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.

Comments

Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

That's not entirely correct. We tried to call them, but couldn't get through. Not our fault.

Re:Not true

[GizmoToy]

It's probably bad that I wouldn't put it past Verizon to pull a stunt like that. That sounds like the kind of excuses you get every day on Verizon's support lines.

Are competitors allowed to compete in the area?

[dattaway]

I'm not from there, but isn't their cable service in the area? Do the cable service offer BASIC TELEPHONE SERVICE AT NO EXTRA CHARGE? If not, then Verizon is violating the law.

Re:Are competitors allowed to compete in the area?

[pavera]

Wrong. Fiber is a whole new animal. If you roll out fiber, the FCC turns a blind eye, there is no regulation. In fact, the FCC ruled that you don't have to allow competitors access to fiber that you roll out. Fiber for the telcos is just like cable networks which people have requested access to multiple times, and the FCC has consistently ruled that the cable cos don't have to allow access.

Re:Are competitors allowed to compete in the area?

[Shakrai]

In fact, the FCC ruled that you don't have to allow competitors access to fiber that you roll out

I'm all for allowing them exclusive access to their own network. Just as soon as they stop lobbying against competitors (wireless and cable last mile solutions) and stop buying off Governments (the entire state of Pennsylvania) to outlaw competition. Until then they should be forced to share the damn network.

the FCC has consistently ruled that the cable cos don't have to allow access

Which is bullshit, seeing as how most areas franchise cable companies and specifically disallow competition. Even if you had the money to roll your own cable plant you probably would be barred by law from doing so. A legislated monopoly! I'm in the wrong damn business....

Re:Are competitors allowed to compete in the area?

[dattaway]

...but...but...if you are the local telephone provider, isn't it a basic legal requirement to provide basic access to everyone? Fiber sounds like whole new animal than basic service.

Where are the lawyers arguing this?

Re:Are competitors allowed to compete in the area?

[pavera]

I'm not saying the FCC is right, or that the whole telco/cable duopoly isn't complete horse crap. It is. I'm just saying under the current laws and regulations, its perfectly legit.

Well they told me when I signed up

[Scyber]

Also it is stated numerous times if you do any research on the internet. I also heard that if you request it, they will keep the copper lines intact. I didn't really care, I never used the copper lines in the 2 years I had been in my house anyway, so they can disconnect whatever they want.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[tgd]

They told me it over the phone. The guys who came out and installed the fiber to my house told me. The installer who did the work in he house the next week told me. The paperwork told me, and so did the intarweb.

On top of that, I don't care, nor I imagine would very many people.

So whats the story getting whipped up about?

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[AlphaOne]

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.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[gruntled]

I stated repeatedly that I did not want the copper removed. First at the time of my initial contact, then when the called to make sure the schedule was still good, and then when the guys showed up for the install. Installer checked with supervisor, supervisor said no installation unless the copper was removed. I needed it, so I took the terms. So far, no negative repercussions, but I do worry about it.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[JAFSlashdotter]

Also it is stated numerous times if you do any research on the internet. I also heard that if you request it, they will keep the copper lines intact. I didn't really care, I never used the copper lines in the 2 years I had been in my house anyway, so they can disconnect whatever they want.

I don't recall the sales people telling us this was the standard procedure, which is bad. But like you, I researched on the 'net before making the switch and I saw it mentioned everywhere. Then, when the installers came, they noted the second line that was present (but not in use) and asked me about it. When I said it was inactive but used recently by my roommate, they said they'd leave the copper, just in case. It seems they can't provide two separately billed residential POTS lines on one FIOS account right now. No argument from them, and I expect I can switch back if I want, though I have no incentive to do so right now. So far, FIOS has been great across the board. Their POTS sounds even better than on the old copper, has no 911 issues, and they install a battery backup for it. In the event of an emergency with a power outage longer than the battery life (extremely rare, at least around here), I guess I can plug the battery backup unit into the cigarette-lighter inverter ( $20) in my car to make any calls that don't work on my cell phone. That's no worse than the fact that I have to plug the cordless phone base station in, too -- or dig through the basement to find the one old corded phone I still own.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[dabraun]

Let's say Verizon decides to raise the rates on the FiOS service by 800%. What are you going to do then?

Of course I can also get internet access over cable, over the cell network, and quite possibly in time over the power grid - that time will come sooner if Verizon raises their rates 800% (most customers would drop their internet access before they would pay 800% more, and even if *you* consider it essential enough to still pay for it doesn't matter because they would lose money with 90% of their customer base drops it, so they won't do it).

The market is extremely adaptive, up and coming technologies which could replace Verizon's offering will move faster if Verizon handles things badly. Verizon knows this, and they aren't going to handle things that badly.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[quanticle]

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.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[JAFSlashdotter]

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.

Hmmm. I guess that'd be possible, though if they upped the rates 800%, I'd invite the Comcast people back in (dropped them for FIOS when the TV service became available) and get phone service from them, or by VoIP on top of their internet, or maybe drop land line phone altogether. I know not everyone has those options, though.

Honestly, I'm seeing Verizon (here in SE PA) as finally taking on the effective monopoly of Comcast, just on TV service instead of phone. And, I'm hoping that the two of them remain competitors fighting for my business for a long time. I hope that will keep either one of them from thinking 800% increases are acceptable.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[rednip]

Now Verizon has you and future occupants of your house.

And I say this seriously for once, I for one welcome our new fiber installing overlords. Copper lines might have meant something 10 years ago, maybe even 5, but between cellphone and VOIP services, I think the competitive market for voice communication has expanded well. Eventually fiber will be the only backbone into the house, and at that point they would need to open it up to competition. If I were a copper line service competitor of Verizon, I would be pushing for 'fair access' today of the new line rather than bitching about losing the copper base.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Planesdragon]

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.

Sure he does. The coaxial cable will work just as well -- maybe better -- than the copper wire as competition for Verizon's fiber.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[zachdms]

They told me they had removed the copper AFTER they did. That was fairly jaw-dropping since I had just wanted to try FIOS for a while. The joke was on me.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Greventls]

What would be interesting would be for infrastructure companies to pay landlords to remove competing services from the houses. Verizon could pay to cut the copper and put in fiber. The electric company could remove gas lines to force tenants onto electric heat, etc.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[ryanov]

What about the price? If I move in there and decide "I'm not paying for this expensive shit since DSL is good enough for me," what are my options? I can't make them install a phone line, can I? They're ultimately locking me into paying for something that may or may not be affordable, or opt to not have a phone in my house at all?

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[ryanov]

What about TELEPHONE service? Currently there are a number of local providers you can use. If they can't use the fiber, you are stuck with Verizon.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"so they can disconnect whatever they want."

That'll make a fine appendum to the sell-sheet when you're looking to sell the house.

Oh - and the plumbing's disconnected too. And electrical grids? We don't need no stinking electrical grid!

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Short Circuit]

Verizon can slowly crank up rates, netting huge profits for themselves without spooking the users. It's worth pointing out that as one service provider cranks up rates, their competitors have less to fear from defecting customers, and so are free to raise their rates accordingly.

In short, inflation. :-)

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Firehed]

Technology changes. You're certainly by no means obligated to have a landline (I know tons of people who don't have one anymore, in favor of a cell). Likewise, you can't choose an internet connection speed half of what's offered at half the price because that's good enough for you. When fiber is rolled out and has replaced copper, I don't see why it wouldn't allow for upgraded services at the old copper-based prices (adjusted for inflation). In fact, I think it's a legal obligation for them to do so due to all these odd government subsidies and public land use laws.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[dal20402]

Like everyone else is saying, the problem isn't that they're replacing copper with fiber. It's that you no longer have any prospect of enjoying the benefits of telco competition. Verizon has you, and whoever moves in, by the short hairs.

Dream on if you think Joe's Coalition of Tiny Phone and Internet Startups has the lobbying muscle to require Verizon to open up that fiber.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[sumdumass]

You can get it from other areas. I have two reliable options, Verizon DSL or dialup. The neighbor's trees block satellite, cable doesn't run to me because the 200 yards to the run isn't economically feasible for Time Warner to mess with (even if I pay the costs of the run), and cell service is hit or miss out here.

And no, I'm not in the boondocks by any stretch, I'm 4 minutes from a small city with cable, good cell reception and all and only 12 minutes from another city that has everything a large city would have except th only wireless Internet carrier folded up because they had to pay something like 85% of the bill to the towner owners per connection to their antenna and the local government won't let them install their own tower. But this is pointless because the signal didn't reach me anyways.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[sumdumass]

I never thought of that, If you want to keep your copper line, tell them it is for the basement that you rent out or something.

Anyways, I'm wondering what renters and landlords are doing over this. If you want the service, they will be the ones stuck installing the older service again if it becomes a problem getting everything rented out again.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[shawngarringer]

Those CLEC providers will submit workorders with Verizon to reconnect them to the copper grid. Its the same as if a person elects for a CLEC provider in a new home without ever having had previous phone service. Verizon will come out and bury the lines if necessary, and install the SDU on the side of the home, and usually punch it down to activate the customer.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Reaperducer]

So, it's OK to allow Verizon to limit you to TWO choices (FOIS or cable) rather than the 30+ possiblities if you keep the copper?

Spoken like a Verizon telemarketing script.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[JAFSlashdotter]

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.

Comcast has had that kind of monopoly here for years on TV, and yet Verizon, despite being required to lease their copper lines to competitors and having Comcast compete with VoIP and internet on coax, invested the money to bring fiber to all the houses in the area. Where this is really a problem is where there isn't that mostly parallel infrastructure (usually cable TV provider owned). I'd guess, though, that Verizon is likely targeting FIOS to areas that already have cable TV -- mainly because that's where the customer density is high enough to make it practical. And if Verizon raises the price unreasonably, the cable companies will gladly welcome the customers back. I know Comcast has been calling, and has gone as far as holding a consumer panel in the area recently.

Am I off base here? Are there a lot of people who have FIOS available in their area, but no cable TV provider that also offers internet / phone?

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[dabraun]

What about TELEPHONE service?

Frankly, as far as I'm concerned telephone service is just another data service you can get over the internet at this point. I need data; data can provide phone service and in time data will be all you need for video/TV service. I have Vonage; I have a cell phone - both are sufficient to not need a land line for most people.

When people jump up and down about what 'the evil phone company' might do, talking about their peculiar situation where they can't get cable or they can't get cell coverage they are missing the larger point. Verizon can't abuse their position because *most* people have multiple options, and until such day as they decide to start charging higher prices to people who don't have other options (for which they would get smacked down in court very quickly) there isn't that much to worry about here IMO.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Kludge]

Is Verizon obligated to wholesale access to the fiber to competitors?

The answer is NO. Verizon is under no obligation to share these lines
with anybody ever. Thanks, FCC.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Fastolfe]

So any time somebody runs a new (insert technology name here) line to your house, they should be required to share it with their competitors? I kind of understood why they did this with copper, but this is something completely new.

If you want an "open" last mile of fiber, do it as a municipal project and run it like a public utility. Don't stomp your feet and cry because a private business does it first and won't give it away.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Fastolfe]

It's my understanding (that I'm having trouble verifying with an official source) is that from a "new tenant"'s point of view, they're eligible for exactly the same standard analog services that they'd otherwise be eligible for. A regular phone line over fiber will work and cost exactly what a regular phone line over copper would. The fact that it's fiber to the building doesn't matter in that respect. It should be a black box as far as the customer is concerned and part of the infrastructure, not CPE.

It's just stuff like DSL, which is copper-specific, that the home will no longer support. But not all homes get DSL today anyway, so if you're a DSL person, that's usually a question that you'd ask when you're looking for a new apartment/house, right? So, "no DSL, but you can get Verizon's new high-speed service," isn't something I would expect people will flip out and cry to the FCC about. If it's a deal-breaker, then it's a deal-breaker. Move on.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[cheezus_es_lard]

I would love to see that kind of flexibility. When I had copper service here in the D/FW metroplex, I found out that Verizon was the only local service provider which serviced my area. My last-mile copper came from Verizon. And while I could have any of a number of ISPs for Internet service, they were all peered into the VZ DSL Switching network, and their peer bandwidth was generally a lot less than that of the VZ uplink I was tied to- making VZ the only choice for anything faster than 54mbps split over every customer of that 3rd Party Network Service Provider.

As far as local voice service, Verizon was it. Long distance, sure, AT&T, whoever else you like- but only Verizon for the local. No other competition- they own the local Class 5 and noone else offers any kind of local switching in this area.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Tmack]

Those CLEC providers will submit workorders with Verizon to reconnect them to the copper grid. Its the same as if a person elects for a CLEC provider in a new home without ever having had previous phone service. Verizon will come out and bury the lines if necessary, and install the SDU on the side of the home, and usually punch it down to activate the customer.

