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Verizon Accused of Slighting Copper Infrastructure
High Fibre writes "Regulatory hearings in Virginia raise questions about Verizon's stewardship of its copper infrastructure, with workers accusing the telecom of cheaping out on maintenance in Virginia due to its preoccupation with its FiOS network. Ars covers the fracas and gives more time to Verizon than the local media do. From Ars: 'During testimony given before the Virginia State Corporation Commission last week... workers painted a dire picture of the state of Verizon's copper network, saying that the equipment required to make repairs — including tools and cable — is not even available.' Verizon disagrees, saying that while it's a challenge to manage and maintain both networks, they are not neglecting their copper infrastructure." A union official gave written testimony about the Verizon problems, presumably so that individual workers would not have to testify in public and open themselves to retribution.
But I suspect unions even more. Most likely, they are concerned about the jobs of their members, who maintain the copper networks.
My guess is, those involved with FIOS are either non-unionized at all, or are much younger and thus not as dear to the union bosses.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Now look, Copper is a good friend of mine, maybe not as close as zinc and iron, but I take exception!
Verizon more likely wants to dump the copper and go with FOIS to all.
I am one of many who are not at all happy about the quality, level, and cost of telephony and digital access. I think our government has corrupted itself with the granting and enforcing of monopolies in this area. The access providers are screwing us and we have a third world infrastructure. It was inevitable that Verizion would skimp on copper to fund their build-out of FIOS. The suprise is that so few people seem to care, or even know, how badly we're being screwed.
Best regards.
Yes, do everything at once. Keep the copper first rate, and roll-out FiOS as quickly possible. You can do this all, because we Regulators have told you to do so. Nothing is impossible for us to order of you.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now there's a knowledgable, unbiased, accurate source. Are contract talks coming up soon?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They can't handle the quam.
Looks like Verizon doesn't even care about the damage they wreck...don't they get even simple economics/sociology...don't they even care about their own children...Start stockpiling water and canned soup, people....
Posting my trouble ticket here where it will be read by verizon tech's quicker than staying on hold with them for the next century.
Can't loop the smart jack on circuit 36.QGDQ.684591..CD LC 703/26
Come on fix it....replaceing f2 pairs can be fun...come on guys.
Not news...
A lot of Verizon's copper is from the old GTE and that was horrible 30 years ago.
I'm sure Verizon has conducted some sort of market analysis on their FiOS vs. copper networks and is jilting their movements to push one of their bigger products, which is FTTH (fiber to the household). It's good for the fiber optics makers, not very good to the metalmakers, and all in all, if I pick up my phone and a dial tone happens I really don't care which is employed. Curiously enough however, the copper networking has a rating of around 40 to 60 years, whereas fiber optic cable is generally rated for 3-10 year lifetime. (Think non-newtonian liquid physics on hollow shells of glass that are generally less than 3 nM and stretch potentially thousands of miles) ...I'm sure they can slight both their products down the road.
Until the phone don't work and I can't read my slashdot however, verizon isn't worth the brainpower to decide if it's good bad or just useless news
I live in Vienna, VA and we had a line that would completely drop out for a day or two after it rained, and the line was also noisy at other times. Verizon would take days to come out the check it, and said that even though they could detect no carrier they couldn't fix it unless it was not working when they actually were out there. On top of that, after the first couple of times coming out the guy basically told us they were going to have to re-run the cable to the house and there was basically no chance of that ever happening.
Oh and they wouldn't give us credit for any of the downtime. So we canceled our land line and they can go to hell and die as far as I am concerned.
Verizon has been granted a monopoly on copper as long as they serve as a common carrier. If they are diverting funds from maintenance of their common carrier network to installation of selectively-installed FIOS, then they are violating common carrier rules.
The net effect here is that people in poor areas face degraded service while people in wealthy, high-density areas have enhanced service and options. This is exactly what common carrier status and state funding of telecomm was supposed to avoid.
Verizon should be forbidden from doing anything other than POTS (and DSL, provided they provide equal access to it, unlike the current situation). Let another company run fiber and operate a network over it, Verizon should not be allowed to run competing services when doing so violates their common carrier status.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The problem is that they're not just letting copper go by the wayside where they're installing FiOS, they're letting copper go down the tubes (so to speak) everywhere - even where they have no real plans to install fiber. Fiber is expensive and they are cherry picking the hig-density, high disposable income areas. To fund this expansion of service, they are shorting funds to maintain copper to the rest of the area.
Now, that's all fine and good - I can always switch to any of a number of other telephone carriers who do a better job of maintaining my phone service. Oh, right - I can't because Verizon has a de facto monopoly on telco services in my area - much of it due to government regulation and exclusive rights.
