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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.
Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic. But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.
I'm in New York and have FiOS. It's a very nice service. Happily, in New York, the slowest speed tier is 10 down / 2 up, and it's quite affordable compared to cable modem service. I'm looking forward to the FiOS TV service, and the day I'll be completely rid of Time Warner (not that Verizon itself is such a wonderful company).
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.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
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.
According to this article in my local paper, Verizon is planning on spending nearly $23b on FiOS and that's for about 1/2 their network. The $18b figure mentioned in the summary comes from discounting the $5b in projected savings from not having to maintain the aging copper physical plant. The linked to article sort of mentions this, but it's not real clear.
I've been hitting the submit button on the "Can I get FiOS?" site in Northern Virginia since I heard about it in 2004. So far, all I've gotten is a web redirect to their DSL offerings.
Speaking of DSL, I talked to Speakeasy (my dsl provider) and asked them if they'd ever be able to offer their open hosting policies over FiOS. Speakeasy said no because FiOS is regulated differently than your POTS lines. So this really put a damper on things because I won't get port 80 etc over blazing optics. Unless they strike a deal (unlikely?) or an act of congress happens (lobbying?). I'd love to know exactly why fiber is treated differently.
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...
What could possibly go wrong?
Congress is actively dealing with this right now! You won't get fiber to your house, but you will get a larger series of tubes. And your representative will mail you your very own Internet.
[Insert pithy quote here]
That book about the scandal sheds a lot of light of just how screwed over customers have been the past decade+. If anything Verizon has a moral obligation to start something like this from the fact that their customers have been paying extra for it for years and the fact that America is getting its ass kicked in regards to infrastructure compared to some countries in Europe and Japan. China is also planning on sinking billions into its infrastructure as well, so it's about time one of these money whoring telecoms stop the douchebaggery and start fucking doing something instead of syphoning capital out of its customers for service in which the cost doesn't justify the performance. Maybe this will trigger Comcast, ATT, Qwest and others to stop their stupid fucking complacency and start doing something to improve this companies infrastructure instead of holding their monopolies and using the legal system to force out municipally owned service.
Then again, I've never associated telecoms with ever doing anything moral, intelligent or in the best interest of the consumer.
The difference is that most of the companies that make huge undelivered promises are not regulated monopolies. When supposedly regulated telephone companies makes huge promises, ratepayers and taxpayers start giving concesssions and possibly paying for portions of those promises at the time that the promise is made.
You're fortunate that you don't live in a rural area where Verizon is busy trying to sell off their landlines. From today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/technology/28ver mont.html
Dear lazyweb,
What say you to publically owned, but privately serviced network infrastructure? For example, a city, town, or borough pays to have its own network system (cable, dsl, ftth, whatever) installed, and then has an outside company (Adelphia, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) provide the bandwidth and support. The city retains control of the lines, so in the event the denizens of the city are unhappy with the provider company, they could vote to terminate (or simply not renew) the contract with the company and seek other bids for service.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Although I may have been successful in my deciphering, I believe FTTH is not a common acronym that most people (even on /.) have heard about. And no, I shouldn't have to chase a wikipedia link to figure it out. At least the submitter didn't use the much worse acronym FTTP, fiber to the premises (which I would have thought a misspelling of FTP).
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
1. Give me TRUE, dedicated bandwidth at a low level. I'm talking like 768k down, 384k up that is MINE. It can't be squashed, and I don't get nasty letters for using 768k down 24/7/365. You really are not giving everyone 30mb down / 8 mb up, at least not all the time. Own up to it and let us know what is allowed JUST FOR US.
2. Show me my burst level. I might have 768k that is MINE, but I might be able to get 30MB down when everyone else isn't as busy.
3. Offer unlimited access within the switch (neighborhood). If I have a 100MB pipe to my house, and my next door neighboor is on FTTP, then allow me to talk at 100MB. I understand lowering it once you hit a trunked connection, but allowing full speed COSTS THE ISP NOTHING, and has a HUGE gain. My buddy might have 30MB from Comcast, but if I tell him that if he switches to ISP A he we can talk at 100MB, I'm sure he would switch.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic. But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.
Maybe you should read the above book. The number of homes with decent high speed internet in the US is pathetic. Compare, for example, the internet service in Sweden. It is faster, more reliable, lower cost, and each citizen paid much less than each American citizen has in government subsidies. They also have about the same population density. Sorry, but the US is falling behind the world, except in a small number of very urban locations. I'm happy you have good service, but don't mistake the situation in new York for most of the US. I've lived in three of the ten largest cities in the US and in each place I had a choice of a crappy cable service bundled with Cable TV I don't want or an incredibly expensive DSL line bundled with a phone service I don't want.
"...and expects by then to have 7 million customers using FiOS for Internet access."
"Fios" is portuguese for "wires"... That name wouldn't inspire many people here in Brazil!
So say we all