And then bill the CLEC for this "service". If they can get away with an arial run, you are lucky, as the digging adds time and lots of money to the bill. Every time we get rejects based on no facilities available to the prem, need customer build-out, its at least $500, digging runs into the thousands and generally causes that account to be canceled, further locking them to their old provider, since the cost goes directly to that customer. The ILECs have many dirty tricks up their sleeves to try to keep their customers locked in, the facilities game is not new, this is just a different twist to it. The FCC rule is that they are required to lease "available" idle facilities at the mandated bulk rate. They are already bad about declaring "no facilities available" for certain CO's, but then are magically able to turn a "special access" order around in a day (special access is just terminology for full-price on the circuit rather than bulk rate, and when caught at this game they get sued, quite successfully, but still a bita for CLECs). Now it seems they have decided they can go in an cause themselves to not have any available idle facilities by simply removing them. Seeing as the public originally paid for the lines they are specifically removing (last mile copper), this should be dealt with by the FCC. Too bad the FCC is in thier pocket.

Tm

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Penguinisto]

Dream on if you think Joe's Coalition of Tiny Phone and Internet Startups has the lobbying muscle to require Verizon to open up that fiber.

They may not... but someone as big as Qwest just might ;)

/P

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[tinkerghost]

If you want an "open" last mile of fiber, do it as a municipal project and run it like a public utility. Don't stomp your feet and cry because a private business does it first and won't give it away.

Um, FIOS IS being run like a public utility. It's using PU right of way regulations to drop it's big ass boxes in front of peoples houses. It's using PU rulings on 'network improvements' to bypass all local regulations on construction & buildouts. The FIOS project is also part of the $9B+ in tax credits & grants that the telcos have received over the last decade with the garuntee that we would all have 40MB service 5 years ago.

Let's also back up & examine this, 'private business does it first'. In Chicago suburbs, the telco's spend $12M to defeat plans to run Municiple Fiber to EVERY HOME. 2 years later they force fed a 3% coverage to just the wealthiest neighborhoods & quoted their costs as 3X the total coverage plan they had defeated. AT&T & Verizon are actively blocking municipality's attemtps to impliment these types of installs - usually by quoting their PU monopoly status. After that, they are doing less, charging more, and killing all forms of competition in the process.

All while the FCC 'protects our interest' by ruling that 'phone, tv, internet' provided over fiber from the Telcos isn't subject to the regulations that cover 'phone, tv, internet' provided over fiber by the cable companies.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[ePhil_One]

I know Comcast has been calling, and has gone as far as holding a consumer panel in the area recently.

Comcast could win me back quicly with one simple change:

Release a Dual Tuner HD Tivo box that works similarly to the "DirecTivo" boxes of DirecTV. Dual tuners trhat are recording continuously (Not shut off when the box goes to sleep, not shut off when I'm not watching the other channel {I can mimic this behavior by leaving PIP on}. Has a sane way of determining what to record. So many little annoyances.)

The FIOS DVR does a lot of what I'm missing. I can search for programs by name. Five minutes of playing w/ the FIOS DVR and I was convinced. But then, it wouldn't take much, the Comcast unit is SO bad.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[jayp00001]

Joe's Coalition of Tiny Phone and Internet Startups can now run their own fiber on the same pole however, something that they could not previously do.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[ryanov]

Well, the problem there is that I'm currently paying $14.99 for the shitty DSL -- that's all I really need and I really don't want to pay for the next thing up (which I guess if I were on fiber right now would be a minimum $39.99 for FiOS, or $44.95 I think it was for cable. That's more than double what I pay now. For a household, that's fine, but not for someone who is paying for it by themselves and really doesn't need a whole lot more than 768k. I could use my cell all the time instead, I suppose, since that's paid for by work, but... that's not really a great option. And I think that it is something to call the FCC about. Right now, there are a number of people other than Verizon that I could have DSL from. Is FiOS allowing competitors? If not, they are scrapping something that I believe they have a mandate to provide to everyone.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[ryanov]

Like I said in another post, though, there does not appear to be a $14.99 plan for FiOS that I can find. For Verizon DSL, there is... maybe that's just so they could hook people on Broadband and go from there (or reel people in initially and then tell them at signup time, "you really want the $29.99 plan anyway -- the $14.99 plan is too slow," making the transition to $39.99 FiOS not quite so painful). Not sure... but at least as far as data is concerned, you are stuck. Can you use dialup with a fiber phone line?

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[ryanov]

I personally prefer to have a phone that is always available. While I do have a cordless, I also own an old-school phone that I've kept (and used) in order to be able to, say, call PSEG when the power goes out... or call someone else that I'm attempting to make plans with during a power failure. 6 hours with FiOS is pretty good, but during a snowstorm, it's not unusual for the power to be out for longer than that. Hell, during a heat wave... it is less than 5 years ago that having a REAL telephone mattered. 'course, lots of people have a cell, but if your power is out for several days, getting that charged is also going to be a problem. My land line gets used when I'm done dicking around with technology and just want to make a call... and it's true, it has been out far less than my internet (even from the same company).

I'm really surprised that they don't have a genuine solution to the power problem with fiber. Of course, I'm not really not sure that it's technically possible to power something over fiber, but... I'd suppose someone knows more about this than me.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[ryanov]

And this kind of shit is the problem. I just find it hard to believe Verizon would clip the copper wires to a house if they knew that they might have to pay to put them back. Seems to me it's not hurting anyone to have them there. Also, what happens if a whole neighborhood goes FiOS? I assume they stop maintaining the copper (particularly because no one is telling them about shitty connections, etc.), which means that a new hookup is going to be bad news for them. I have to believe they are going to try to avoid it at all costs -- this seems to be some trickery that would make that possible. Call me crazy, but I've had phone service with these jokers for a long time -- I've LEARNED not to trust them.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Fastolfe]

If not, they are scrapping something that I believe they have a mandate to provide to everyone.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of requiring the telcos to open up their copper infrastructure to competitors. It's not a matter of ensuring equal access to everyone's home, it's a matter of allowing competition to survive where it's impractical to lay down new infrastructure. Here, Verizon *is* laying down new infrastructure, so the case could be made that it's no longer impractical to do so. One of the big arguments made when deciding to require the telcos to lease out their own lines to their competitors was that these lines were in some cases paid for using tax dollars, and there's no way a competitor is going to be able to lay their own lines. While opening up these new lines might still be the right thing to do, it most certainly shouldn't be automatic or implied. If we want to change the way this roll-out works, *now* is the time to do so, either by setting up municipal "last mile" connections that can reasonably be opened up to whoever wants to use them, or by requiring that Verizon do the same up front. Yes, Verizon's sitting on a lot of infrastructure, but, again, this is new stuff. You can't single Verizon out and say their new deployment needs to be opened up to their competitors without applying the same rationale to every new project companies are coming out with. Who wants to tell the satellite companies that? After all, Mom And Pop Telephone isn't going to be able to launch their own satellites. It's only fair, right?

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Fastolfe]

It's using PU right of way regulations to drop it's big ass boxes in front of peoples houses.

Are potential competitors not allowed to do this?

The FIOS project is also part of the $9B+ in tax credits & grants that the telcos have received over the last decade with the garuntee that we would all have 40MB service 5 years ago.

So your government made a deal with the telcos, and because they agreed to the deal, there's a hidden provision in there that makes everything they build community property? If you're a budding new community, and there isn't a telco willing to give anybody in your community high-speed Internet, wouldn't you consider giving them deals or concessions to make it happen? Your community is effectively contracting with the telco. The telco isn't "raping" your little town and they don't deserve to automatically have the things that they're building in order to satisfy that agreement simply turned over to the community.

Now, I'm not saying that "last mile" fiber should be entirely under private control, because there are lots of advantages to allowing a variety of service providers using that fiber constructively, but they're in the process of rolling this out to communities today. Now is the time to put these requirements in (or as I suggested in my earlier post, create a municipal entity that either does this work themselves, or contracts out with someone like Verizon with the understanding that it will be publicly-owned). It's completely unreasonable to wait until they've rolled out this new infrastructure and then try to do some hand-waving about the reasons copper was opened up and suggest that the same reasons apply to fiber. One of the big assumptions behind opening up the copper infrastructure was that it was cost prohibitive for anyone to roll out their own infrastructure to parallel copper. Verizon is clearly doing that, so this argument no longer holds a lot of water.

the telco's spend $12M to defeat plans to run Municiple Fiber to EVERY HOME

How do they accomplish this? If your local government is making poor decisions, that's a problem your local government needs to deal with. The solution is not necessarily more government.

After that, they are doing less, charging more, and killing all forms of competition in the process.

I'm not going to disagree with any of this. I don't have all of the facts, but I have no reason to say your conclusions are wrong here. The thing I have a problem with is the idea that any new infrastructure that these guys roll out should automatically be subject to the same "open to competitors" requirement that copper had. There were very specific reasons they did this with copper. I would encourage you to read up on those reasons and ask yourself how many of those apply to this new fiber roll-out.

I agree that the FCC isn't doing the best job with respect to telco vs. cable regulation. It would be far more useful to regulate things based on what services are provided rather than what type of physical connection it is. It's all going to be IP-based in the future, so why treat copper differently from fiber, and fiber differently from coax when it comes to services? Just as you can get homes in many areas with either gas or electric heat, it's still just heat. It shouldn't matter if your home is wired for telephone via copper, fiber or coax. It's still telephone and should be regulated as telephone. But I think the reasons behind opening up copper are largely specific to the fact that it's existing copper infrastructure, and more specifically, that nobody else was likely to be able to parallel it.

If anything, I would even go so far as to say that the presence of satellite, cable and cellular, the convergence of telephony and other services across all of these different providers, is an excellent reason why it's

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[tinkerghost]

Are potential competitors not allowed to do this?

In many states/municipalities, no they are not allowed to do it. There is frequently 1 telco & 1 cableco in a region & they have granted monopolies based on performance contracts which typically require buildout milestones - ie 80% coverage in 3 years. There are multiple reasons for this but some of them boil down to the amount of land that would need to be taken up by the easments of multiple providers.

So your government made a deal with the telcos, and because they agreed to the deal, there's a hidden provision in there that makes everything they build community property? If you're a budding new community, and there isn't a telco willing to give anybody in your community high-speed Internet, wouldn't you consider giving them deals or concessions to make it happen? Your community is effectively contracting with the telco. The telco isn't "raping" your little town and they don't deserve to automatically have the things that they're building in order to satisfy that agreement simply turned over to the community.

One of the concessions that the big Telco's made in order to be granted their monopoly status on the easments is that they will provide access to the 'last mile' to competing companies. This isn't some new isue. It's the law & has been for close to 20 years. What these communities did was grant a monopoly on the physical plant in exchange for competition in the service. What the telco's are doing in several areas is using the Federal Rules reguarding 'network upgrades' to keep their monopoly on the physical plant and using new FCC rulings on fiber v. copper to claim a monopoly on service.

That's the problem, they were granted easment consessions & monopoly status based on garantees of competition. Competition which is no longer mandate, but the communities are still required to continue the easment & monopoly status of the Telcos.

How do they accomplish this? If your local government is making poor decisions, that's a problem your local government needs to deal with. The solution is not necessarily more government.

In Chicago, they brought several lawsuits agains the municipalities which were debating municiple loops - claiming their garanteed monopoly status prevented the towns from entering into competition with them. Additionally, they mounted several large shill campaigns to persuade the people to vote against fighting the lawsuits.

The thing I have a problem with is the idea that any new infrastructure that these guys roll out should automatically be subject to the same "open to competitors" requirement that copper had.

If the Telco's are willing to give up their monopoly status & their PU easments, then by all means allow them to keep their networks closed. However, if they are going to have a granted monopoly and use PU easments, then they should be held to the rules by which those were granted.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[dal20402]

I am also legally free to buy 45 Bentley Continentals. That doesn't mean I can afford to do it.

The whole reason for opening up already-built infrastructure to competition is that the immense capital cost of building new infrastructure 1) makes it impossible for new entrants and 2) makes it unprofitable even for entrants who can afford it, unless it's a dramatic technological step like POTS to fiber.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[jayp00001]

The key difference is that Verizon is completely rebuilding the infrastructure (and absorbing the capitol costs). It's not already built up. New competition still has access to the existing telco centers to run the lines back to. Verizon is actually selling the much of New England to another, smaller communications company because they do not want to have to run the fiber to rural areas. They would rather that small companies test the profitability and then re-buy it back if it's successful. What's lacking are entrepreneurs with the guts to go broke if enough people do not buy the service.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[quarkscat]

Well, lucky you.

I am in a region "serviced" by Verizon, and I have formed the opinion that
Verizon management are all the devil's spawn. I keep getting direct (to me)
mailed advertising for Verizon's DSL service, which isn't even offered in my
area. (The local CO is not even equipped for the DSLAM equipment, the CO
is too far from my residence for even ADSL service, and at the rate that
Verizon is rolling out FttN(eighborhood) OR FttP(remesis), I should be able
to directly mind-meld my brain to the Internet as another option.)