That's the problem with the infrastructure being run by for-profit corporations - there is effectively no competition. Between rights of way, exclusive rights for areas, and a century of stacked up regulations the barriers to entry are insurmoutable for all but the most dense, wealthy areas of the country. Were I king, I would separate the infrastructure from the services. Sadly, I'm not (as I hear it's good to be the king). It would not solve all the issues, but it would at least start down the road of reducing the anticompetitive behavior of the incumbent utility operators against data (and power) providers which do not own infrastructure.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
In fact, one need not look far to find the oldest of old telephone cabling still in service: the old paper wrapped twisted pair cables with lead Western Electric splice closures. There are plenty of old-style WECO terminals, surge protectors and everything else. Many of these items were placed in service over fifty years ago and due to robust engineering are still in use today. Verizon is a huge buyer of these items.
While all of that are facts, it is also a fact that outside plant is shifting FiOS at a rapid pace. Despite quantum leaps in copper technology, a single-mode fiber has a very distinct advantage: infinite bandwidth. It is the future, plain a simple, and the much anticipated "copper cliff" (where placement of copper plant outside the US drops precipitously) has been passed for a few years now.
The question then becomes how long the copper legacy systems will be supported. The best answer is probably as long as it takes to make them completely superflous. Many industry best-guesses are putting that time at 10-15 at max.
Sorry, it had to be said.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
one of the nice things about FIOS is that it takes a lot less people to maintain. A 2U server running Vovida has the power of a DMS 500 switch at a tiny fraction of the costs.
Unions hate any efficiency that lets companies do more with less, so they are looking for ways to fight technological progress
The local cable provider around here is very good about fixing things and running a fast network, but even they don't have the power a single provider would.
Consider some of the items you get with open-competitive comm service:
Now, think of the stuff we had under the previous system:
I think it's time to re-regulate all telecom. The private companies have been given a chance, and proven they can't police themselves.
A lot of people who didn't like the old system complain that they had to rent their phone, or that the pace of innovation wasn't as fast under a single provider. In my opinion, having reliable service is worth forgoing the buzzword-of-the-week. I'd be interested in hearing what people think about this.
You're pretty close I'd say, but then miss your own point.
Unions are a victim of their own success. They got better contracts and better benefits, which raised the price of the goods and services produced by union shops. Laws of the free market then shifted business away from union shops to offshore and non-union shops. Unions then resorted to some questionable tactics to "fight to keep what they have" from heavy lobbying and lawmaking to outright extortion and violence.
This fight has cost our country, and has negatively affected *your* wages as well as mine. This is not information from Faux News, just google economists and unions. E.g. , economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University calculated that labor unions have cost the American economy $50 trillion over the past 50 years alone and it also found that wages in general suffered dramatically as a result of an economy that is 30 to 40 percent smaller than it would have been in the absence of labor unionism.
Sorry, I know it's good for you and your family right now, but you can't mess with the free market without consequences down the road.
-Ryan C.
To my way of thinking, why doesn't Verizon go Wireless. Basically put repeaters on top of telephone poles, then put receivers next to the green boxes they installed years ago? For power, use a small battery with a solar cell attached. Next offer to remove all the telephone copper wiring with discounts to use wireless phones. With all the copper saved, PC's could use Linux band width would be cheaper, faster...
1. When did our current system of government-granted local monopoly become "open" in any sense of that word? Right now __I HAVE A SINGLE PROVIDER__ of land-line service.
2. Everyone knows (or should know) that the worst of all possible scenarios is a government-enforced monopoly over a market but a corporation as the producer. Worst, that is, except for the producer.
3. That said, it's not like there is no overlap between land-line and other communications services. It's not as if you have copper or NOTHING. You have a choice.
4. Feel free to pay old-sk00l Ma Bell prices to Verizon. I'm sure you'll get better service than the rest of us.
5. I suppose next you'll be suggesting a return to horse-drawn carriages, and IBM-provided computers. And the printing press? Been nothing but trouble for illuminators world-wide.
The net effect here is that people in poor areas face degraded service while people in wealthy, high-density areas have enhanced service and options. This is exactly what common carrier status and state funding of telecomm was supposed to avoid.
The regulations pre-date the Internet, that's the problem. Here in NH, Verizon is putting nothing into its telecomm infrastructure except in the very densely populated part of the state near Boston, where they want to sell TV over FiOS. The rest of the State they're happy to leave at 35% (it varies) DSL service penetration.
