Slashdot Mirror
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.
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."
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.
Now there's a knowledgable, unbiased, accurate source. Are contract talks coming up soon?
I'd trust anyone working out in the field compared to the suit and tie CEO who would could only be dragged into the trenches for photo-ops.
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.
What does that have to do with a union official? I mean, they COULD be someone in the trenches. Or they could be an employee of the union, and almost certainly are; they do no real work, and their entire existence can be filed under "administrative overhead".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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 $0.5 cheaper, than going through a unionized toll-collector (EZ-Pass would've fazed those bums out, so extra is being collected for your undeserved pensions). Etc.
I do strongly dislike Microsoft. But:
- it is possible to not buy them;
- they don't slash anybody's tires;
- they don't beat the competition up on the street;
.Much like the Luddite's of the past, you tend to stand in the way of progress — except now you phrase yourself differently. Instead of the honest "this will eliminate my job", you are lying: "it is not safe" (witness the union opposition against automated subway trains, for example).
Got the idea, on where the subject comes from, yet?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm not sure why you included "knowledgable" in there. Who else but the workers on the ground would know about the state of Verizon's infrastructure? As for bias and accuracy, I'm as likely to believe the union as Verizon, and I suspect the real answer is somewhere in between.
I would like to add that it's hard to compare the pace of innovation between then and now. Every industry is innovating faster now than they did previously, and it's not because of deregulation of the industry. It's just because as technology gets more advanced, more and more innovation will happen at a faster rate, also, as the industry becomes more widespread, and important to businesses, these pressures will push innovation to happen quicker.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
(@$!sd2
---- NO SIGNAL ----
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
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
"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.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
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.
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
>>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)
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.
Ah yes, being called names by an ignorant coward. Log in, and say it again, child. Not really surprising behavior from someone who thinks that unions are the best thing ever, though.
Guess what? I don't give them a free pass for much of anything. I think that we should eliminate the entire legal concept of the "corporation" and if it ever happened I would be there to piss on the ashes of the old way of doing business. I just don't think that compounding the problems with yet another layer of misdirection is the answer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
...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.
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?
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!
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.