Thanks, Verizon! (and thanks, State Corporation Commission that cut these
SOBs such a big break, competition-wise.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[dabraun]

I'm really surprised that they don't have a genuine solution to the power problem with fiber. Of course, I'm not really not sure that it's technically possible to power something over fiber, but... I'd suppose someone knows more about this than me.

Really bright light, solar panels at the end points in people's houses.

The power company is gonna start shaking in their boots :)

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[ryanov]

But, in that case then, aren't they ripping out lines that were paid for with tax dollars? I think that's a problem, no?

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[QuickSilver_999]

I'd have to say that this argument doesn't hold any water anymore. Any place that you are capable of getting service, you are also capable of getting cable, so if you don't like the service provided, you can always go to cable. I'm more concerned with how cable is fast becoming the "one stop shop" for communication (digital phone/digital cable/high speed internet) by blocking competitors from giving one of the services (cable) in their area. If they want a monopoly, then fine, they can have it, but they ought to be forced to not participate in other activities until their core business is opened up. After all, VZ was forced to open their copper, how come Time Warner isn't being forced to open theirs? Especially now that they are a "telephone company" by providing telephone service in areas they service. Shouldn't say AT&T be given access to TW or comcasts last mile? Why is it only the telco's get ripped for doing stuff like this?

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Fastolfe]

If by "paid for with tax dollars" you mean "paid for as part of a deal to bring those services to that community earlier than they would have otherwise, in exchange for money", yes. And no, I don't think that is a problem. The fact that the community may have less competition than it did before might still be a problem, but there are better solutions to that problem than confiscating this new infrastructure that Verizon is paying to lay down.

Re:Well they told me when I signed up

[Fastolfe]

In many states/municipalities, no they are not allowed to [use the PU rights-of-way granted to the telcos]

I don't have enough information to disagree with this, but one of the provisions in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the requirement that the telcos allow competitors access to their rights-of-way. It's possible some state/local regulations preempt that, I suppose.

This isn't some new isue. It's the law & has been for close to 20 years.

If things were this simple, they'd be breaking the law and all of this discussion is academic and moot.

One of the concessions that the big Telco's made in order to be granted their monopoly status

Either I'm misunderstanding you, or you seem to have your history a bit confused. The major telephone companies had been considered a natural monopoly for the better part of the 20th century. It wasn't until the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that the telcos were forced to allow their competitors access to their lines.

In Chicago, they brought several lawsuits agains the municipalities which were debating municiple loops - claiming their garanteed monopoly status prevented the towns from entering into competition with them. Additionally, they mounted several large shill campaigns to persuade the people to vote against fighting the lawsuits.

So, if I understand what you're saying, the city of Chicago entered into a contract that prevents them from doing their own thing, and the people of Chicago voted to keep it that way. I still say the solution to this problem is in Chicago. You can't just keep escalating to higher levels of government when you don't get your way in your own community. Just because people were misled doesn't mean you need the next-higher-up government to step in and force them to do something they believe they don't want to do. That runs counter to the principles of democracy.

However, if they are going to have a granted monopoly and use PU easments, then they should be held to the rules by which those were granted.

In my opinion, public utility easements should allow access to anyone wanting to provide those telco services, not just the incumbent. That would seem (to me) to be a more logical thing to require than requiring the telcos to "give up" that access. (Then nobody would be able to offer those services, right?) I was actually under the impression that this was the way things were, but you've pointed out that that's not the case, so if that's true, you absolutely have a valid point.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Ai Olor-Wile]

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."

terms of the lease?

[Original Replica]

I have no idea what the lease terms are, but I'm very suprised there isn't either a guaranteed renewal or option to buy for the leasee. How could you build a business on something that could be yanked out from under you without recourse?

Duhh

[Joebert]

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.

From a sales point of view, why would you want to tell someone "Oh by the way, there's no turning back, if you decide you don't like FIOS, you're fucked because we're going to cut the old line as soon as you switch" ? Alot of people are going to be disturbed by that & it could be the deal breaker in alot of cases.

From a Verision point of view [font size="0.002"]maintaining both networks must be pretty expensive[/font].

It's like polar bears going to a new iceburg when they realize the one they're on is about to rollover. Some polar bears are going to have a shitty time making the swim to the new iceburg, but the quicker everyone gets over there it better.

Re:Duhh

[zippthorne]

DId you mean to say .002 or .2 for the font-size?

It might be legal but....

[Dr_Barnowl]

Wilful destruction of existing infrastructure for no reason exception to "cut off" their competitors? They're going to the special hell.

Re:It might be legal but....

[hdon]

That "special hell" you mentioned must be the "industry leader" position. In Pittsburgh, Verizon has been engaged in practically illegal (and totally illegal, if you can prove these maneuvers were planned and not lucky coincidence) activities along with its sister company Verizon DSL for a decade.

In fact for the past several years, Verizon has been charging all other CLECs (read: competitors to Verizon DSL) for last-mile piggybacking (which they are required by law to offer) even more money than it costs a customer to get Verizon DSL, and of course the only way Verizon DSL can provide such cheap service is by being the singular DSL company in Pittsburgh who is eligible for the cheapest pricing bracket for last-mile piggyback rates.

For example, while Verizon DSL charges $14.99/month for their basic DSL package, Verizon charges some of its competitors $16/month for each DSL customer they have.

This is of course all legal unless you can prove that Verizon and Verizon DSL have consorted for this to be the case. And it is arguably illegal, still, if you can prove that Verizon's piggybacking rates are anti-competitive. But no one seems to be doing anything about this.

Re:It might be legal but....

[moosesocks]

It's far from 'no reason' -- the FiOS network was designed from the get go to be a REPLACEMENT for the copper infrastructure that would improve performance and reduce costs.

When it was installed at my house, they made us all aware that the copper lines were being disconnected (but left intact).

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. The passive nature of the FiOS network would indicate that it's *less* likely to outages and failures. The pole-top components for routing and switching perform their functions utilizing optics, and require no power -- it's quite a cool system from an engineering standpoint.

The amount of FUD floating around this article is absurd. I'm no fan of huge corporations, but this is a clear-cut case of a monolithic corporation using its large size to actually implement an infrastructure that benefits consumers and reduces costs (and passes some of those reductions off to the consumer). It's a hell of a lot more than the cable company's ever done for us.

Re:It might be legal but....

[bladesjester]

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.

Re:It might be legal but....

[reset_button]

Some people think that they're going down to a lower-level hell than that:

Today a follow up commercial was shown where the young boy has gone inside to speak to his unconcerned father who is reading a newspaper inside the house, totally dumbfounded and out of touch as the child rattles off the information about the service told by the stranger. The next scene, the child and father are outside watching the Verizon man running wires to a box and the boy tells the father, "you should see his truck".

Re:It might be legal but....

[evilviper]

Verizon has been charging all other CLECs (read: competitors to Verizon DSL) for last-mile piggybacking (which they are required by law to offer) even more money than it costs a customer to get Verizon DSL,

That's complete bull.

Verizon DSL charges $14.99/month for their basic DSL package, Verizon charges some of its competitors $16/month for each DSL customer they have.

Verizon charges $15/month FOR THE FIRST YEAR ONLY. The lowest possible price is $20/month after that. No doubt Verizon loses money on the first year of service, and anyone who really wants to compete will have to do the same. You can charge a fee for anyone canceling early, and/or make-up the loss in the second year, that is assuming your service is good enough that people stay around.

Personally, if I could find somebody providing decent DSL service for $18/month, I'd sign-up immediately, and I bet many, many others would as well... (at least, as soon as their first year "trial" of Verizon DSL ends)

Unfortunately, there is no such competition around here. The only big competitor to Verizon and SBC/ATT seems to be Earthlink, which charges $40/month for DSL service that is worse than Verizon's at $15/20. Every other DSL company is just another small company reselling Verizon/ATT DSL at their normal price/rate, and trying very, very hard NOT to compete...

Re:It might be legal but....

[compro01]

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.

Re:It might be legal but....

[Fez]

Verizon has been charging all other CLECs (read: competitors to Verizon DSL) for last-mile piggybacking (which they are required by law to offer) even more money than it costs a customer to get Verizon DSL,

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.

Re:It might be legal but....

[compro01]

and yes, i do work for a phone company, namely, Sasktel.

Re:It might be legal but....

[Short Circuit]

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. Similar circumstances, but in one case it was only three days, and the phones kept working. When I lived in another area, the power was down two days, but even the BRI we had running into our house at the time kept working.

I hope cell towers will be getting better service than residential areas will be. Or maybe I should just get a ham license.

Re:It might be legal but....

[macdaddy]

I attended LinkSys One training with a couple Sasktel guys about 9 months ago. In fact Cisco goofed up on my temp badge and printed my name and Sasktel as my employer. I still have that badge some where.

Re:It might be legal but....

[LWATCDR]

Sorry after the last hurricane I was without power for 9 days. Still had phone.

Re:It might be legal but....

[wkk2]

Most central offices have well designed backup power so a total loss of service is unlikely if your copper goes to the office. Unfortunately, many subscribers are served by remotes that only have small battery racks. Some have more than one phase, which helps since outages frequently hit only one phase. After that, you can only hope someone will wander by and connect a generator to top off the batteries often enough.

A while back, my area lost two phases due to lightning blowing a cable under a bridge. The cable TV company actually had people in the neighborhood with small generators to power distribution nodes. A big truck even showed up to power a lift station before the tank over flowed. Some things are more important than phone calls :-)

Re:It might be legal but....

[compro01]

ah yes. i forgot about the rural concentrators. i can't remember what we have for backup power on those (presumably a relatively short battery backup), as the rural service is handled by a different department, though barring a very major storm or other catastrophe, we'd likely get a truck rolling and get a temporary generator running there before the backup ran out.

only time the phones ever went down here was a few years ago when they were doing highway work nearby. the road crew cut the (clearly marked) cable twice within a week.

Re:It might be legal but....

[evilviper]

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.

Once again... you're using bullshit numbers. Verizon isn't offering DSL service for $19.95/mo even today, without a year-long contract. 3 years ago, the lowest promotional pricing for Verizon DSL was $30/mo, and that was ONLY with 12 month contract and for the first year you were signed-up. It's absolute and complete bullshit to claim their service is sold for less than the wholesale line fee... a bit like saying McDonalds is giving away their food for free, since you happen to have a coupon.

Verizon and AT&T are selling at a loss to get people to sign-up, and then keeping margins low to ensure a large number of customers. There's no reason a 3rd party can't do that.

we had to charge no less than $60 per customer

The fact that your company doesn't have the size, infrastructure, or customer base to make the economics work out, has nothing to do with the issue.

And I'm always suspicious of anyone who quotes a single figure when discussing a complex issue, where a vast number of qualitative decisions can vastly change things.

Re:It might be legal but....

[Ardipithecus]

After hurricane Wilma, both the phone and cell towers died out, approximately after 3-4 days without power.

We got power, phone and cell after a week, but some people were w/o power for weeks, not sure what happened to their phone/cel.

HellSouth, now part of ATT.

Re:It might be legal but....

[scharkalvin]

After Hurricane Wilma in South Florida we were without power for almost two weeks.
I don't know how long the phones stayed up after the power went down because the
storm ripped our phone lines out of the ground when a stand of trees uprooted
(the phone lines were buried so long ago that the tree roots grew around them).

Ma bell did start to deploy generators to replace dead batteries so the phones came
back on line as soon as they spliced a new section of cable in. BTW have you EVER seen
the batteries Ma Bell uses? They are lead / acid storage batteries, each 2v cell is
as big as a refigerator!

Re:It might be legal but....

[rtechie]

Verizon and AT&T are selling at a loss to get people to sign-up, and then keeping margins low to ensure a large number of customers. No, they're not. Their own "internal" wholesale rate is far lower than what they charge the CLECs. They are deliberately undercutting the price of the CLECs (which they essentially set) to drive them out of business. It is a well-known fact that the ILECs are screwing the CLECs left and right.

There's no reason a 3rd party can't do that. No, they can't, because the ILECs have a government-granted monopoly. As long as they want to do DSL, they have to deal with the ILECs and their predatory pricing. This is why most small ISPs are flocking to WiFi.

Re:It might be legal but....

[AK Marc]

After hurricane Wilma, both the phone and cell towers died out, approximately after 3-4 days without power.

Well, the phone company has batteries and generators, but someone has to fill the generators. It's probable that they ran on battery until the generators were on, then generators until they ran out of diesel fuel. That seems like a problem with their backup plan (no refills on fuel with an infrastructure failure) rather than any technical plan (since generators run "forever" when properly fueled).

