language actually is that Verizon just needs to "pass all households," which is interpreted loosely:

There were a lot of caveats in the contract, however. Verizon is only required to "pass all households," a vague term that means the fiber need to extend "to a point from which the building can be connected to the network." Verizon is not obligated to make that connection, however. As a result, the company is now claiming around 75 percent accessibility, even though the number of New Yorkers who can actually sign up for FiOS is probably much lower. A study by public advocate Bill de Blasio concluded that just 51 percent of households in New York have fiber access. The city and Verizon dispute these figures.

Read more:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decades-failed-promises-verizon-it-promises-fiber-to-get-tax-breaks-then-never-delivers.shtml

[djean111]

1. Well Verizon just delivered everything but their mobile service to Frontier on April 1. Everything.

So now they don't have to install fiber anywhere, I suppose. Just count their money.

I am currently waiting for a Frontier technician to show up - phone stopped working, and I have spent hours in chat with technicians, to no avail.

And waiting to see if my Verizon retiree discount is still in effect.

[TexasProgresive]

2. We know what crooks they are, don't we?

The refused to implement DSL to rural customers in Texas. Verizon landlines have been sold to Frontier. They are promising to serve rural customers with DSL. It's not fiber but at least it beats satellite. Now I don't know if we will keep our employee concession on our bill.

Another retired former GTESW, Verizon employee.

[LiberalArkie]

5. DSL standards have improved to the point that it is now possible to get 100meg service out in the

rural areas. In fact one of the labs has a new standard being worked on that delivers 1 gig service out to 2 km and then drops to 100meg at about 5 km. Copper is a long way from being dead.

[djean111]

7. I used to do the QA testing on DSL, in Tampa. But by then on contract, along with a bunch of H1-B

guys here, and actual Verizon employees in Chennai. My (H-1b) manager could explain how DSL worked and was provisioned on one white board. It was fun while the contract lasted, but all QA went to Chennai. So no more contract job.

[bemildred]

10. They ought to be able to multiplex the heck out of it and drive it way up.

Noisy or not. So yes, I believe that, esp with decent wire.

[LiberalArkie]

14. They are bonding 4 individual DSL pairs and getting 100 meg service service to homes

and business now. My DSLAM feeding my neighborhood is fed with a 10g fiber circuit. So there is lots of room to grow.

[bemildred]

16. Yeah, ought to scale up very well.

I used to have DSL, but they were too cheap to make it reliable on the crappy Telco wire.

[NickB79]

20. Well, we have Frontier DSL in a rural area, and we don't even get 3 meg right now

Just pinged our line on Ookla: 2.10 up/0.23 down. Some days I can't even use DU if my wife wants to watch Netflix.

No matter how much I call and bug Frontier if they have ANYTHING faster.

[LiberalArkie]

21. I used to barely get 1 and paying for 3. But Windstream just recently replaced all the

DSLAMS in my county with new units that are fiber fed. Some of them are available for 50meg service, but ours has not been turned up to that yet.

[djean111]

6. I started with GTEDS, in Bloomington, Il, went to Durham NC when they closed Bloomington,

came to Tampa when they closed Durham. "Verizon" was not a merger, it was a takeover, and we watched our IT jobs disappear into thin air. And Chennai. I had enough points to retire, but it was hard to find IT / QA work. Still struggling, but hey.

As I understand it, Verizon sold not only landlines, but absolutely everything not mobile to Frontier. FIOS TV, everything.
If I lost the retiree discount, I can't afford what I have now, plain and simple.

[TexasProgresive]

8. There was talk that they were going to sell Enterprise AKA Verizon Business

VZB has a huge nationwide fiber backbone and offer enhanced fiber and copper circuits to customers. I remember the hype during the merger, 2 companies were coming together equally. Neither was being taken over by the other. It took them a few years but they got what they wanted GTE Mobil. First they shed themselves of the former Contel towns and now most if not all of GTE's footprint. I am glad I got out when I did. The sale was announced while I was burning up vacation time before retirement.

We just didn't know how good we had it at the Good Times Express.

My career was cable splicing, outside plant tech (engineering) and for the most part central office. I worked in step by step, CAMA/SAT, #1 EAX and GTD5. For a couple of years I worked in a SSOC where we monitored COs for half of Texas. Besides the above switch types we also monitored DMS 100/200, DMS 10, Stromberg Carlson DCO and#2 EAX. There was a lot of responsibility but it may have been the best couple of years with GTE.

[djean111]

12. I was a programmer/system manager/Quality Assurance person. Mostly Tandems and HP-3000s.

A lot of fun, really, and I did get to work in Holland and Denmark and Japan, months at a time, supporting software that we sold to other countries' phone companies. Lots of good memories. The new owners of Verizon decided it was too much exposure, selling software overseas, so everything was shut down. I was thisclose to having an apartment in Tokyo and having, finally, Japanese lessons. Eighteen hour days, seriously, but a great time. I was very lucky.

When I was last working a contract to test DSL at Verizon, they actually whined about the almost non-existent Friends and Family recommendations. Hey, dummies, your H-1B peeps don't have friends and family here.

