Slashdot Mirror
Verizon: FiOS Access For Other ISPs in the Works
Ant writes "According to Broadband Reports' story, 'Verizon has confirmed the claim made by a DSLExtreme representative here last week that the company has plans to offer other ISPs access to its new fiber-to-the-premises network.' A Verizon spokeswoman is quoted as saying, 'A couple of deals have already been signed and more are in the works.'"
This, like DSL shared access, is not competition. For example, we sale DSL in Hell$outh and Verizon territories, and they charge us more for just the raw line than they charge customers for the line plus Internet access. We have to charge our customers twice as much as Verizon does just to break even. If it wasn't for our much better customer support, we would have been out of business a long time ago.
To explain this a different way. For DSL, BellSouth charges end-users $25 for a slow connection. BellSouth charges us $30 for the same speed connection plus we pay about $20,000 per month in overhead for our ATM connection to those customers plus we pay about $15k per month for Internet bandwidth to Sprint. As you can see, BellSouth is abusing their monopoly position. They aren't selling to us just to be nice, and there is no competition.
I am an engineer for Verizon designing part of this large fiber network. They are putting it up in places people can afford it and places where population density permits. It costs a whole lot of money to put this stuff up. It also goes very slow as the splicing of fiber optic cables is very time consuming and has to be perfect or the loss in the cable will render the cable useless. You will be able to get HDTV, phone, and a retardedly fast internet connection all on one bill. Fairly cheap I think. You can actually get a faster upload then 2mbps I think, but I am not totally sure. Either way you get a T-1 for way less than the business cost.
The install is basically an external box that separates the fiber, they drill a hole to the nearest power outlet for the battery backup, and run Cat5 + Cat3 to a single drop anywhere in the house. Then they give you the crappiest D-Link wired router possible.