Re:It might be legal but....

[AK Marc]

BTW have you EVER seen the batteries Ma Bell uses? They are lead / acid storage batteries, each 2v cell is as big as a refigerator!

The ones I saw were the size of automobile batteries. They were connected together in groups that were refrigerator sized, and those were connected together with other groups. The resultant battery room is about 30 ft by 80 ft with two generators at the end (not included in that measurement) which were each the size of a truck. Maybe the ones you saw were "mobile" units that are sealed groupings of the smaller batteries (or maybe that's what they are using now and what I deal with is older design).

Re:It might be legal but....

[enmane]

Mark my words...

Verizon will start the same scam that they've done with the cell-phone market. My original cell-phone plan for emergency calls only was $19.99/mo. - try to find that rate today, you can't. Now I HAVE to get a $34.99 plan BUT it has a ton of features that I don't need. Be prepared to pay $40/mo. (most basic service) for broadband for a ton of features that you don't use.

It's POTS part of Universal Service?

[Above]

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?

Re:It's POTS part of Universal Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

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? Oh, the irony!

Re:Makes me wonder

[UncleTogie]

Every other story posted here has some sort of editorial ulterior motive but I haven't been able to figure out the motive for hating Verizon yet. Any thoughts?
If a company acts in a manner that a semi-informed reader base finds repugnant, wouldn't you expect to find us calling foul? Verizon just makes it a little easier by painting a huge bulls-eye on their back.

...and in advance, I'd like to apoogize for bein' an insensitive clod at those who've lost their family to a bull...

...or to Verizon for that matter...

What about future tenants?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What about future tenants?

[iggymanz]

that's already the case in most places, you're going to get cable TV from one provider and you're going to get phone service from one provider, and maybe you can get internet via phone or via cable provider.

Re:What about future tenants?

[packeteer]

The realtor will simply phrase it as a bonus. "This house comes PRE-INSTALLED with FIOS broadband!"

Re:What about future tenants?

[The Second Horseman]

No kidding. I'd ask. I'd also try to get any cost of connecting the "last mile" part of haggling on price. Frankly, I don't trust FIOS or cable/VOIP for 911. When we had the huge regional power failure a few years ago from the Great Lakes out to New York, POTS was about the only thing working. Even in areas that had power, the cellphone carriers were completely overwhelmed. Here in northern NJ, all the carriers pretty much went to hell due to call volume and (in some cases) failed towers. SMS still worked, but you can't get EMS out that way. And if you are someplace that gets hit, in future outages, no VOIP, no FIOS, etc. If you've got kids, or someone with medical issues, or you can imagine yourself being unlucky, not being able to call 911 isn't a pleasant thought. And at what point does Verizon seek permission to shut the copper down entirely? How about 10% of customers subscribing to POTS? Maybe 20%? Why not 30%?

Here's the screwed-up part - POTS just works. It just works. It's a really good design. The copper goes to your house, it works. You can call 911, and it works. It pretty much works through anything except a major earthquake or storm (ice storm, hurricane, whatever). And, of course, we're going to screw it up through our own (often poorly informed, in the case of the 911 limitations) individual choices, plus our desire to let large companies make even more guaranteed profit by messing it up. Great. I can get TV and high-speed internet, but when the power goes out, I can't call 911. What the hell? As this sort of stuff movies forward, we're going to hear more and more horror stories of folks unable to get help and deaths resulting.

Maybe I'm just getting cranky, but screwing up a basic service so that Verizon (or whoever else) can stuff a bunch of channels into the Idiot Box doesn't really seem like great public policy. Sure, some people can live without a land line, and are willing to take whatever risk it entails (Whoops! Forgot to charge the battery, and I just sliced open an artery. D'oh!), but the broader question should be carefully looked at by regulators and lawmakers. It won't be, of course.

Re:What about future tenants?

[Grapes4Buddha]

I just bought a house a couple of months ago and the realtor did exactly that. I shudder to think what I would have gone through if I just wanted POTS. We're about 100 yards from the street and all of our cables are underground. I have no idea whether there's still copper from the street, or even if there's coax in case I wanted Comcast instead.

Re:What about future tenants?

[__aafutm5472]

That's exactly it. When we bought our house, we were informed that the house had fiber pre-installed. I didn't worry too much about it, because I'd read many stories of folks simply re-activating the copper, if it was still there.

Guess what? The copper is still there at my house, but Verizon flat out refused to turn up service on it. I was pissed. I was paying $14.95/month for my Verizon DSL at my apartment, but since Verizon wouldn't turn up the copper service at the new house, we couldn't transition that service over; instead the best they could do was their low-end FIOS service at $39.99/month, or almost 3 times what I was paying. Sure, it's faster, but I don't spend all my time online, so I didn't care. I went around and around with them for days, before I finally talked them into all sorts of discounts (which, btw, I need to call them on as they've mysteriously stopped my 6 months of discounts after just 4) to make it somewhat reasonable.

The only saving grace is the copper is still there, and if I hook a phone up to it, I can probably still dial 911 or use a calling card. But how many residents have the technical skills to re-wire their phone box?

Needless to say, when this contract is up, Verizon will see none of my business. Currently they have the best deal on cell service for my needs, by far, but I refuse to do business with them, even to the detriment of my pocketbook.

Yay, deregulation

[nysus]

This can only help those phone companies. Once we're done deregulating the telecommunications industry, we can start getting rid of those pesky traffic light and parking restrictions that regulate where and how I drive MY car.

You can't please the average Slashedotter

[Frosty Piss]

You can't please the average Slashedotter. You guys have complained for years that telecoms are not replacing copper with fiber. Now Verizon replaces copper with fiber, and you bitch.

Re:You can't please the average Slashedotter

[dodobh]

We want broadband over fibre and telephony over copper for emergencies.

fiber lease?

[SolusSD]

Is verizon required to lease out the fiber now that they are 'cutting off' the copper? It seems to me that the copper infrustructure should be the failsafe fallback should something happen to the fiber or if power goes out. People should always have the ability to cal 911 in the event of a power outage

Re:fiber lease?

[ahknight]

Are the fiber COs on UPSes? If so, having your equipment on a cheap UPS should keep your end of the line active. I have my DSL and AirPort on a cheap powerstrip UPS so that when the power goes out the only thing I notice is the A/C and lights are off and the MacBook Pro is no longer charging...

Re:fiber lease?

[pavera]

no they are not required to lease the fiber, and they are not leasing it. The FCC ruled a couple years ago that if you as a provider invest in fiber roll outs, you no longer are subject to the required leasing agreements of the past. So as verizon cuts the fiber, they are creating 100% monopoly service areas.

As far as 911 they are still required by the FCC to comply with the power outage requirements, which state something like 6-8 hours of uptime in the event of a power outage. They install a battery backup at the customer prem to satisfy this requirement. This is all copper infrastructure has too. Sure at some COs they have generation equipment, but most of the locations where telco's are muxing out fiber to copper lines are running on batteries with 6-8 hours of uptime.

Yanked out?

[flyingfsck]

Do they actually yank the wires out and sell them for scrap? If they just rip them out of the punch down blocks then the next company can punch them down again.

you have not much imagination then

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:you have not much imagination then

[HouseArrest420]

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. And who do you think is paying to remove that copper? The consumer. And who do you think is paying for the FIOS replacement to that network? The consumer. And who do you think will pay to remove the FIOS/Cable lines in 20-30 years (possibly sooner) when EVERYTHING from your computer to your refrigerator to your TV will run off a wireless network? The consumer. And who do you think wll pay for the set up of that global wireless network? The consumer.

The consumer will ALWAYS, and has ALWAYS, been the provider for ANY change in ANY thing. There's no use crying/complaining/wiching things will change, they won't. That's how this world was built, on the money of those living in it.

Re:you have not much imagination then

[dal20402]

when EVERYTHING from your computer to your refrigerator to your TV will run off a wireless network?

Please, God, no. I'll shoot myself. Let me keep my anti-competitive and extortionate, but wired, network.

Have you ever lived in an apartment building full of MIT geeks? I have routinely had up to 41 802.11g networks visible in my apartment, operating on all 11 channels, over the last year. The interference is so bad during peak times (anytime in the evening) that sitting 3 feet from my WRT54G I get transfer rates as low as 500b/sec with 90% packet loss. (At 3 am my network works perfectly.) I understand the higher signal strength of 802.11n will make it worse. Wireless technology is just not yet ready to be deployed in physically dense environments.

Re:you have not much imagination then

[HouseArrest420]

Wireless technology is just not yet ready to be deployed in physically dense environments. This is where most people are missing the big picture, and I'm not saying you are, just people in general. Everyone has gripes about wireless, from the unreliablity to the lack of competent security...but guess what? Wireless technology, in all its 10 years of deployement, is still in its INFANCY. Look at what we're STILL learning to do with computers! And how long have they been available? SO, to hope a complete wireless network will never happen would be like people back in the day wishing we didn't start putting toilets IN the house because they thought it would stink! Its going to happen, and trust me, when we get it down its going to be flawless. Want a bag of popcorn? Throw it in the microwave, and ten feet down the hall on your way back to the couch turn on the mic with your thoughts! Watching tv but want to surf the net on trusty old betsy instead of your tv?? Point your remote at your computer and push power. Its coming. But don't misquote me by thinking its happening within the next ten years. We've got a ways to go yet. But we're pretty close. I mean, how many more games of chess is that parapalegic going to play with his mind before they say we can now control computers with our thoughts?

Why cut the copper?

[BlackWind]

Because Verizon is getting OUT of the copper network business. (Have you looked at the price os copper lately?)
Oh, and those "Reasonable Rates" that the smaller companies insist are necessary if they are going to provide competition? Those are actually LOWER than what it costs Verizon to provide the service to them. Damn straight the rates go up when they lease service over fiber, now they are getting the service at cost. (No profit for Verizon, but not a loss anymore, either.)

Re:Why cut the copper?

[pavera]

Actually its worse than that. The FCC ruled that if you roll out fiber you are exempt from competition. Verizon is not leasing their fiber to anyone, and they aren't required to. They are cutting the copper because as they do that, the are creating 100% monopoly service areas.

Verizon, at&t, and any other Fiber service provider owns a 100% monopoly as long as there is no copper. Verizon is not required, and has no natural incentive to lease their fiber to competitors at any price. If they were to allow a competitor to "lease" the fiber, I guarantee they would say "Ok, well our retail rate is $49/mo, so we'll let you use the connection for $45/mo" or some other really impossible to compete with price. The competitor would still have to provide all of the connection termination equipment, and the bandwidth, and would probably have to sell the service at ~100/mo just to cover costs. So obviously no one would sign up for that.

Verizon isn't doing that though, as they cut the copper they are removing competitors and creating 100% monopoly service areas where customers have absolutely zero choice.

Re:Why cut the copper?

[BlackWind]

Actually, Verizon is even now leasing some of it's fiber lines to competing companies. (At least they are in PA) Granted, they are doing this more to prevent anyone from claiming that Verizon is creating a new monopoly, than from any intention of being nice.
And no, they aren't raping the competing company. Verizon really is charging them Verizon's cost to provide the phone service. The "reasonable Rates" that Verizon is required to sell service to smaller competitors are nothing more than a forced subsidy, paid for by Verizon.
Verizon is perfectly willing to have other companies offering service to people in areas that VZ serves, they're just not happy with having to pay for that company to do it.

Lack of disclosure happens...... however.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I agree

[tkrotchko]

Keeping copper buried in the ground can't be cost effective. It's also 100 year old technology.

So Verizon is fixing that, and it seems a bit whiny to complain about it.

Re:I agree

[daeg]

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.

Re:I agree

[daeg]

I don't think the parent point stands. The bitching point comes from the disconnect of competitors and public land and funds usage. If Verizon or the regulation system had a plan in place to decouple Verizon's lines and open them to competitors after so many years (to "recoup" their investment), it would be different. There is no such plan in place.

And no, most Slashdotters don't like Verizon. Verizon targeted Vonage with a malicious software patent lawsuit. Even if the infringement were real, Verizon waited until Vonage was a big enough target to act -- they have not targeted other VOIP outfits. If the infringement were real, Verizon should have acted much sooner.

Re:I agree

[AK Marc]

Sure, that's not "right". Who cares?

Why is that not "right"? Verizon uses public land for free. Verizon has agreed to abide by regulations, some which help it and some that hurt it, including all future changes. Verizon has agreed to operate in the public interest, despite being a private company (a requirement to be allowed to use such public spaces for free). As part of that, it doesn't seem to be unreasonable to require that they rent (for a profit) unused space on it. They entered into markets with that agreement in place, so they don't object to it that striongly. They don't mind making a profit, they just like hurting competition (which could be seen as illegal). So, requiring that they rent it helps them make a profit and helps protect them from antitrust investigations. That doesn't seem like something that's so evil.