And guess what - if you lay off people and pay the rest less, they have less money to spend. One would think that would be obvious; then again, having to achieve ever-increasing quarterly profits is, really sort of like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[MH1]

25. Key point: "your H-1B peeps don't have friends and family here. "

Yep, and that's why paying H-1Bs is basically a foreign aid program. All those remittances going home to those "friends and family" instead of being spent here.

[djean111]

26. And - they really do not spend it here. The guys I worked with shared contracting-company-leased

apartments, 4 and 5 to an apartment. The internet connection came with the apartment. They shared a contracting-company leased car. They brought their lunches. Don't know if this is still prevalent - but they told me that in Indian families, one person is the head of the family, and handles and invests the money - buying, for example, the apartment building they live in. So many of the guys sent all their money home, and then got an allowance. So no, the money does not get spent here, just as little as possible. And I would imagine their living expenses were charged off on any income taxes they may have paid.

[LiberalArkie]

9. V still has the wireline/fiber along the eastern seaboard. But everything else went to Frontier.

It is costing Frontier a lot of money to upgrade what Verizon neglected all those years so that they could build out Wireless. The wireline companies that did not do cellular are doing daily well since they do the backhaul for the cellular companies. Cellular is expensive because of tower rental, fiber rental, having to have all the stores and the need to be upgrading everything almost on a yearly basis. They have to spend billions to purchase and upgrade everything for 3G only to throw it away (who wants it) and replace it with 4G. 5G is about to come out and it will be time to replace all the 4G they just purchased and replace it with 5G equipment and software.

The wireline (landline companies) are tickled to death. More fiber and bandwidth to sell them. VZ has the habit of calling out the telcos when a site does down. The telco tests their end and everything is fine. VZ demands they dispatch a tech to prove it instead of dispatching their own VZ tech. VZ then has to pay the telco for the telco's tech rollout and still has to roll out their own tech. Day after day then same thing.

VZ will not make it in the long run.

[lpbk2713]

3. Fifteen years ago they said they would have DSL in my hood soon.

Even though I was on the outside limits in distance from the serving office. Fifteen years later DSL is obsolete and no one near me ever got DSL. They started saying the same about fibre when that first rolled out but now we know that will never be either. Telcos are all cut from the same mold. They talk a good game but they hardly ever deliver.

[2naSalit]

4. My Internet only

service has gone from $20/month to $45/month in one year... according to their literature they are punishing me financially because I don't have a teevee and landline or want to bundle my phone and no teevee or some shit. I just need the Internet from them, that's all... and it costs me about $50/month by the time the whole process of paying the bill is done. I don't autopay anything and I send USPS money orders to my creditors, including my landlord. After being hacked in that OPM hacking last year (in which my phone number and contacts list was stolen) I don't trust nay institution that requires me to give them my info so they can extract money without my knowledge of when and how much until sometime later, screw that, I don't have much and not willing to over pay for anything. AOL did that to me back in the early 90s, learned that lesson quickly.

If there were another service provider in my area that cost less to use, I'd be using them instead. Verizon has a lock on the rural western states and we pay dearly for it.

[bemildred]

11. I'm paying $65 just for internet.

I get weekly reminders that I can get TV back for only $15 more.

They can go screw themselves. If they didn't have monopoly, I'd dump them today.

[marlakay]

18. Feel same way we pay $49 a month for internet

From Suddenlink i had no other choice in my small town except ATT which cost more and you had to buy cell service too.

They keep bugging me for tv and i bought antanae which i can get all major channels and pbs, have netflix and hulu and hbogo, all i need.

[bemildred]

19. AT&T sucks bad, not unlike Verizon.

Their marketing is very annoying too, I wouldn't give them business for that reason alone.

[marlakay]

23. I didnt mention i have verizon

When we moved last summer Sprint doesnt work here at all zero bars so had to switch we are retired and couldnt afford ATT.

[bemildred]

24. Rural areas. you take what you get.

We had Verizon for a while. I got tired of being ripped off. I'm not that into being on call 24/7 anyway, land lines work fine for me.

[Blue_Tires]

13. Verizon have been crooks for a long time now....

[dembotoz]

15. running that much fiber was pretty unrealistic from day one but it made for nice pr kits

fios might have been practical in major urban areas with population density, but when verizon realized that their promise for fios included podunk former gte areas like rural wisconsin i think they sobered up in a hurry

[Trekologer]

17. They did the same in New Jersey

Last year the Christie admin let them off the hook for the undelivered promised by allowing Verizon to use wireless LTE coverage as a substitute.

[dembotoz]

28. in wisconsin the gop asskissing of the carriers has become an embarrassment

[Odin2005]

22. Thank God we have MidContinent here in Fargo.

They are considered one of the best internet providers in the country.

[djean111]

27. Frontier repairman stopped at the house yesterday. I lost phone service last Wednesday. MANY

ex-FIOS people are without phone service. Turns out that frontier never had digital voice. And for some reason, anyone who - AT FRONTIER'S REQUEST - rebooted a router or the box where the fiber comes in - have lost digital voice - and they don't know how to fucking fix that. So no time-frame or anything - just too bad so sad.

I know others did not have my experience with Verizon, but I retired from there, always got my internet and phone and TV from there, got my retiree discount, and very very rarely got an outage. Bright House, around here, has outages all the time. So - not a happy camper. I have lost my dependable FIOS, and won't be surprised if I lose my retiree discount. At which point I will have to cancel some things and look around.