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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.
Nothing like screwing over any future resident of a house. I guess that's something that would need to be included in a home sale. "By the way, buying this house will lock you into Verizon's broadband." Doesn't seem right.
Maybe it is news because verizon and the other telcos and cable companies keep coming up with new (which makes it "news") shaft the consumer things? I'd go as far as saying cutting the copper is deliberate sabotage of critical national infrastructure and a violation of the implied trust the telcos got when AT&T was broken up and they were allowed to take over parts of the publicly paid for copper infrastructure. Yes, that's right, the public paid for every penny of it, and the telcos got free eminent domain seizures for running it over private property, something rather valuable in today's world. They've also gotten billions of dollars to maintain it, with those frakking service fees you see on your bill that they asked for and received.
The copper built this nations telecommunications and cutting it is at a minimum consumer unfriendly and is destroying quite decent backup that is already there and works. They could like, just leave it the fuck alone when they install the fiber in case the customer wants to use it for something else or have a backup connection, perhaps from another company. And if verizon doesn't want that copper, it should be taken away from them with no recompensation whatsoever, just like any other abandoned property on the street, and given to someone else who would actually use it after being held and auctioned off by the local marshals or sheriffs, just like they do with abandoned cars or abandoned buildings.
Not at all. They are replacing it with technology locked into Verizon. With copper, other companies could lease the lines from the line owner. Not so with fiber. It would be one thing if Verizon were using wholly private land for their fiber, but they are putting it on public easements and public property with public infrastructure-improvement subsidies. They should serve the public first -- which means allowing competitors to use the equipment that they install on public land.
If you want a deregulated, private network -- buy your own land to lay your own lines using only your own money. Verizon is doing none of those things.
So whats the story getting whipped up about?
Let's say Verizon decides to raise the rates on the FiOS service by 800%. What are you going to do then?
Your first instinct would be to switch providers, but you can't do that because you don't have infrastructure the competitors can use going to your house.
The million dollar question was asked earlier: is Verizon obligated to wholesale access to the fiber to competitors? If the answer to that question is yes, then this is much ado about nothing... go buy a battery and plug your FiOS stuff into it. If the answer is no, then this is a new monopoly forming and it's pretty underhanded (and typical) for Verizon to lock competitors out.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
So 800% is a bit extreme. What about 50% then? Or 25%? Even a moderate increase in the rate will net Verizon significant profit, while not significantly impacting their user base. And, if they don't have to open up to competitors, Verizon can slowly crank up rates, netting huge profits for themselves without spooking the users.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
The US has a primitive broadband infrastructure BECAUSE of this sort of activity.
With a more competitive marketplace there would be pressure to improve quality, reduce prices, and expand the market.
If Verizon has no competition they charge what they want, provide crappy service, and dont invest in their infrastructure.
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How do you explain the existence of contract lawyers? You know; people highly trained and well paid to spend their days understanding how to read and write small print. --If every working Joe was fully trained in the reading and understanding of deliberately deceptive small print in deliberately confusing contractual agreements, then why, oh, why do we have contract lawyers and schools dedicated to teaching contract lawyers?
Some people who sign contracts are not the same as you; they might be, say for example, overwrought working parents who may not have the same time and ability to focus their attention that you enjoy. Some people didn't have the proper nutrition or the same educational opportunities while growing up that you did, and so have fewer skills with regard to understanding the technical minutia in contractual agreements. Or are you suggesting the people who are not like you should be punished in some kind of 'Survival of the Fittest' line of myopic thinking? Should people who are not the same as you be fed to the sharks? I disagree, especially when 'Fittest' actually means, 'born to parents who happened to grow up in the right place and the right time with the right skin colour.'
I've met sharp-witted poor people who are among some of the hardest working humans on the planet, and I've met dull as doorknob rich people who are not, so 'lazy' and 'unfit' are piss-poor generalizations against people who aren't as advantaged as you. --That's a pre-emptive, "Don't even go there," in case you were wondering.
There is more than one kind of person on this planet; and thank goodness for that! Otherwise we'd have a world filled with tight-ass conservatives. The world would be missing good sex, 95% of the creative arts, spicy food and automobiles which come, "in any colour we want so long as it's black". In other words, the world would run like a Swiss watch, but there would be little appeal in actually being alive there.
Which is to say. . , some people spend their time developing skills other than the understanding of legal fine print and technology. Thank goodness!
Corporations which go to lengths to exploit people, and even create weakness in people which can then later be exploited, should not be held blameless while those they harm are sneered at for not being white and rich and mono-cultured enough.
-FL
less onimous than these posts want to make out
Good luck selling your house to someone who just wants plain old phone service, unless Verizon's going to put the copper back in or charge normal phone rates for people not using the internet stuff.
FCC regulations require them to lease the copper to other broadband providers. They have no such obligation with the fiber. Once the copper is gone, you're locked into Verizon broadband (unless you switch to cable). At that point, especially for those households without cable available, Verizon has no reason not to jack up your prices and/or provide shitty service.
It's the same thing we always see from the telcos, and which explains the terrible Internet, cellular, and POTS service we have in the U.S. Instead of competing, they run whining to either Congress or the regulators for special protection. Because there is no way for consumers to counteract well-funded political interests, Congress gives them whatever they want, and they don't have to compete anymore.