Evolution is inevitable

[drcln]

So what? This is like people saying "Oh no, when they installed the new indoor plumbing, they carted off the outhouse. What if the sewer clogs? Now were trapped into higher cost sewer service."

Get with the program people. The copper network is a dinosaur and cutting it off slowly as people willingly convert is the least disruptive way to let it die. Sooner or later everyone will have to convert. Don't like your FIOS, there are plenty of other options for everyone involved.

Re:Evolution is inevitable

[PRMan]

Shouldn't this be "Creation and Intelligent Design are inevitable"? I mean, it's not like the fiber optic lines just happened by random chance, right...? :)

Re:Evolution is inevitable

[NullProg]

Get with the program people. The copper network is a dinosaur and cutting it off slowly as people willingly convert is the least disruptive way to let it die. Sooner or later everyone will have to convert.

No, copper in some cases provides a better voice service than fiber. When the power went out here three years ago (4 hurricanes within eight weeks), we were without power for over 80 hours. I never lost my phone service (yes, I have an analog phone).

Even if I have power the local exchange may not. Copper switches work without power, fiber won't. Per the FIOS tech, the UPS on the voice fiber will only last about sixty hours. Cell phones? Forget it, cell serivce was down for two months in some areas.

Copper is not a dinosaur, its a cockroach and will be around for a while.
Enjoy.

Re:Who is going to?

[drfireman]

Cell phones and VOIP are only making POTS a thing of the past for people who have good cell or internet service in their house. I have neither, so this is a real issue for me. If I can't talk Verizon into leaving my copper alone, it'll be a real gut check.

Re:Makes me wonder

[artisteeternite]

What do they have to gain? What every good editor wants, eyeballs. The more eyeballs the more they can charge for ads. To do that, editors post what people will read. The Slashdot readers hate Verizon, so they want to read articles giving them even more justification for hating Verizon.

Also, though, I think they keep posting articles about how crappy Verizon is because there's no such article about good things Verizon has done. The editors "motive" for hating Verizon is probably for the same reason as the rest of us, they've dealt with Verizon.

From personal experience I will say that Verizon is worse than the IRS. A couple years ago I had to deal with both the IRS and Verizon at the same time. I forgot to send in a worksheet with my taxes, so I had to spend time on the phone trying to get that worksheet to the right location so they could give me my credit. Don't get me wrong, the IRS is a pain and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand was doing. But everyone was nice and did everything they personally had power to do. We finally got my taxes straightened out.

At the same time, I was moving and signed up with Verizon for telephone and internet service. I signed up about a month ahead of time and asked them to activate my land line phone service and DSL the same day I moved in. That was a nightmare. First, the phone service connection was a couple days late. Then, when I went to hook up to the internet I discovered they had never actually set up the DSL. I found the email with the confirmation number and called about the problem. The service rep asked me for my phone number and then told me there was no record of ordering DSL. When I asked her about my confirmation number, can she try looking up my order through that, I was told that she couldn't look up anything with the confirmation number. Basically, the confirmation number does NOTHING except make me feel good, until I call and try to use it to prove confirmation. So I spoke to higher-ups about the problem and was told, "Oh, we're sorry, we'll have it set up in a couple days." A couple days go by and still no DSL. I call again and am told there was a communication problem and it will be just a few more days. Still no DSL! The last person I talk to says, "What? It's impossible to get DSL set up that fast. The last person you spoke with lied to you [yes, he really said "lied"]. It takes about two weeks to set up DSL." So, I finally got DSL about a month after the originally "confirmed" installation date.

Then, to finish it off, when I moved from my apartment after I year I had them disconnect the phone line. Well, the line got disconnected (I tried it, I couldn't make a phone call) but the next month I got a bill for DSL. For the month AFTER the phone line was disconnected! It actually took some time to convince the service rep that I couldn't have DSL after my phone line was disconnected, but FINALLY, they agreed to "refund" us. Yes, after all that, we still had to pay the stupid bill and wait for them to send us a reimbursement check!

I have sworn off Verizon for good. THAT is why people hate Verizon.

Re:Who is going to?

[everphilski]

If you aren't getting fiber (about the best internet service there is) installed to your house, then this DOESN'T AFFECT YOU. RTFA. They are only cutting copper when they install fiber service.

Thats why this is much ado about nothing. It doesn't affect anyone except the people who have alternatives like VoIP.

I just got FIOS

[Nessak]

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.

Re:I just got FIOS

[satoshi1]

Land line, Land line. Not LAN line.

Re:I just got FIOS

[lancejjj]

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. That's not what Verizon did to me.

I have a two-family rental property. One family recently had Verizon FIOS installed. The other family is cell-phone only (single guy) with four idle copper lines.

Verizon cut all copper to the house.

The 1st unit now has Verizon fiber and lost its copper connection.
The 2nd unit lost its copper, and now has no connection to the street.

Re:I just got FIOS

[compro01]

This really does piss me off but even with the $30 a year it will cost me

$30? going by the numbers you've said, that comes to 131.4Kwhr per year ((365x24x15w)/1000). current power prices are $0.10/Kwhr, so it should be closer to $13.

Re:I just got FIOS

[compro01]

ah. i must've missed that when i was looking up prices to check that. current price here is about 6c per kwhr.

Re:I just got FIOS

[regular_gonzalez]

It's land line, not LAN line :)

Re:I just got FIOS

[Sir Holo]

One family recently had Verizon FIOS installed... Verizon cut all copper to the house.

Doesn't the owner of a rental property have say over a modification like that, since it is his house? The property is now quantifiably less desirable to potential renters due to the removal.

You, the owner, didn't sign anything authorizing the removal, so don't you have a route of legal recourse to seek compensation or to force re-installation of the copper cable? (Verizon doesn't own the cable, they just have access to it, right?)

Re:I just got FIOS

[Skapare]

But most places like that are rural areas where FIOS isn't being installed anyway.

I used to live in a dense urban area of a major city. I now live in a rural area. The power went out more often in the city (including spectacular high voltage line faults a few dozen times on exactly the same pole). Where I live now, the power goes out maybe twice a year, and both of the last two times were not even during bad weather.

My cable does go out an average of about twice a month.

Re:I just got FIOS

[rlds]

I thought the real issue is not cutting the copper to the house (the drop) but dismantling the infrastructure in the outside plant or the central office to support the POTS line. Reinstalling the drop is not a big deal. I bet a complaint to the regulators can get that problem fixed in that 2nd unit.

Re:Who is going to?

[BVis]

Cell phones and VoIP are making POTS a thing of the past.

While that may be true for those of us who have options other than dialup for IP access, that's really not the point here.

The point is that Verizon is taking (probably illegal) actions with or without the customer's knowledge or consent. Verizon has a long history of interpreting the rules in their favor, regardless of the ethics or legality involved.

Verizon needs to be forced to comply with the rules, either through legal action or market pressures. They're not above the law, as much as they might like to think they are.

consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I said that, and it is the consumers-the publics-copper after all. If verizon doesn't want it, it should be taken away from them then and someone else can use it. In fact, I'd go as far as saying all the damn copper should be reseized from the telcos so they can't pull any bogus additional fee nonsense on the public. They keep saying it is "their" wire,pure horse hockey, they just sort of gradually assumed ownership of it, it's always been the publics wire with a limited granted monopoly to maintain it. If they cease maintaining it, they have given up any claims to control over it and should leave it alone.

No maintenance means they have abandoned it, back to my original point, the sheriffs take it and auction it off and their workers stop touching the stuff.

As to the wireless everything, I'll believe it when I see it. At best wireless today is half assed and half working and still pretty insecure and flaky. How long have we been waiting for wimax for instance?

    Until then, they shouldn't deliberately destroy that which is still working, at least leave it intact for backup purposes.

double standard, ahoy!

[argStyopa]

Are all the people bitching about this in any way related to the people who bitch about how the US has the most primitive broadband infrastructure?

Just curious.

Re:double standard, ahoy!

[Shatrat]

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.

Re:double standard, ahoy!

[Anonymous Coward]

A large portion of the copper infstructure was paid for by the public, NOT verizon. Also, is there some technical reason that the old copper needs to be removed to install fiber? No, there isn't a compelling reason other then to lock people into their service.

Good day, my dim witted friend.

So don't go with verizon because...

[sokoban]

It's a trap!

Re:Makes me wonder

[Nullav]

Data services don't count as common carriers anymore.

I tried to get info about fios

[rossz]

The Verizon website has a page where you can check the availability of fios. After entering my address it just loops back to the same page without any indication of success or failure. At first I thought it was because they were idiots and used Internet Exploder specific extensions, but IE does the same.

I also wanted to know about their Terms Of Use and to see if they have a "business class" package. I insist on running my own server and don't want them blocking or redirecting any ports. I was unable to locate any kind of TOU page. Pay attention Verizon. I'm willing to pay for a damn fast connection, but it's going to be on MY terms. You will NOT tell me how I can use my connection (although I have no problem with you forbidding spam).

Re:I tried to get info about fios

[The Cisco Kid]

DSL is a 'consumer' product.

If you need 'business class' service, you need to call and ask about a T1 (or fractional T3, if you need faster than symmetric 1.5Mbit) line. And you might want to call a local/regional ISP, rather than a telco known for supporting spammers (or any telco, really - find a reputable ISP, and they will arrange the telco/connectivity part of the service). And yes, you will pay business rates for your connection.

Re:I tried to get info about fios

[rossz]

I already have DSL and I'm allowed to run a server. sonic.net is one of the few ISPs with a reasonable terms of use policy.

Speak to the OSP guys

[kilodelta]

The Outside Plant guys at Verizon will tell you that Verizon is trying to get rid of the copper infrastructure. But so far there aren't any buyers.

If they do get rid of it all those OSP guys go with it. I don't think they realize that.

Re:Speak to the OSP guys

[The Cisco Kid]

I dont think that by 'get rid of it' they mean 'sell it'. I think they mean make it go obsolete and forgotten.

MaBell never learns, really..

[mother_reincarnated]

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.

Re:MaBell never learns, really..

[sumdumass]

The packet based network isn't the problem. It is isolating the consumer from the coper network to avoid any chance of competition without properly informing the consumer it is a one way street that is the problem.

Verizon should at least have both services available (copper and FIOS) or fully disclose that they won't be able to get another service from another provider even if it is an ISP or some cut rate Telco. The reason Verizon exists in the state they are in is entirely and only because the FCC and states had gave them a monopoly to carry the phone service. Switching to something that isn't regulated means they aren't fulfilling their obligations and commitments that have allowed them to work in a monopoly situation to the point where they got as big as they have and are able to do what they are doing.

Further more, I think there might be some problems about this after the FCC has given them money to make sure their was normal coverage in remote locations. I think this is not only implied but required that they have the equivalent of the copper service available to these customers. I will read through the regulations to see, but I don't think Verizon can cut people off like this after they have taken the money to make sure they were connected in that way.

Re:MaBell never learns, really..

[ChiRaven]

Further more, I think there might be some problems about this after the FCC has given them money to make sure their was normal coverage in remote locations. I think this is not only implied but required that they have the equivalent of the copper service available to these customers. I will read through the regulations to see, but I don't think Verizon can cut people off like this after they have taken the money to make sure they were connected in that way. Coverage in remote areas is handled under universal access fees, and is certainly not an issue anywhere Verizon is going to be laying fiber.

As far as the tariffs go, if Verizon was given the territory back in the monopoly days, they still have a legal obligation to provide residential service to anyone in that area who asks for it at rates covered by tariffs set by the relevant (usually state) regulatory authorities. In most cases, there are service level requirements as well. What there is NOT is any requirement that Verizon use a specific technology to provide this service

About outages-if the regulators are on their toes there are also provisions that outages over a certain level call for rebates and fines. In that case Verizon will find it in their interest to keep those fibers lit and humming.

Missionary position.

[Fantastic Lad]

Oh, that's rich.

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

Re:Missionary position.

[Deliveranc3]

He's a nerd, he'll die off for sure.

The small print on Mountain Dew is a killer.

Every industry is doing the same shit we see every day coming out of the electronics industry, ask an automotive fan about any car company they probably have the same shit happening (And an Apple vs Microsoft battle too)...

Welcome to Capitalism America... IF they are successfully made to share this fiber then yay! But this should still be the fiber American's PAID the teleco's to install all those years ago, it's ironic they've found a way to make it WORSE than nothing :P

Re:Missionary position.

[JesseMcDonald]

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. . . .

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. . . .

Which is to say, some people spend their time developing skills other than the understanding of legal fine print and technology. Thank goodness!

If you doesn't understand a contract you shouldn't sign it. Simple as that. If you want the service, and don't care to become a contract lawyer, then hire a specialist in that field to explain it to you, so that you can enter the contract with a full understanding of the entirely voluntary responsibilities you are accepting.