And in a way, who can blame them? They're a public company, they only have so much money to invest, and it's not maximally profitable to invest in rural areas.
That's a failing of the Government granting the monopoly status, not Verizon. Yeah, I hate to defend them, but it's not useful to attack them - it's not going to help. This problem can only be solved by the regulators, either by requiring service levels or doing away with the monopoly grant. If one believes natural monopolies exist, then a service level requirement is the only way forward.
Ironically, it's the rural areas that can most benefit from high-speed Internet, and the least likely to have it (in the US anyhow).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Verizon does not need to share the new fiber plant. The copper plant is what Verizon has to share with other people. Why invest in something you don't get all to your self. It will be interesting to try and get T1 and DS3 lines from AT&T in the Verizon footprint. Although I suspect that AT&T is doing the same thing with their copper plant.
The regulators are getting exactly what their policies have said they want.
Remember Ma Bell is back! and this time she's pissed.
A trade union is a monopoly. A trust concerning itself with (mostly — anti-competitive) efforts towards maintaining and ever increasing the prices of its members product (labor).
Nobody likes monopolies — the sooner you are busted with RICO and other anti-trust laws, the better. Your corruption and violence have made you far less likable, than most corporations are or deserve to be.
Those, who have grown up in a Soviet Union and similar countries, have particular dislike for trade unions — workers' solidarity, May 1st, class warfare... As far as I am concerned, for example, your sorry Socialist union-official neck belongs on a lamp-post... Nothing personal.
Those (truly) poor, who wish to immigrate to this country to work, are appalled by your arguing, that Americans are, somehow (by birthright?), entitled to better jobs, than Mexicans or Thais or Uzbeks.
And all — including the natively born and raised Americans — still remember the crookery surrounding the name "Hoffa", and the recent NYC-transit strike. We are all wondering, for example, why using the electronic EZ-Pass is only $0.5 cheaper, than going through a unionized toll-collector (EZ-Pass would've fazed those bums out, so extra is being collected for your undeserved pensions). Etc.
I do strongly dislike Microsoft. But:
- it is possible to not buy them;
- they don't slash anybody's tires;
- they don't beat the competition up on the street;
.Much like the Luddite's of the past, you tend to stand in the way of progress — except now you phrase yourself differently. Instead of the honest "this will eliminate my job", you are lying: "it is not safe" (witness the union opposition against automated subway trains, for example).
Got the idea, on where the subject comes from, yet?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I would like to add that it's hard to compare the pace of innovation between then and now. Every industry is innovating faster now than they did previously, and it's not because of deregulation of the industry. It's just because as technology gets more advanced, more and more innovation will happen at a faster rate, also, as the industry becomes more widespread, and important to businesses, these pressures will push innovation to happen quicker.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
(@$!sd2
---- NO SIGNAL ----
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
There's no way that Verizon deserves this. I live in BFE, Virginia and, while it took me a few weeks to identify the problem, Verizon was very prompt to repair my noisy line once the issue became apparent. I seriously doubt my rural, had-to-fight-to-get-it DSL service is the single bright spot of an otherwise dismally supported network.
I'm more than sympathetic about the DSL in rural Virginia problem having been denied DSL service for 5 years before I finally got it last fall, but a company can't be expected to behave unprofitably (or less profitably) when it has a choice.
I think Virginia government needs to consider legislation and spending that will bring bigger pipes to rural Virginians. If the state wants to see minimum service levels above and beyond what's required for POTS, then it should regulate high bandwidth internet service as a utility.
Politicians need to realize that, for many of us, high-speed internet service is as important as, if not more important than, telephone service and, for the record, satellite internet service is _not_ high-speed.
Each of these wireless devices will likely cost several times the length of copper/fiber that they would be replacing. The maintenance costs would be astronomical. Despite semiconductors having a nearly indefinite lifetime, batteries...even the best rechargable ones available, still wear out. Also, what you'd save in a PC by decreasing the cost of copper would also be offset several times by the increasing cost of chip grade silicon, which would be in higher demand to manufacture the electronics for these wireless boxes, including the solar panels used to power them.
Costs aside, the amount of bandwidth that you would need to do this would quickly far exceed the available "open air" bandwidth available to you. Yes, you can shove uber amounts of data in high concentrations through the air using DSS or OFDM, but there's still a limit. Within the confines of a fiber or cable, you can have essentially a whole band of RF spectrum available, and duplicate it again and again in each adjacent run of cable/fiber.
Wireless is great, but it has its place in communications technology. Its uses are nearly limitless, but so are its misuses.
