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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.
Well, telecom companies have the unique property of being unreasonably bloated bureaucratic beasts with a very naughty agenda that make the 3v1l [MP|RI]AA gang look like really angry little kids throwing a temper tantrum. Indeed, pretty much all American phone companies spend their free time trying to figure out how they can squeeze out more profit--does the name "Ma Bell" and what happened to it ring any, er, bells? I think this is less "omg! liberal media bias!" and more "Yes, corporate interests really are that malicious, and they've probably got lobbyists changing the definition of common carrier status to make this all legal."
Wilful destruction of existing infrastructure for no reason exception to "cut off" their competitors? They're going to the special hell.
As part of the "deal" the phone companies made with the government a long time ago I thought POTS was one of the "Universal Services", which has a federal tariffed rate. My feeble understanding is that obligated the phone company to provide that service to anyone at the federal rate.
So, once the copper is cut, shouldn't you be able to order that service, and make the reinstall cost be on Verizon's nickel? If enough people did that, might they not find it unprofitable to cut the copper?
I work for a small cable company and its basically a 50/50 situation. Either the customer completely forgets what is disclosed to them, or the CSR flat out never mentions it. Often in sales, its the promotional rate the customer is never informed about, they assume that 30$ is what everyone charges for 8mb connections. So they switch to another company, get hooked up on a promo rate for 6-12 months and when it ends they come back to us, wash, rinse, repeat.
When new homes are wired up, it can take 4-6 weeks to have the trench buried (mostly for locate purposes). You explain this to the customer, but if you check the notes on the account, you'll see them calling several times a week wanting an ETA on when someone is going to bury the coax line. You connect them to the field ops manager who repeats exactly what the CSR says, they feel better, but a week later its back to the same routine.
I am neither a fan or opponent of Verizon (technically my company competes with them in certain areas for phone), but its very possible that alot of customers are indeed informed about the loss of copper, they either don't remember, don't care or are so technically retarded they don't even understand the basic premise of copper vs fiber.
I don't mean to belittle customers, most companies get a strong following of loyal customers who both enjoy and understand the service with very few problems (My Qwest DSL has been going strong for years now). Anyone who's worked in a call center for a few years will understand this. I've had some calls where I've had to repeat the same thing over and over again and in the end, I got the feeling they didn't understand one word I said.
And maybe everyone will forget you invented the rules in the first place...
1996 "Let's make everyone pay each other for calls from their network to another network..." rule to keep CLECs from being a viable business (oh wait dialup ISPs are all inbound calls, D'OH!) followed by the
1999 "The Internet is not the telephone call so we don't have to pay those competitors the BILLIONS of reciprocal compensation for all our customers dialling up to d/l pr0n" rule which made
2004 "Packet based voice not subject to the same regulations as POTS" rule
Which means that now Verizon is rolling out a pure packet switched network that they don't have to share... Oh yeah and practicing a scorched-earth policy it seems.
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm
When communities started deploying their own fiber optic cable systems the communications industry was alarmed, even though they had plenty of opportunity to begin laying FOC themselves. They went to congress (lobbied and bribed congressmen) and got a law which forbid local governments from "competing" with free enterprise and paid the companies an advanced "reinbursement" to lay the FOC themselves. The communications companies, including Verizon, took the money but never laid the FOC. By ignoring the companies lack of compliance, even though they took the cash to do so, Congress has given defacto approval to the theft.
What does one expect when "campaign contributions" can be so easily converted to personal use?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Actually in seriousness, I did the research and was sort of informed that my copper would be shut off. I told them that I didn't want the service unless they left my copper lines alone. The Verizon folks agreed. However, to them copper left alone, meant converting my phone lines to fibre anyway and taking the phone company box with them!!! I called and complained and they said my copper lines were still there. Yes, soft of true. I was extremely pissed off to say the least.
There are 2 problems with having your copper lines switch to fibre. Aside from the obvious vendor lock-in, fiber telephone service isn't going to stay on for too long if your power goes out (they don't run their own generators to keep it going unlike with copper). (We have terrible power here near Washington, DC.) My wife and I work at home. With two of us using the phone, the batter backup on their router won't stay going for long. Plus batteries age!
So if you want reliable phone service do what we did, change local service on (at least one) of your phone lines to another company. It took months to get a Verizon guy to actually come over and rehook one of the lines up and a ton of bitching. So my advice is DO THIS STEP BEFORE GETTING FIOS! However, I don't know if it can be Sprint anymore (that's what we used) since Verizon bought Sprint. If you use another local carrier they have to work via copper.
If you have another local carrier, you can still get Fios. Apparently, they then have to bill your credit card. There really should be some class action suit about this stuff. It is nuts. However, Fios is still pretty darn good Internet.
That's odd. I work for Verizon as a lineman and do lots of FiOS installs in the Boston area.
My foreman told us a month ago to stop taking down the copper just to improve our install times. Maybe at the CEO level there's a big conspiracy to eliminate common carrier lines but the 1st and 2nd level managers certainly don't care about it. And I know for sure the linemen don't.
I know when I install I only remove the copper in a few circumstances:
1. The customer specifically asks me to (usually for aesthetic reasons, they don't care for all the wires running over their lawn).
2. They have underground conduit so I have to use the old copper line to pull the new fiber through it.
3. The drops to their house go through thick foliage and rather than try to weave the fiber through a bazillion branches I'll tape it to the old copper line and just pull it through.
Other than that? Why would I spend 30 minutes cutting the old line, getting dirty gathering it up and then finding a place to dispose of it when I'm all done? I'm not going to do extra work for no reason. Particularly if there's good reason not to do that work. I say just wait for the next hurricane to knock it down for you. Then we can take it away.
Basically I think it's going to go one of two ways in the future.
1. Consumer complaints over price and service will ultimately lead to making the fiber network common carrier in a decade or so.
or
2. WiMAX, BPL, Cable, Cellular and Satellite will provide enough options for consumers that the number of people calling for the fiber to be made common carrier just won't reach a critical mass because most people will be satisfied with the existing communications options.
Your scenario's a little strange. I don't know why those guys would risk losing a new customer over something as silly as that. In the Boston area anyway they seem to bend over backwards to save an install.