If you want contracts to become simpler you have to refuse to sign ones you don't understand. Otherwise they'll just present you with the most complex and one-sided contract they think they'll be able to get away with -- which will always be more than you intended to agree to. It's no different than overpaying at the store because you refused to shop around, or buying a good at a price that exceeds its value to you. If the terms are too onerous, walk away.

Re:Who is going to?

[evilviper]

Cell phones and VoIP are making POTS a thing of the past.

How are you going to use VoIP? You can't use dial-up or DSL, since the line has been cut. You're stuck with the choice between the ridiculously high prices of the cable company, or the telephone company.

In both cases, they have extremely high fees that significantly penalize you if you don't want their crappy, overpriced TV and/or telephone service.

Niiiiice

[mgabrys_sf]

When I was switching to AT&T from Verizon I was getting nothing but "omg - AT&T"!

Now you know the dark side of the force. I'll take my chances with the NSA thank you very much. Oh and Verizon? My iphone links to my computer out of the box. I didn't have to hack it to enable OBEX assclowns!

Re:Niiiiice

[The Cisco Kid]

AT&T and Verizon are each just different branches of the old telco monopolies. They just bought up different pieces of it, and they are both evil in their own seperate ways.

Just a replay of their optic cable ploy

[Jerry]

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?

Re:Makes me wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Makes me wonder

[dal20402]

they're cutting copper off and replacing it with fiber? Who cares?

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.

Re:Makes me wonder

[mikael]

This is something all nerds would love, unlimited bandwidth to the home but the only article I see are about how they're cutting copper off and replacing it with fiber? Who cares?

The next tenants/home owners who move in. While a nerd/geek may be happy paying tens of dollars each month for cable/broadband/telephone service, the next tenants may resent being forced to pay for a whole load of services they don't want. This might even affect the rental/property price of the location in question.

Having freedom of choice is far better than having no choice at all.

What do you expect?

[mediis]

they started fios in "green zones", where there was no pre-existing copper. this gave them the work around where they didn't have to share their lines w/ other telcos. its only a logical conclusion to land lock the customer back into their territories by cutting the coper. if you are going to spend the billions in infrastructure and lines then you might as well block all others from access.

Re:Who is going to?

[drfireman]

FYI, I did read the original article, and I've read many more on the subject (not Slashdot articles, real articles). I didn't think I would have to spell this out in such excruciating detail to make this trivial and obvious point, but I'll try again.

I am considering getting FIOS. I may get it, I may not. I'm still deciding.

It's not clear to me if the local Verizon guys will let me keep copper for my phones. They may, they may not. I've heard stories about it going both ways.

Your previous post expressed incredulity that anyone would want to keep copper ("Seriously? ... Cell phones and VoIP are making POTS a thing of the past.").

Cell phones and VOIP are inadequate where I live (outside Philadelphia, which is a large-ish city in the US), and probably in many other areas, due to coverage, quality, and reliability problems.

Therefore, it's important to me to know if I can keep copper before I commit to FIOS. I don't know for sure if there's any other way to have reliable high-quality phone service in my house, and I happen to need reliable phone service with better quality than what I get over my cell phone. Reliability of non-copper Verizon phone service in our area is not yet known, reliability of copper appears to be as close to perfect as I could hope for.

I'm glad you're happy without a land line, but I have legitimate concerns about increased phone downtime if they take out the copper. Downtime with our current broadband provider has been extremely bad. They blame squirrels, I don't happen to know if the squirrels like Verizon cables too.

Re:Verizon FiOS in Cedar Park, TX (Austin)?

[b1t r0t]

Why would they? They are only doing FIOS in areas where they are the ILEC. Which in Texas basically means Denton, College Station, and maybe a few small cities out in the middle of nowhere, where they are surely going to wait as long as they can. Admittedly I hear they are breaking past their ILEC borders in the Denton area, but that is because Charter cable is so crappy.

Meanwhile, five miles south of you, I have a Uverse box 500 feet away that was installed last March and is still dark because they can't get enough bandwidth off of the last mile of copper to everybody after all, and (as I've heard) because the MS-run set-top boxes are junk. Maybe they'd have had better luck with Xbox 360s for set-top boxes?

Re:Makes me wonder

[dal20402]

From personal experience I will say that Verizon is worse than the IRS.

I've had similar experiences with Comcast.

I don't know how the telcos can argue with a straight face that they're engaging in ordinary market competition when they are providing worse service than the one entity that by definition doesn't have to compete.

We should have built latest-generation network infrastructure publicly, and then allowed any network service provider to provide service over it. Then the problem of enormous capital costs, which is the one semi-cogent argument Verizon has to justify its noncompetitive behavior, would have been a non-issue. And telco service might even be as good as... airline service. (I'm not asking for much, here...)

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[neildiamond]

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.

Re:Who is going to?

[mh1997]

Cell phones and VOIP are only making POTS a thing of the past for people who have good cell or internet service in their house.

If I had mod points left, I'd mod that as funny. Good VOIP and good cell coverage provide convenience and cost savings, not quality. Unfortunately the general acceptance of low quality alternatives only ensures that low quality becomes the norm.

Re:Makes me wonder

[mysidia]

It seems to me the FCC needs to recognize that policy makes them destroy the copper and adjust regulations in a manner to obtain the effect that they also have to lease any fiber, if the copper was removed or is no longer being maintained, in a similar way.

Do you think there's some special reason it won't happen, when fiber to consumer premises becomes more widespread?

Farewell to count-on-it-in-emergencies

[dpbsmith]

But I'm very sad to hear this about Verizon. This is the final nail in the coffin of the ultra-reliable count-on-it-in-emergencies service that Theodore Vail, AT&T, and the Western Electric engineers brought into being. Through pure self-interest, and I know that the days of Ma Bell had their downside, but it was one of the wonders of the world. The phones always worked and in the extremely rare occasions when they didn't, the phone company acted as if they had a responsibility to make them work.

Now we're slowly getting pushed back into cheap service that works except when you really need it. Because it's easy to evaluate what your phone costs, and it's easy to look at the list of spiffy features, but it's very hard for Joe Consumer to know how reliable the service is... so the free market can't put a proper value on reliability.

Six months ago, the company I work for installed spiffy VOIP telephones. Because of some issue or another, they kept the old I-know-it's-not-Centrex-but-whaddaya-call-it system connected for a while. And there were also about three individual plain old lines for some fax machines.

A few months ago there was a power outage that started around 9 a.m. and lasted into the early afternoon.

The spiffy VOIP phones went dead immediately.

The old company phones kept working for about an hour.

Apparently the local cell towers don't have much in the way of battery backup because a few hours later nobody's cell phone could get a signal.

But the three plain old phones were still working six hours later, and based on past experience I believe they would have worked for a couple of days.

Re:Farewell to count-on-it-in-emergencies

[fabu10u$]

A few months ago there was a power outage that started around 9 a.m. and lasted into the early afternoon.

The spiffy VOIP phones went dead immediately.

The old company phones kept working for about an hour.

That's a chintzy VoIP implementation. If they had cared about reliability, your VoIP sets would be run on PoE switches attached to adequate UPS/generator capacity. Just like your old PBX.

Re:Makes me wonder

[pavera]

Already done, the FCC ruled 2 years ago that all fiber services (video, telephone, data) are not subject to common carrier regulations. They aren't required to lease their lines. Verizon, SBC (at&t), et al when confronted by the FCC about "why are we so far behind these other countries in broadband" the carriers argued that it was because they couldn't invest in fiber because of the requirement to lease the lines. They said they wouldn't be able to recoup their investment. So the FCC said "Ok, if you install fiber, its yours you don't have to allow access to it"

Re:Makes me wonder

[eat here_get gas]

[quote]...but I haven't been able to figure out the motive for hating Verizon yet...[quote]

perhaps because they are a large conglomerate that doesn't give two shits or .02 about their customers?

I have my own horror story of losing www.piinkfloyyd.net solely because of Verizon..likely a story for another post (or perhaps here if anyone would care to hear it, but it isn't relative to TFA). In any event, they only care about money- not how they get it, or who they trample over to get it. Seems like a pretty good reason to run this story to me.

911 Availability Laws

[enact]

I remember hearing phone companies were required to provide 911 availability even to non-customers, and the phone system reliability had follow the 5 nines rule, 99.999% availability. Though the Conservative De-Regulation Movement might have rewritten the rules. Didn't Vonage get in trouble recently for a flawed 911 system? People who had their lines cut should plug in a real phone and let their legislators know they no longer have 911 service in case of emergency.

Re:Makes me wonder

[encoderer]

As much as I understand that regulation is sometimes necessary to keep a level playing field, it's no myth that regulation is also a barrier to free markets and the general principle of Capitalism.

Which is why any heavy regulations of Fiber at this point in time would almost certainly have the effect of stunting growth of fiber networks. These companies are spending billions. To invest that kind of cash you need to see a tempting ROI, which just won't happen if you saddle it with regulations.

If we want Fiber networks to be public infrastructure, then we need to pay for it with public monies. Regulate it, fine, but give them gigantic tax incentives to actually run the stuff.

I'll probably be modded down, or have some slashdotter call me a faciest right winger who is trying to protect TheEnemy. I don't care. In all honesty I'm probably one of the biggest supporters of Liberalism and the democratic party you've ever spoken to. But I also have a BS in Economics and this is economics 101.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[mjpaci]

The phone still works in a power outage is not as important as it used to be*. A lot of people with POTS are still up a creek because they have cordless phones which don't all work so well when the AC is gone. Also, with the advent of Cell Phones, people don't really need the copper to still work when there's a blackout.

--Mike

* I will agree with the parent that it was, at some time, REALLY REALLY REALLY important that the phone still worked during periods of blackout.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[Shakrai]

since Verizon bought Sprint

You mean MCI? Verizon doesn't own Sprint....

Apparently, they then have to bill your credit card

This is probably just a misinformed CSR. I was able to get invoice billing for dry-loop DSL. Don't see why FiOS would be any different. Of course I dropped their DSL and went back to Time Warner after they raised my price $10/mo and informed me that I had to have dial-tone service to get the best deals. Yeah, like I'm going to play for a landline that I'll never use (cell only here) just to save a few bucks on DSL.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[markov_chain]

However, Fios is still pretty darn good Internet.

Damn right it is! You got your 1310, your 1490, and your 1550. Light so clean, it's 20dB hot. True QAM!

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[Shakrai]

lot of people with POTS are still up a creek because they have cordless phones which don't all work so well when the AC is gone

Yes, but most people with a clue also have a wired phone for backup. So POTS is still valid here.

Also, with the advent of Cell Phones, people don't really need the copper to still work when there's a blackout

Granted, if the cell site that serves your house has batteries or a generator. Most large rural sites do but in many urban areas they lean towards smaller micro and pico cells that may or may not have a provision for backup power. And when the micro and pico cells go down you can count on the macro cells (i.e: the ones large enough to justify generators) being too overloaded to use.

As a healthy person in my 20s I feel that being cell-only isn't that big of a risk. Odds are that if the power goes out (which doesn't happen too often here) my cell service keeps working. If it stops working I can probably drive somewhere with power/service if I really need to make a call. But an older person who might have medical problems should really consider keeping copper based POTS service for extended power outages. You never know.....

* I will agree with the parent that it was, at some time, REALLY REALLY REALLY important that the phone still worked during periods of blackout.

What's sad and annoying is that as technology advances people seem willing to accept less and less quality from it. A properly designed copper POTS system has six nines of reliability. Can you say that about FiOS, VoIP or your cell phone? I wish these new technologies would be held to the same expectations as the old.

Re:Makes me wonder

[dal20402]

Econ 101 should have also taught you that regulation of public goods is necessary to prohibit their being abused by whatever private interest has the most power.

Because of the extreme expense of installing telco infrastructure, it makes essentially no business sense for a company to install infrastructure to compete with existing infrastructure unless the new installation is a big technological step forward. For the duration of each technological step, then, if we don't treat the infrastructure as a public good, we are essentially granting whoever built it a monopoly until new technology comes along.

Intellectual honesty would then seem to demand that the public pay for building the infrastructure. But that won't ever happen. So what we need is a regulatory middle ground that will prevent monopolies but allow the builders to recover their investments. For all its flaws, that was essentially what we had with POTS/DSL infrastructure. Now, with the fiber, we're just conceding the monopoly. Doing that in the name of capitalism is pretty ironic.

Chintzy VoIP implementation?

[dpbsmith]

As far as I know, all the important gear in the IT room is on battery-backup units. Not my department, but I'm pretty sure it is. It's the same department that takes care of all the desktops in the cubicles, and all of those are on battery backup. When the power goes out the entire building is filled with the eerie wail of dozens of battery-backup units whining in misery, slowly tapering down as people shut down their PCs and turn off the backup units.