Second, employment of technical advances would slow to a crawl again. One of the complaints of companies like ATT and ITT in the years before deregulation was that the local governments prevented installation of superior quality and features in order to keep costs down.
Third, in the current political climate, monopolies are vulnerable to unions, which drives up prices. A non-union company has competitive advantages which, other things being equal, lead to it driving union companies out of business.
Fourth, unions and monopolies, especially government-maintained monopolies, are an invitation to corruption. Government is too powerful and corrupt as it is.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Umm.... After a strike is over, Verizon even gives amnesty to union workers who commit assault. I hardly think that Verizon is going to seek retribution against someone who says that equipment is short.
"but I suspect it comes from unions having better contracts with better benefits, and then the general public getting pissed when unions fight to keep what they have."
If you really believe that is why unions are disliked, then you need to resign your position immediately due to overwhelming ignorance/naivety. As a representative of the union, you should have a much better handle on the perceptions of those in the community regarding unions, and not rely on your obviously biased opinion.
I have Verizon telephone and DSL service in Washington, DC. My DSL connection was crapping out a couple weeks ago and I was thinking about switching to Comcast cable. I decided to call tech support and give Verizon a chance to fix the problem.
The first tech support person I got was Indian, clearly working from a script, and not listening to what I (as a pretty knowledgeable computer person) was saying. He said he couldn't help me because he was a Windows support person (even though I booted my MacBook Pro into Windows and knew that the problem was with the modem or line, not the computer) and transferred me to a Mac support person.
The Mac support guy was great. He tested my line remotely and said that it looked fine, but since my complaint was about intermittent connection problems he would monitor it throughout the day. He called back an hour later and said he saw the connection drop repeatedly and would send out a technician.
The technician was thorough. He checked the modem, checked the phone jack, checked the wiring in my apartment, and checked the main box where the line comes into the building. He disconnected an old unused jack (really old, with a big round four-pronged connector) and seems to have cleaned up whatever noise was causing my problems.
Verizon's copper is fine. And if you are in an area where Fios is deployed, copper should be ripped out and the tech working on it fired. It is not in Verizon's interest to leave customers without service. They lose money. That includes copper that can't be replaced yet with fiber.
So while I'm sure the Union delegates are concerned about the welfare and future of Verizon, they are neglecting the fact not being able to repair expensive copper installations is good. They should not keep pouring money into that worthless RJ-11 copper crap. Or into the Union worker that can't figure out fiber capping. Verizon is just going to keep you idiots around long enough to keep the lights on. If you can't adapt, you die. Even if you are in a Union. See U.S. Automakers as an example.
"If it were a free market, you would have the government enforcing labor laws"
Do all your opinions come with this level of insight and consideration, or just this one? Are you actually aware of what "free market" means? And why shouldn't I just dismiss you as a ranting moron when you display this level of stupidity?
I switched from Verizon DSL (northern NJ) to Comcast Cable 6 months ago. The DSL was fine for man years then all of a sudden I experienced frequent high latency (500-8000 ms) and packet losses. This happened several times per day, and often multiple times in an hour. The occurences were random, e.g., 3 a.m., and not peak hours related. After a lot of calls, runarounds, and also made to buy a new modem by Verizon, it turned out that the Verizon router were overloaded. It had been going on for months, and there was no ETA for upgrade. Total cost included a new modem (~$50, there was nothing wrong with my original modem, of course), several hours on hold in various phone calls, two days lost waiting for on site tech person (one day which the tech did not show and did not call), many hours trying different things on my own (shorter wire, MTU, etc., remember that the problem was random), many hours collecting connectivity data, and a whole lot of frustration.
Verizon knew what was going on, they just decided to string the customer along without telling them the truth, pretending to try to fix the problem that they knew they could not fix without a router upgrade (and they had no ETA). My guess was that they were redirecting resources to rolling out the FIOS and decided to let the DSL customers go to hell.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Got any pending litigation?
More notably, their members are more likely to live in areas negatively affected by 'degrading copper but no fiber' (unlike executives who were probably (magically) in early-release fiber zones).
On the other hand, the union really can't bite too hard on the hand that feeds them because, if it goes gangrenous, they're gonna end up with a bad taste in their mouth. They also can't make a clearly false statement because, if they do, the company can -- and will -- sue them from here to Sunday (and will have easy access to all the documentation needed to prove the lie).
