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Verizon Copper Cutoff Traps Customers
theodp writes with more mainstream attention to an issue discussed here a month back: "As it hooks up homes and businesses to its FiOS fiber-optic network service, Verizon has been routinely disconnecting the copper infrastructure that it was required to lease to other phone companies, locking customers into higher broadband bills, eliminating power outage safeguards, and hampering rivals. A Verizon spokesman argues customers are being given adequate notice of the copper cutoff, which includes this read-between-the-lines fine print: 'Current Verizon High Speed Internet customers who move to FiOS Internet service will have their Verizon High Speed Internet permanently disabled after their FiOS conversion.'" Customers are supposed to be informed by both the sales person and the installer that their first-mile copper will be cut, and this is not happening.
In a power outage, there is a battery backup that keeps the fiber gateway alive for a few hours. Any outage that lasts more than a few hours usually results in a failure of the copper infrastructure as well.
Funny. A couple of years ago, we had a wicked ice storm that knocked out power for a sizeable area for close to a week or more. In the case of the road I'm on, the power was out for 5 days.
The phones still worked the whole time.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I got FIOS installed a few days ago. We decided we didn't want cable TV service and 20/6Mbit for $45 is so much cheaper then the 6/2Mbit we were getting from Comcast for $57/month. From my experiences there seems to be a lot of disinformation about the Verizon install.
1. They didn't cut the existing copper to the house. The installer said they don't do that if there is more then one family or if the customer asks them not to. But even if they had I could still get phone only service over fiber for the same price as over copper. It doesn't matter much as we don't have a LAN lane, only cell phones.
2. They install a battery backup with the fiber that will keep it alive for 6+ hours if the power goes out. But honestly, most people have cordless phones and other phones that require 120v AC so they lose phone when the power goes out anyway. True, if you power goes out frequently and you need to use the phone then FIOS isn't for you. But most places like that are rural areas where FIOS isn't being installed anyway.
3. The worst part of FIOS is that we now need to pay for the 15 watts the transformer uses. This really does piss me off but even with the $30 a year it will cost me it is still a much better deal then Comcast. Oh, and I can still use Comcast for Internet/TV/Phone if I so I have not lost my choice of connections. I would need two separate coax runs if I wanted both at the same time though. The installer asked me if I wanted him to run new coax in the house which I declined.
I'm not overly impressed with the actual speed of FIOS now that we have it but it still is a better deal then Comcast. When Comcast becomes cheaper, I'll probably switch again. We have more competition now then we ever had in the past and it is saving us money.
Any outage that lasts more than a few hours usually results in a failure of the copper infrastructure as well.
nonsense. POTS over copper is centrally powered with sizable banks of batteries and 2 diesel generators the size of my car for backup power.
in the event of a total power grid failure, we have enough fuel in the tanks under the main office to keep the system running for roughly 2 weeks (and if we can't get more fuel in that time, the shit has really hit the fan). the batteries alone would power the system for about 8 hours, but the generator starts up automatically if the power is out for more than 20 minutes.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That's complete bull. That's not bull. We tried to partner up with Verizon to offer DSL in their territory 3 years ago, and they wanted $22/mo per line for the loop fee, PLUS you had to pay them damn near $1000/mo for the wholesale aggregate circuit. They were charging $19.95/mo direct. We did the math, and to make any money (including compensation for the additional upstream capacity we'd need) we had to charge no less than $60 per customer and that was without marking it up much. Then by the time you're breaking even, you need more capacity. It didn't add up and we ended up pulling out before we even had 15 customers on the line.
Oh, and wholesale Verizon partners were limited to ONLY the 768K/128K or 1.5Mbps/128Kbps speeds. Talk about a hard sell...
And now that the telcos have been deregulated again, Verizon has grandfathered most if not all of their wholesale offerings and has choked the market off even more.
I don't like at&t any better than Verizon, but at least their DSL wholesale pricing is a lot more reasonable.