So I don't know exactly what it was that failed, but it probably wasn't the gear in the building.

I don't really know. I'm just reporting what actually happened.

I didn't think cell phone towers were supposed to die that quickly, either.

Inherited lock-in

[joeslugg]

We bought our house just under a year ago and it had FiOS already (our town was supposedly an early test market) and no copper line. We had just 2 weeks between close of the sale and move-in, and we needed phone service pronto. To get a regular copper line put in and provisioned was going to take "several weeks" and "several dollars" from what little I can remember.

In the end we signed on for the FiOS, and indeed their Internet service was cheaper than the Comcast.

The point is, the decision was effectively made for me before I bought the place, and I never had any opportunity to request the copper be left in place.

So what are the odds that down the road there will be petitions for competitors to gain access to the fiber?

When I got FIOS

[squarooticus]

When I got FIOS, I explicitly told the Verizon installer not to touch the copper. And they didn't. Too bad for those that didn't think of it ahead of time: I guess they'll have to pay for another installation if they decide to move back to copper.

Re:Analogy

[Jainith]

It's like polar bears going to a new iceburg when they realize the one they're on is about to rollover. Some polar bears are going to have a shitty time making the swim to the new iceburg, but the quicker everyone gets over there it better. WTF???

Re:Makes me wonder

[TheRaven64]

I'm not completely convinced that this is a bad thing. Leasing the copper doesn't really provide competition unless the lease prices are really well regulated. You're still buying the same product, just from slightly different middlemen. Without this, they are clearly a monopoly, and can't hide behind the 'no, look, we have to compete with our resellers' defence.

I work for Verizon

[potat0man]

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.

Re:I work for Verizon

[enmane]

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.

What's the value of copper per pound these days????

I knew a girl that used to polish jewelry. At the end of the year, she managed to make a few hundred just from cleaning the polishing brush each day...

Re:I work for Verizon

[potat0man]

Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind.

Problem is the wires are much too thin to be worth much considering all the insulation you have to burn off to get to the copper.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[JAFSlashdotter]

If you were really THAT concerned, and savvy enough to keep a corded phone around, the power supply on the FIOS equipment takes 1 amp at 48 volts from its power supply. I don't know how much the power supply loses in converting to the 48v, but I bet you could run it with the power put out by one of these (< $20, free shipping), and an extension cord to your car. A solution not readily available back when always on POTS was "REALLY REALLY REALLY" important in a blackout. Better start the engine from time to time, though.

Seriously, six nines costs a lot of money -- is it really necessary? We have a lot of redundant technology that we didn't have before. If my land phone is out, I have a cell phone. If the land phone goes to 4 nines, and I have a 2 nines cell phone (disclaimer: numbers are rectal extractions for illustration purposes only), as a system, that would be 6 nines (.0001 x .01 for double outage). Would it be OK for the phone company to charge extra for the 6 nines POTS and let those happy with 4 pay less? Verizon is competing with companies that don't offer six nines to a public that doesn't want (or perhaps doesn't know they want) six nines. They are offering a product at the same level (arguably better) of service as their competitors.

Re:Makes me wonder

[mabhatter654]

but this also put the telcos in the position of competing with CONTENT providers. This is the core of the whole Net Neturality issue. When the telcos had to lease their lines on RAND terms, anybody could connect as a service, and anybody could connect their home to the internet.. the key is that the telco beurocracy could not cut off any service provider or any customer from the network.. and therefore the internet for very long. Without this direct access to high-speed lines, there would be no Google, no Yahoo, no Slashdot. Now that they can charge a "toll" to anybody legally, the whole thing gets nasty quickly with how low they can go.

Re:Makes me wonder

[mabhatter654]

in your idea of intellectual honesty, the public has already paid hundreds of millions of dollars in "upgrade" taxes and "tax rebates" to help them out. Technically there's no reason to allow any concessions, but the Corporate heads are like little kids begging one more cookie from daddy after mommy told them no more before dinner. And these people are the one that claim US workers are so "underqualified".

I never got notified

[Phobos23]

They never once told me that my copper would be permanently disabled until the tech walked out to the end of the driveway with wire cutters. He also assured me that it could be reconnected if I ever canceled FIOS. If this is not true, I am certainly miffed.

Re:Makes me wonder

[aggles]

When I installed FIOS, Verizon cut my copper - after telling me they would. When I discontinued Verizon's internet service for a variety of reasons, my POTS line remained at the same price it was while on copper. Granted, it doesn't have the power-out reliability, but there is no forcing to pay for a whole load of services I don't want.

Re:Makes me wonder

[cgenman]

Econ 101 also says that monopoly pricing is always ridiculously high, and in no way encourages efficiencies in the market. Which is to say, even if the monopoly is legitimately earned (and cutting off public-funded copper does not sound legitimate), it is very likely to cause major disruptions in fair market value.

Re:Makes me wonder

[j-pimp]

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.

Assuming they didn't, how many people are going not want to buy a house because they can't get a land line? Alarm systems work with FIOS, and the modems come with 8 hour batteries? If I was moving into a new house, I would not go out of my way to get a land line.

This is a big problem in principal, and has some negative implications, but house resale is not one of them.

Why not...

[Kaenneth]

Why not just force them to share their Fiber lines like the Copper lines?

as for the battery life, couldn't you just plug the transformer into a UPS/generator?

Re:Why not...

[Paulrothrock]

What voltage is coming out of the transformer? All of the networking equipment I have in my house runs 12V DC out of a transformer. All solar panels run 12V DC, as do the storage batteries. Why not simply remove the transformer and power the UPS with a solar panel. You could get this set up for under $200 and never have to worry about losing internet or telephone service.

Recent Verizon FIOS Customer

[PS3Penguin]

As a Verizon FIOS Customer who very recently upgraded to FIOS. I can say I was told three times that the old line would be "disabled" and that once the conversion to FIOS was complete the old copper wouldn't work anymore. Talking with the technician who did the install .. the big motivation (from his point of view) was getting off the old / aging copper including the DC loading systems that add (according to him) a big demand on maintenance and space in the central office. Obviously if they jack the rates up really high .. I would need to switch to Cable (currently and 6Mbps down). As for the "Destruction of the last mile) .. all that they are doing is removing the jumper inside your local box (where your house wiring connects to their wiring). The wire under the ground is still there .. and I doubt their going to go removing what's been laid. Also remember that if they get too greedy .. then the local PUCs that regulate their fees / requirements will be pressured to enforce more customer friendly options. With the fiber to the home .. your more likely to see pricing pressure / new service options from them. As internet becomes considered "required infrastructure" to the masses .. I expect more .. not less regulation over it.

Re:Recent Verizon FIOS Customer

[achbed]

Here's the crux of the problem. All the current legislation and regulatory requirements specify the existing infrastucture. Specifically, the copper. Disabling this allows Verizon to do anything they want with that customer's connection, and there isn't a thing (legally) that the customer can do about it. It's bringing back the bad old days of "we own your wire(fiber). We can do whatever we want". Oh, yeah, the physical stuff will still be there. But how long until they cut out maintenance of the old unused equipment, and there's no longer the option of going back? Betcha it'll be sooner rather than later.

Bovine customers don't count

[MSTCrow5429]

"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."

I don't think so. They pretty much scream this in the product literature, and it's become just something people are generally aware of. If you don't know they're snipping your copper, you probably also aren't really bothering to check if a used car you are interested in has an accident history, or reviewing a home inspection report before buying a house. Or picking up bottles at random to drink out of without checking if they contain bleach.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[stuntpope]

I keep waiting for something big and heavy to fall on that child.

Interesting quote FTA

[gatkinso]

"The small guys have tried to fight this re-monopolization of the network infrastructure."

Allow me to finish the statement....

"The small guys have tried to fight this re-monopolization of the network infrastructure, network infrastructure that they did not build or invest capital to build."

Re:Interesting quote FTA

[VGPowerlord]

"The small guys have tried to fight this re-monopolization of the network infrastructure, network infrastructure that they did not build or invest capital to build."

You're right, but considering that in the United States, the telephone infrastructure is, and always has been, subsidized by the government, it's not outright owned by the companies that laid it either. If you want to be technical, since the capital (both money and land) was invested by the government, the governmnet owns it.

Re:Interesting quote FTA

[The Cisco Kid]

Mod parent as 'telco shill' who wants everyone to beleive it was the monopoly telco's that paid for the infrastructure, as opposed to their overcharged subscribers and the government. Your grandparents (and their parents) paid for this infrastructure many times over in the form of absurdly expensive telephone bills.

The simple truth is that the in-ground infrastructure is a natural monopoly, and while ideally it should be public property, if a private company continues to own it, then access to it and charges for using it should be heavily regulated, and any entity that wants to use it to provide services should have equal access at fixed rates.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Jafafa Hots]

Not responding to you per se, just looks like a decent spot in the thread to make my comment...

Without regulation, specifically the breakup of AT&T, we would not have the internet (as we now know it) and all of its economic and social benefits.

I'll explain if anyone bothers to read this and wants me to.

Seperate Charges

[Eugene]

Here in Taiwan, since the beginning of DSL service, there are always 2 seperate charges for DSL services. One is the circuit fee you paid to the phone company (which is monopoly), and the ISP fee for you paid to your ISP. You can choose the phone company as your ISP, or you can choose other ISPs. but the circuit charge is always paid to your phone company.

Re:Who is going to?

[drfireman]

If I had mod points left, I'd mod that as funny. Yeah, well. I wasn't trying to be funny, I just didn't feel like getting into an argument by stating the obvious. For all I know this guy lives somewhere that has much better stuff than I can get here.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[neildiamond]

Maybe it was MCI. Whatever. ;)

iPhone doesn't do OBEX

[YesIAmAScript]

http://www.macintouch.com/iphone/faq.html

And there's no hack (well, at least not yet) to turn it on.

Re:Makes me wonder

[ChiRaven]

I expect that Verizon, assuming that it retains its status as the ILEC in a given territory, is still obligated to supply residential POTS service to anyone who applies for it at tariffed rates regardless of the technology they use to deliver that service. There has never been any provision that I know of in a telephone tariff that specified the technology through which basic residential service had to be delivered.

Time to break up the phone company (again)

[Skapare]

It's time to break up the phone company (again). They did it the wrong way the first time. And look what happened anyway ... the pieces are coming back together like the liquid terminator.

The correct way to break up the phone company is to split it at the point between physical infrastructure (wires and dark fiber) and all services (in classic terms: "dial tone"). One company would be the monopoly company owning all that "last mile" infrastructure (which in major part was financed by taxpayers and rate payers in the past, including development of most of the right of ways they are laying fiber in now). This company would be regulated and tariffs would specify the rates for providing wire and fiber connectivity. The rates would guarantee a return on investment at reasonable percentage. Owning stock in this company would then be a low-risk investement but not a big money maker.

The other company from the split would be required to pay the same going rates as any other company to lease the wires or fiber on behalf of the customer they will be serving (and most go through the same provisioning process). This company would be serving "dial tone" in classic terms, or "IP routing" in more recent terms (or TV or whatever else might happen). The competition would be in this arena, and it would be made to be a level playing field, including audits to be sure everyone gets to lease the infrastructure at the same rates.

The telcos wanted to be sure they are getting a return on their fiber investment, which in theory should be a big benefit to us all. Well, with this kind of split and a single regulated monopoly owning that fiber, and getting a guaranteed return on that investment through something like a 5% markup over the cost of the fiber, then they will be getting their return on investment.

These rules should also allow any business or individual to lease the wires or fiber running to their premise and connect it with another going elsewhere with a standard cost for the install and lease of the "last mile" as well as the cross connect (a fraction of last mile cost). Then you can power or light the circuit yourself (like the old "alarm circuit" provisions).

Re:Time to break up the phone company (again)

[The Cisco Kid]

I'd mod you up if I had points. I'm not sure if you realize it or not, but your idea is not new. (Google for 'structural seperation' if you didnt realize it was an existing idea). The state of PA *almost* did it once.

It is however the only real long term solution to the horrific state of telecom competition in the US. As such, it is guaranteed that the well-heeled telco lobbyists will leave as much chance of this happening as MS will of allowing OpenDocument to become the official standard for wordprocessing documents.

Re:Time to break up the phone company (again)

[Skapare]

Sure, the chances of it getting through do seem to be daunting. But I think we need to try, and try again, and keep trying, through Congress, until we can get this or something like it moving forward. As I understand it, the original breakup was some 20+ years in the making, on again and off again, in Congress and in the courts. Too bad it actually happened when it did. If it had been put off another decade or so, the correct way to do the breakup might have been clear.

Property owner rights vs tenant rights

[DragonHawk]

Doesn't the owner of a rental property have say over a modification like that, since it is his house?