Now, the one implied point of the parent that I can agree with is that -- when contract negotiations are close -- the forces that strike a balance between biting the hand that feeds you (in the hopes of getting more food) and quietly eating what you've been fed will shift towards biting. Even so, making (provably) false statements that hurt the company are too much of a lose-lose proposition for the union for me to believe that they're lying through their teeth about this.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I am a Verizon customer (forced). I live in an area that got stuck with them after the merger/takeover/purchase with GTE. Service in the rural areas sucks because they do not consider rural areas profitable. I can not get DSL where I live because they won't let any other vendors in to their CLECs. And no, they are not going to upgrade our cable plants for hDSL or even give us fiber for FTTP for that matter. Charter is our main broadband choice. Verizon offers wireless service, but let's face it, it is less than optimal when leeching large files. ;)
"Nobody shoots anybody in the face unless you're a hit man or a video gamer"- Jack Thompson
Wait a sec... I've heard this story in variances a hundred times now. Hold on.
I have no love for unions.
But this "A friend had X happen to him... and the union guy didn't do anything..." This sounds way too pat.
My B.S. meter went off here. Did anyone else get that feeling?
Can you back up what you said? Or will your "friend" get in trouble?
-Ben
If our lame fucking government was in the business of improving our country, they would work towards a nationwide broadband infrastructure where no company owns the lines and they are all told to piss up a rope if they try the crap they pulled on cities that tried to build a network.
Then we could tell the telcos to shove all that copper up their ass.
Back in the day, here in New York, it was Nynex. I remember the fight it took to replace a neighborhood service line that hadn't been upgraded since around the turn of the century. Getting new service installed was a crap shoot, since they didn't reliably know what they had in place without doing a manual signal trace end-to-end.
Verizon is regulated, yes. It's given a monopoly; in exchange it's required to meet certain SLA's or pay a penalty. The penalty has never been sufficiently punitive. Given where their bottom line really comes from (long distance services, expansion into new markets) and the fact that any assessments made by regulators will never negatively impact the business case for NOT directing investment toward upgrading/maintaining the copper infrastructure, what you've got is what you've got.
In other words, even including the fines levied for failure to meet SLA's, it's more cost effective to do a terrible job on the copper infrastructure - and still keep their statutory monopoly by happily paying the piddling fines.
Add in the influence they enjoy on local legislatures and regulatory agencies, there's no reason to expect any change.
>>It's because Unions reward mediocrity.
No, they reward 'cooperation' and 'mutual support'. I know it's a strange concept for brainwashed drones but try to grasp it. Those concepts define humanity and help us survive. Even if current state of American society doesn't reward those in short term, they are still vital in long term. They also make society a nicer place to live, as opposed to breeding cutthroat scum we see today.
Your anekdotal 'evidence' is laughable.
>>It's also because unions are often famously controlled by organized crime.
Stop repeating this outdated lie. Mafia was involved in unions to some degree in the past, but its influence has been marginalized since 80s. Mafia is/was also involved in many other areas of society, for instance it's been controlling many businesses as well. This doesn't make businesses evil, so blaming unions for mafia involvement is ridiculous.
>>Unions are parasitic. They are better for the individual worker, but worse for the economy; co-ops would have been better for everyone but we're not there and probably never will be.
More bullshit. Larger economy without fair wealth distribution results in rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, just like we see today. Wealth concentration at the top increased dramatically since 70s, while real wages dropped during the same period.
On another hand, unions promote professionalism.
Anti-union rhetoric mainly comes from non-unionized incompetents who envy better wages and working conditions, and from business types who hate to pay fair wages to anyone but themselves.
...ask the people who work for the CLECs in the US. We've known it for over a year now and there's not much pretense of a cover for it. Field technicians openly acknowledge it in casual conversation. The routinely remark that the wiring in an area "sucks" (most common description used by Verizon techs). If you have a bad pair in a cable, the chances are high and increasing that you will be let down with their "no good pairs", "technically non-feasible" response and SOL.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Rather than re-regulation, we need complete de-regulation, not the half-assed kind we have now.
Right now, the last-mile infrastructure is owned by monopolies that have been given that right because it would create chaos if multiple companies all built last-mile infrastructure. This is not a de-regulated market.
What we need is for the last-mile infrastructure to be owned by the local governments. Companies could then bid on the contract to maintain that infrastructure. Then consumers could be free to choose whichever provider they want since the provider would only have to support connections from the local infrastructure to the rest of the world. If Verizon, or whatever company wins the contract to maintain the infrastructure, is neglecting its maintenance duties, the local government would be free to contract with some other company. The maintenance funds would come from locally raised monies (or government subsidies, in the case of areas that are too sparsely populated to be able to foot the bill for the entire cost of their network).
