Verizon To Pump $18B Into FiOS

larytet writes, "LightReading reports that Verizon will invest $18B into FTTH. The company says its fiber-based service will become profitable after four years, and expects by then to have 7 million customers using FiOS for Internet access." For perspective, have a look at Bruce Kushnick's book $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. His site has a page detailing phone company promises of fiber since 1993. We have been paying for these undelivered promises for years. By now we should have 86 million homes wired with FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec.

Comments

Of course!

[laughingcoyote]

Well is this unexpected? They were begging for money and consideration at the time, but they were also lobbying. In effect, they say "Oh it'll be fine, you'll see, watch what we'll give you!" Of course, since the promises weren't written into the law as a mandate, with real consequences if they went unfulfilled, what they gave us, predictably, was as little as they could get away with for as much as they could charge.

Now, in addition to tax revenue and right-of-ways, they want us to give up net neutrality. "Oh, but look what we'll give you!" I imagine they'll do just as well as last time.

And this is why subsidies are bad

[MikeRT]

Subsidies are frequently abused and allocated for all of the wrong reasons. They skew the market, create a new base of lobbyists and generally increase the scope of government intrusion. We wouldn't have people like Ted Stevens be the norm in Congress if the American people could bring themselves to follow what's in the Constitution, and subsidizing business isn't one of the enumerated powers of Congress. If it were a dry, boring job that made them more like "law book janitors" than power brokers, most problems would go away within an election cycle.

But no, we just need to change where and how the government gives away money, not whether or not the government should be involved at all.

I'm a little surprised by Verizon

[chaffed]

I'm surprised by Verizon because you don't need a Verizon PC to use FIOS. Imagine that! Those clever engineers figured out a way to make a service profitable without proprietary lock in. Gee they are great!

Okay I do have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to Verizon.

Now imagine if Verizon FIOS was operated like Verizon Wireless.

You would be required to sign a 2 year contract and pay $1000 for a PC that can barely take advantage of the basic features of the service. If you wanted something that could give you the full experience that would be a 2 year contract plus $2000 for equipment.

All the while the PC they sold you would be locked to FIOS and have many features disabled. Some features I can imagine being disabled would be File Transfers via FTP or any standard protocol. You would be required to use their application at a fee for every transfer.

You would be locked out of using other media services like Apple, Yahoo or audiable.

Your information services would be limited to their partners, probably fox news...

Finally they would happily hand over your personal information to those willing to pay or a government with no probable cause or a warrant.

This all sounds very familiar now that I write this all... Net Neutrality anyone? or a lack there of...