While I cannot speak to FiOS in particular, and it may vary by jurisdiction, too, I can say that it is not that simple. In many cases, the law recognizes that tenants have certain rights, and those rights may trump the property owner's rights. For example, a property owner has to provide a safe dwelling. The law may also require the property owner to grant access to public utilities. In cases where specific law doesn't apply, the utility will often require the property owner to sign an agreement granting the utility a right-of-way to each and every tenant. Since it's hard to rent out a property which cannot get electricity or water, the property owner has to have those agreements.

As a practical example, when we wanted to get Comcast Internet installed at work, we had to sign one of those multi-tenant agreements, because we owned the building, and it was easily large enough to be sublet in the future.

Hold your horses

[PacketScan]

The responsibility of Connecting LEC (local exchange carrier) wires falls on the new carrier. To hook up the wires should a change be made, the wires are still in place just not tied to the terminals.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Deliveranc3]

Small ISPs are anti-major news sources. Legislate for big ISP big media...

sleazy, BUT...

[briancnorton]

This is a bit sleazy, but the places where they are laying fiber are also places where there are PLENTY of other options via cable, wireless, or even satellite.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[Pedro_Burrito]

I was specifically told that my copper would not be cut until a month after FIOS was installed. Not true. Verizon installed my FIOS on a rainy Tuesday night during a thunderstorm. The tech forgot to ground the outside box. Ten minutes after he left, I lost voice and data and I work from home. The service worked intermittently for two days and three calls from me from my cellphone. I called again on Thursday and told Verizon to put me back on copper and they refused. Two people on the phone and two visiting technicians told me that the copper was cut off at the Central Office, not at the splice block. They also told me that Verizon would not reinstall the copper. The outside box was finally replaced on Friday and everything has worked well since. I looked at the old outside box and the main jack was melted.

I'm glad I'm not the only one on a soapbox....

[matlokheed]

About this time last year, Verizon was sending their reps through the area going door to door trying to advertise FIOS and to get people to switch over. At the time I had DSL and I was very happy with it as it was cheap and provided what I needed (an always on connection that could be used while the phone was being used).

But when the Verizon salespeople came through, they said that they could give us FIOS at no increase in cost. We asked them repeatedly whether this was accurate and they repeated just as many times that this was the case and that our bill would remain the same as part of the upgrade plan (and that we'd get a free month in addition). Fantastic we all thought and while I'm not the person on the phone bill at my home, I was definitely one of the primary contributors to the decision to switch over. Unfortunately, they required a contract and it was signed based on what the reps said and not what they actually planned. A week later, they stripped out my copper and we were sailing with FIOS and we were very happy with it.

2 months later, we got the bill and said, "Gee, our bill's doubled. This must be some mistake." But Verizon maintained that it was not and that there was nothing they could do. So we told them that we wanted our DSL back. They said, "Sorry, we can't do that." After some badgering, they told me I could get on a list to petition to get our copper back and I'd know in a week if it was going to happen. A week passed and I got no word from them so I started going through Verizon calling chains. I'd get transferred up about 3 levels each day before they'd tell me they'd get someone to call me back (and nobody ever would).

Eventually, they called me back while I was at work (though I'm not the name on the account) and told me that they'd decided that they wouldn't be giving back our copper. I asked them to explain why and they told me they didn't think that they needed to. I told them to tell that to the primary account holders and they told me they'd leave a message, but if they weren't home (and I knew they wouldn't be) that would be the end of it.

So here I am a year later looking for a cheap alternative to Verizon as they steadily raise the price on their phone service (as their contract only locks in an internet price). I really don't like Cablevision. I think they're a bunch of crooks, but at this point, I'm about ready to go over to them just to take some business away from Verizon. Every so often a Verizon rep still shows up at my door and I usually rant at them for a little and then tell them to get off my porch.

Moral of the story: Read your contracts. Read them three times over when dealing with Verizon. Oh. And avoid Verizon whenever you can.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Jtheletter]

These companies are spending billions. To invest that kind of cash you need to see a tempting ROI, which just won't happen if you saddle it with regulations. If we want Fiber networks to be public infrastructure, then we need to pay for it with public monies.

I thought it would be better to respond than to mod you down. Your arguments are sound assuming that the telcos are doing the fiber rollout on their own with their own money, except that they're not. Congress gave the telcos a couple billion-with-a-b dollars of public funds to roll out fiber infrastructure in the US. The telcos have dragged their feet, mostly not used any of that money for fiber, and have even come back and asked for more money and tax breaks from congress to do what they were already supposed to have done. In addition the lines still run over public and private land and are granted easements by the government to do so. If any of the telcos wanted to do this on their own it would probably be so expensive as to be nearly impossible. So yes, since they are already spending taxpayer money to roll out a privately owned network, I'd say that we the people get to attach some strings to that deal - such as NOT disconnecting the copper infrastructure that is ALSO publicly owned and paid for.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Gr8Apes]

You're almost right - we actually paid billions for a fiber network we never received. Not only that, but it can be argued that the telco's don't actually own any of the wires/cables/fiber, as it was all subsidized by the people (taxes) one way or the other. The same can be said for cable companies.

While I'm not one to liek government interference in business, this really does appear to be a utility function that should be owned by the public, much the same as other municipality owned services.

Re:Who is going to?

[jc42]

It's not clear to me if the local Verizon guys will let me keep copper for my phones. They may, they may not. I've heard stories about it going both ways.

You might want to find a better way to express what you want. Go look for the "gotcha" story above by neildiamond (610251). He got Verizon to agree to leave the copper wires, and they did. But they removed anything that wasn't a copper wire, including the stuff back at the office that made it useful.

You want more than just the "copper"; you want a phone line that you can, for example, plug a phone into and call 911, and it'll work. If you aren't careful, the phone company folks will use weasel words to make you believe they're leaving your old phone line intact, when they have no intention of ever allowing it to work again. They don't care about the copper wires inside your house; they just don't want to ever supply that sort of service to you again.

Then a year later, they'll up the rate for your FIOS line by 50% or more, because they're a legal monopoly with no need to negotiate with you any more, and no regulatory requirement that they allow a CLEC to supply your IP service over FIOS.

Why does anyone care about copper?

[jamietre]

There are two major concerns here. Telephone or backup service, and competition for internet access. As far as telephone service goes, most people I know don't even use the copper lines that may (or may not) come into their house. I haven't had a land line in years. Every household usually has at least two mobile phones, which more and more people are using for their primary telephone service anyway. Copper-based phone service is dying anyway, and frankly I don't see much reason to save it. As far as competition goes, there are so many other ways to get internet access (not the least of which is leeching from your neighbor, and other wireless solutions) that I hardly see this as a monopoly. This seems like a lot of hullaboo about nothing. So verizon wants to pay to put in infrastructure for a cool new technology? And you bitch, because that little wire that used to provide you with unreliable and dial-up is being cut? So what? There won't even be any technologies that use it in a few years.

So what?

[Jimithing DMB]

A few years ago my folks wanted to get rid of the aerial telephone line running from the utility pole next to the street. They had previously gotten the power company (Dominion/VaPower) to bury the electricity feed and the cable company (Cox) to bury the cable feed.

Verizon would not bury the telephone feed which needed repaired anyway as it had become detached from the house during hurricane Isabel. So my parents had been hearing the Cox commercials about the digital phone service. At first I was rather apprehensive as the hard land line came in pretty useful post-hurricane since I was able to strip the ends off of the aerial and attach a normal phone jack to it to keep our phone service going.

Cox's original plan was to put the converter on the utility pole and use the existing aerial, with Verizon having to repair the aerial (because it is "theirs"). After the guy came out he realized that the buried cable line was RG-11 (fairly fat for a residence) and that he could do the box right on the side of the house. So now my parents have no last-mile copper telephone to their house because we eventually convinced Verizon to take the damn aerial down.

One interesting thing about the cable phone service is that the box has a notice on it warning of 90 VDC. Apparently, the RG-11 line caries cable signals plus 90VDC power to the converter outside which splits it into phone service and regular (non-powered) cable. What a great idea! So it never goes out and no batteries are required.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[AK Marc]

A lot of people with POTS are still up a creek because they have cordless phones which don't all work so well when the AC is gone.

I was in Best Buy getting cordless phones. Some guy was looking at the row of identical-looking phones with eyes glazed over. I was looking like I knew what I was looking for. So he asked me what it was that could possibly set one apart from the others. I had a simple answer, "I only buy cordless phones with batteries in the base so that they work when the power is off." His eyes lit up, he joined me in the hunt, and we both left with a phone that will work for hours (of talk time, days of stand-by) in the event of a power outage. Actually, since I have 3 handsets, I can use the base and one phone, then swap batteries and talk for another 6 hours. If I talk for 12 hours straight and the power is still out, I'm SOL. Oh, and that's longer than the batteries on FTTH usually is. I believe the standard is 6 or 8 hours.

My Fios Copper Line Experiences

[ivan256]

I've had FIOS installed at my house twice at my house (business line and residential line). Both times I asked the tech not to remove the copper. There was no bitching at all. He simply left it in place. The 4 pairs that were originally there are still there and provide dial-tone.

Incidentally, the battery lasts a damned long time, but it doesn't cover the data or video services, only the voice. The power was out for 9 hours last night and the damned ONT for the residential line was beeping once a minute the whole time; and I don't even subscribe to the FIOS voice services. (The business line's ONT is connected to a UPS that could run it for days).

Re:Makes me wonder

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Here you go: USPS. It's a public company, and it still has a monopoly on letter carrying.

No, it's a quasi-governmental agency. It's only private in that it isn't funded through taxes. It still gets some interesting breaks, especially re: parking tickets and license plates.

It's just this simple: If we put copper-esque regs on Fiber at this point, NO FIBER WILL BE RUN. It would be a disservice to the shareholders of Verizon to spend BILLIONS to roll out fiber networks that its competitors can immediately use "against" them.

Which is why it makes sense for municipalities to run their own last mile networks and rent them out to anyone who wants to use them.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Seriously, six nines costs a lot of money -- is it really necessary?

Sure - ever have a heart attack?

Re:Makes me wonder

[mysidia]

If we want Fiber networks to be public infrastructure, then we need to pay for it with public monies. Regulate it, fine, but give them gigantic tax incentives to actually run the stuff.

The copper infrastructure they are destroying was paid for with public monies. They should have a duty to continue to provide that infrastructure or an equivalent. Since they are installing fiber in its place, they should be obliged to provide the same access to the fiber, ONLY because they are destroying and/or ceasing to maintain infrastructure paid for with public monies.

The alternative as I see it is to severely penalizing + fining them for destroying publicly funded infrastructure that is needed for their competitors to operate, and using the proceeds of the fines + future public infrastructure subsidize, to subsidize their competitors (instead of them) in building public infrastructure to take the place of what is being destroyed.

Also, to the extent that fiber was subsidized with public funds, it would be only fair that the major providers be obligated to lease certain access to that fiber also.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Jtheletter]

Note to mods:, this is offtopic, posted at 1 to keep it under the radar but maintain my identity for the parent AC's benefit.

Why would you mod him down? It's not a troll or flamebait. For the umpteenth time... disagreeing with a post, or thinking it uses poor reasoning, is not a reason to mod it down.

First off, I responded instead of modding him down, making your chastising of me rather unnecessary, no? I chose to respond specifically because, as I stated, his logic was sound but the premise incorrect, so I sought to correct that premise.
Secondly, it *is* appropriate to mod someone down when they have posted something that is technically incorrect, offers no particular insight because it is incorrect, and has reached a mod level of 4 or 5. This helps to separate the chaff from the wheat in the discussion. Many people browse at 4+ to save time and see what other users have agreed are the better posts in the thread, which means that some users are going to mod posts down as well as up in determining which are "best".

This isn't kindergarten, everyone doesn't get an A, we aren't all right all the time. I agree with you that posts should not be modded down for disagreeing with opinions or for petty reasons. However when a post is factually incorrect and we learn nothing by the poster's misinformation (OTOH sometimes it is useful to leave a bad post up so others can demonstrate why it is wrong) then there's really nothing wrong with modding it down.

If there were a thread discussing physics and someone was just using incorrect math to make their point, should we leave that at +5 insightful?

Re:Who is going to?

[everphilski]

I am considering getting FIOS. I may get it, I may not. I'm still deciding.

If you have fiber, then you can get VoIP. My point stands.

Re:Not true/My Fios Copper Line Experience

[JAFSlashdotter]

I was asking in the context of already having a (theoretical) four nines landline and two nines cell phone (actual reliability I don't know). The chance of having a heart attack at the same time as your four nines land line and your two nines landline are both not working is what? I suppose there are some pathological cases, maybe if you're extremely high risk -- but then that's not everyone (not even close). I buy health, auto, and homeowners insurance because it makes statistical sense. I don't think this makes sense. In my opinion, paying for a six nines landline ought to be optional -- you can calculate the risk and pay whatever you want.