You're right that the entirely regulated situation is better than what we have now. But what we have now isn't a de-regulated system. It's a bastardized version that allows TeleCom companies to get whatever they want, make huge profits and keep us in what is roughly a third-world situation when it comes to broadband availability. With publicly-owned last-mile infrastructure, we could have a situation that's better than what we had before the so-called "de-regulation."
just wondering...
I bought a house with FiOS installed. When I went to have my speakeasy VOIP and DSL service transfered I found out that it couldn't be done. Why, because when the prior owner had FIOS installed they disconnected the copper lines. Verizon is bringing back the phone company monoply one house at a time. Once you get FIOS, no more copper and no more alternative providers. FiOS is pretty cheap right now but I'd like to see what happens when it gets to be the only game around.
Verizon currently is required to share their copper network with 3rd parties. There are lots of "paper" phone companies that rely on this network to deliver services.
I asked my rep at ATX telecommunications why they could not resell FIOS service. My rep simply replied - Verizon won't let us.
A friend of mine recently complained to Verizon about his poor quality voice service. His phone lines would make a terrible humming noise every time it rained. Verizon came out and installed FIOS gear and moved his phone service onto the FIOS gear. He was told that Verizon no longer fixes copper circuits if FIOS is available.
Verizon negotiated deals to ensure exclusive use of their fiber network, stating they would not deploy fiber if they could not recoup the costs.
It's a good strategy for Verizon - install their exclusive fiber and let the copper network rot. Eventually they force out all the "paper" phone companies. Screw all that "public rights of way" stuff.
This is one reason why cable companies and telcos need to be regulated within an inch of their lives.
-ted
There's a false dichotomy between your idea and the private market idea commonly, it seems. However, both government regulate/government run services and private services can exist side by side. See: USPS vs. FedEx. Both have a market for delivering packages and do fine at it.
There's no reason we can't force all the current telecoms to spin all their current POTS divisions off in to one government regulated entity, ensuring base level information service for all citizens for a minimal fee + tax dollars. Then, they're *welcome* to compete in the market place offering premium private service, in exchange for their loss of common carrier status responsibilities (which they're fighting against anyway) AND privileges(which they've proven they no longer DESERVE through abuse).
Verizon's copper is fine
Did you take a quality survey? Several state regulators and many customers disagree with you.
It is not in Verizon's interest to leave customers without service. They lose money.
Its kinda hard to switch POTS providers when there is one incumbent provider at a time. For people with no other options, there is no way to switch!
So while I'm sure the Union delegates are concerned about the welfare and future of Verizon, they are neglecting the fact not being able to repair expensive copper installations is good.
The FCC and state regulators would beg to differ.
They should not keep pouring money into that worthless RJ-11 copper crap
Not until they replace it.
If you can't adapt, you die.
Ayn Rand, is that you?
...form a union. We "get to" gouge customers? Hardly. We get a decent wage (a little on the low side). If you can't find that because you're not organized, I can't help you.
Canada was in the same boat. Back before the deregulation, I called iomega to get one of their shitty Zip drives reapaired. Unfortunately, they did't have a 1-800 number. By the time I spoke to anyone there, I had racked up a $130 phone bill. This was in about 1993.
Today, that long distance phone bill would be about $2.
Also, in 1993 to get ISDN cost about $300 - $500 monthly. Now you can get 40 times that speed for $30 monthly, internet INCLUDED.
While the phone bill was a bit less back then (about $20 monthly), one had to add about $10 monthly for telephone rental. Which made it equal to the $30 monthly it is now. Except this was more than 10 years ago... shouldn't the price have been lower?
Prior to deregulation my phone line died (joy of joy). It took 2 weeks to get a repair van out there, and that only happened as I threatened to have the CRTC (Kind-of-sort-of like your FCC, but at the time with absolute ultimate power over phone companies) involved. Today I can even get DSL activated in under 3 days.
Today you can get a toll free number for your business pretty much for free. In 1993 that would cost an arm and a leg and probably would have been accompanied by a commitment to purchase switched-56, centrex, or a fractional T1.
So, tell me again how deregulation kept prices high. Because I'm just not getting it.
When one of our Verizon copper T1's went down recently due to a bad Smartjack card, we had to wait for one to be trucked in from downstate. The tech told me "They won't let us stock copper cards anymore. Anything copper. We have to keep sending for them. Everything we carry is fiber.".
Given the still-huge copper infrastructure, that makes no sense to this customer. We have a lot of copper in this area. No FIOS at all. I've been told by numerous people at Verizon in different informational layers that FIOS is not even planned. Yeah, FIOS and a T are completely different things. But the point was no fiber backbones are planned.
And you know what? You're lucky. That could change at any minute (management decides that that shit is unnecessary and money can be saved), and you'd be fucked. Even if you did want to quit and find a better job, you'd be in a rough spot for a little while (even if you do have money squirreled away for such a reason). Changing jobs is a hassle, and it can take away a good commute that you'd planned for at the previous jobs. Why have to worry about that shit -- why not have it written down and be safe from fast-ones like that?
...they are called industry associations and resultant price fixing cartels, that never get busted. Then when you have a government that is top to bottom 99% international globalists, that's a HELL of a "union" to try and bargain against. As in, raise your hand if you think any union guys voted to close their factories and ship them overseas, or any IT guys were just thrilled to train their replacement workers.
We got globalism rammed down our throats by both the dimocraps and the dweeblicans in "government". And it matters not a whit who gets elected either, the endgame is outsourcing what can be outsourced, and insourcing illegals by the tens of millions and legals by the millions, all to drop wages and benefits paid to the middle class, while "rewarding" the boss/master class for their "hard work".
So it's the 15 ton wrecking ball versus the 150 megaton fusion bomb. Which set of ripoff jerks are the bigger jerks then? Can you really blame the guys who can see it is coming for trying to use their wrecking ball? It's *all* they have now, they have no other option.
Wake up. There isn't any war on drugs or war on terror, that's posturing and a way to skim more and more tax money from non governmental workers who actually produce something and give it to loyalists who will help perpetuate this ripoff congame.
The only real war being fought now is the war on the middle class in the US being run by NYC and Wallstreet and Washington DC with so called "government", total partners in crime, with the complete hijacking of the US and putting it up for auction, so they can take the sale proceedings and leave everyone else with bupkis and a stack of IOUs that somehow become their "debt".. In fact, this is the last generation of a predominantly large middle class in the US, in the future, just think a much larger mexican styled society, a very very rich and very very small upper class, then the huge numbers of serfs and government drones with just a touch better pay and benefits, designed to keep the serfs in check and oppressed and to protect the "elite". That's the government's primary job now, to protect the "elite" and their profits and power. They'll still call such a society a "democracy", but that is all it will be, some BS noun they use. And if you think that is crap, do some research on the stealth government they are creating by corporafascistic fiat called the north american union. It's real, and it's coming soon to a neighborhood near you, the complete return of the two class society, complete with black suited mercenary goons on every corner, snitches in every house, cameras on ever corner, and cradle to grave mass economic servitude.
Every single stinking thing they do is so geared towards that I am surprised we haven't had mass rioting yet. I guess as long as they keep feeding people cheap beer and the sopranos and paris hilton and football and iPod stuffings and junk like that they won't notice until it is too late to do anything about it, just *eat it raw*.
I read something about a year ago about Verizon looking to sell off their copper here in Vermont... No FIOS yet though...bastards.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I am so tired of union protests where they whip out the big inflatable rat. Do you see other workers pull this kind of whiny protest. Unions are a joke. I remember doing some IT work in a building in downtown Chicago. They had a union doing some work on it. They actually had some joker acting as an elevator operator in a modern elevator. He had a chair, radio (playing classic rock), and assorted snacks. Take your union and shove it.
I want my! I want my! I want my Eee PC!
If I need to move a new job then I'll move, I live in a company heavy area so I probably wouldn't need to but movings only slightly annoying (granted I don't own a house). Why have to worry about that shit -- why not have it written down and be safe from fast-ones like that? Because I'm above average and have no desire to be tied to system that rewards mediocrity, idiocy and laziness? I have no desire to work in the same job or field much less place for 40 years. Anything based on seniority is worthless to me, that just rewards the sheep and mindless zombies.
I loathe pointless rules, restrictions and bookkeeping as it's all an utter waste of time to me. Any job where I can't say "hey I had this brilliant idea and spent the last 24 hours straight working on it, here it is so I won't be in today because of sleep deprivation" is simply not a place I want to work at. Sometimes I come in at 7 am, other times at 1pm. Sometimes I leave at 4pm, other times after midnight. I get paid to get things done, flexibility allows me to do that not pointless bullshit.
because apparently it is no longer a top priority, and they have stopped adding the capacity for it in my neighborhood. My downstairs neighbor has Verizon DSL, but I have been unable to get it because as far as I can tell from what the Verizon rep said they don't have enough DSL jacks for any new accounts. This is a college town. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who want DSL. Too bad. The rep said that they are no longer adding DSL capacity because they are focusing all improvement on the FiOS network. Not that FiOS is available in this area. We're just screwed. She suggested that I wait until the downstairs neighbor canceled their service. Brilliant. Stuck with Comcast Cable again.
The Cheese Stands Alone.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
"I've asked the community -- the reason is the perception is that the unions take their money and do nothing"
This is nowhere in your original post. If you know it is one of the reasons that the community dislikes unions, why didn't you mention it previously?
I have a friend who works for Verizon up North of Baltimore. For th elast year+ he has been telling me story after story about how Verizon has dismissed the crews who are responsible for copper infrastructure maintenance. He says the ONLY work done on the copper infrastructure is repairs, no tree trimming etc. is being done. As a result the length of time to get a repair done has gotten pretty long as the calls grow ever higher. Installing new lines and things like that is now a nightmare in smoe communities - techs pull pairs thinking they are unused (there's few if any left) and often end up disconnecting someone in order to get another working, that person then has to put in a service call - round and round they go.
The focus is on FIOS rollout. Techs are being actively encouraged to move from the copper sector to the FIOS group. However the FIOS group apparently has their trucks tracked more closely and is often forced to work OT. FIOS rollout is going slow because often when someone goes to FIOS they go for a triple play which is Phone, 'net, and video. Often times this requires rewiring the ENTIRE house becasueof the standards that have been laid down regarding quality of cabling - coax etc. The result is that the techs are often getting maybe 2 installs a day done and working OT most every day. Some techs take shortcuts by simply reusing "substandard" coax but they can get into trouble for doing so.
Verizon is also pissed off at the cable companies up there taking their phone business. The cable companies often disconnect the internal wiring at the outside box and jumper the wires to backfeed from inside (how mine's done). Verizon has actually begun REMOVING the boxes from the outsides of some people's houses when they cancel with Verizon in order to interfere with the cable companies trying to do this.
Make no mistake - there's an ongoing battle here beneath the surface. It comes as NO surprise to me that Verizon is doing this same thing in Virginia. From what I've been told by the guy I know their plan is to roll out FIOS while allowing the copper to "rot". At some point in the future they plan to sell off or lease the copper to 3rd party CLECS and burden them with the maintenance\repair of what's left of the copper. Never mind that Verizon received massive subsidies and were given rights of way on public\private lands to run the cables in the first place! I can say for sure that the trees in my neighborhood haven't been trimmed back in at least 5 years and on my block alone there are *multiple* cases of trees LAYING limbs against the phone lines. Not too far from me a tree fell against the lines and into the road, the police trimmed the tree out of the road but the trunk still lays against the phone lines some 2 months later. Very glad to see this coming to light, it's disgusting!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Thank you very much for the perfect illustration — of pro-union bogus rhethorics.
Now try to get your head around the question of what happened to the building elevator personnel...
How dare we replace the qualified professionals and entrust the opening (and closing!) of the elevator doors to the sensors and computers?
The same stupid non-arguments: What if there is a malfunction? What if somebody is raped in the elevator — it happened, you know?.. "Oh, I just don't feel safe anymore" — a lady would complain to a sympathetic journalist. And, your own: "what if something happens and the operator is not there?"
Well, guess what, it is not happening often enough to justify the cost (which you dismiss as "few bucks"). Keeping the human operators does not provide enough value.
Now add to this, that a machine can actually do a better job opening and closing the doors and announcing stops — machines are always better at repetative mundane tasks — and the argument for keeping the door operators becomes a purely luddite one.
Removing the drivers is next. Stand aside, dimwit, you are slowing progress.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Verizon is funding this rollout? You mean the zillion sin tax subsidies didn't fund it? Trust me, Verizon is getting plenty of incentive to roll this stuff out! They are skimping on copper because they know that eventually when FIOS is more fully rolled out it's their competitors that will be taking over the copper and they intend to hand them an albatross.
Verizon was going gangbusters on fiber rollout until they were forced to share their copper with 3rd party providers. As soon as that occured fiber rollout slowed to a crawl and they began lobbying for regulatory protection of the fiber infrastructure so that they wouldn't be required to "share" it like they were the copper. They got that protection and are proceeding to rollout FIOS as fast as they can (still slow but faster - it's a big job). Verizon intends to dump the copper just as soon as they can, often times (not always) they are REMOVING copper as they install fiber into homes - switching away from fiber that they provide to a competitor in the future will be further burdened by this practice.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Ummm... that's internally inconsistent. Since when does "high prices" == "less than before"?
By "high prices" you apparently mean "lower prices", but that detracts from your point, so you want to obscure it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You didn't answer my question. In fact, you didn't come close to answering it. We both know why.