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Verizon, Copper, Fiber, and the Truth
Alexander Graham Cracker writes "Starting last spring, reports began surfacing of Verizon routinely disabling copper as it installed its fiber-based FiOS service. We discussed the issue here a couple of times. In my experience, every time Verizon has installed FiOS at a friend's house, they have insisted they have to cut off the copper and move the POTS to the fiber. By doing so, they block anyone else such as COVAD or Cavalier from renting the copper for competitive access. Sources report that today, at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Verizon executive VP Thomas Tauke denied ever doing that. (The transcript should be up in a day or so. The AP coverage does not mention this detail.) I wonder if Rep. Markey's staff is interested in hearing from people who experienced Verizon disabling copper, and without notice?"
That's my question. Can't other phone companies use the fiber line into your house as well? I thought all fiber/copper went back to the same switching station anyway.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
All someone would need to do to validate these claims would be to bring in a competitor and have them try to offer services through said copper. It would be hearsay to make a statement without something other than a "word of mouth" to back up a claim. Doing so - bringing in an alternative provider - provides irrefutable proof. However being crafty I can think of an instance where someone @ Verizon can make an argument charging that the copper coming into the home was causing some form of crosstalk which caused attenuation issues and required the copper being "disabled". Note the intentional use of "disabled" as opposed to "cut". I personally could see some twobit Verizon shlum doing something stupid on their own accord. "If we cut the copper John we never have to worry about losing our job!"
Infiltrated dot Net
This is why the company that provides telephone service should be a separate company from the one that maintains the wires. Same with power. Same with cable.
Fiber be damned, bring me lower prices. Competition between competitors is guaranteed to bring down prices. The fact that I have no choice in carriers is the one reason I have to pay $30-40 for a decent connection. Leaving down a cable would definetly lead to a competitive market.
And DSL be damned. When the DSL is sluggish like in my neighborhood, it is not an option.
Copper infrastructure was mostly paid for by government granted monopolies. In return, it was a tariffed service that the telcos had to lease to anyone, in a non-discriminatory way.
Yes, they had to lease to their competitors. That was the price of the gov't granting them a monopoly.
Fiber is paid for by the telcos, not the gov't so is not a tariffed service. While Verizon MUST lease copper to competitors, it isn't compelled to lease fiber access. Verizon cutting the copper is effectively cutting off any competition that was not a Baby Bell in a past life.
No, they can't just reconnect it. The copper is cut on BOTH ends -- telco CO and house. Feel free to reconnect one end, but they aren't required to let you hook it back up in their CO.
The only reason Verizon and AT&T and the others can afford to pay to lay the fiber is the wealth that was created by their guaranteed monopoly.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Or further up the line? Because the Telco is responsible up to the demarcation point, after which, it is the customer's wiring. Which side are they cutting? How significant is this cutting? Whole sections, or just a snip here to isolate the premise wiring in preparation of new equipment installation?
And who told you that you can't allow a competitor to run a new cable to your property? It wasn't Verizon who made a regulation making them the sole provider -- it was your local and State government. Don't be mad at Verizon because your government is completely fraudulent and corrupt -- if you vote, kick everyone out on the next election, and keep doing it until someone removes the monopoly provisions.
Verizon's telco predecessors made that capital investment with gov't guaranteed monopolies. In short, it really ISN'T Verizon's copper, it is copper paid for by taxes and a gov't granted monopoly. It is national infrastructure.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
As someone who has FIOS, the difference in service is clear. With copper I was free to choose my ISP. I chose a very, very good local mom and pop ISP. With Fiber I'm stuck with Verizon.
The technology may be more modern, but the terms of service are in the stoneage. It would be better in the long run if the terms of service were forcibly opened, as with copper, since they don't appear willing to open them voluntarily.
This is something of a reversal of history though. Verizon didn't deploy the stuff until they got a waiver of the copper rules requiring they open them to other ISPs. They were active in closing the terms of service and the government went right along with them.
Bastards.
Evil people are out to get you.
Yeah, you ARE confused. Verizon often did not lay the coper lines, Ma Bell did. Oh yeah, and Ma Bell (or Verizon later) was granted a MONOPOLY and made a huge amount of cash on it. In exchange they were told, you have to let other people rent those lines. It was part of the Deal. Oh, and also don't forget that when they installed the copper in the first place they often charged the home owner to do it. As in, I paid to put this stuff in, I will need it later, so how dare you rip it out So yeah, they are RIPPING US OFF. They are in effect paying their employees money to prevent them from having to fulfill their legal obligations to RENT (as in they get PAID for it) the copper. Totally illegal, totally a waste of cash and totally unethical. But you go on and and complaing about how what they are doing is 'ok' cause they own the copper.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This is the entire reason for granting certain rights to companies like Verizon in exchange for demanding certain things, such as allowing competitors to lease space on said cables.
The problem is not that the government granted the monopoly; the problem is that the government has been lax in forcing Verizon to comply with actions demanded of them by their common carrier status.
But, oh, I forgot -- if the government didn't exist, everything would be peaches and cream, and we'd all live in an ideal world of competitive business and market equality.
Natural monopolies exist, and they do not benefit people, other than the holders of the monopoly. But again, I forgot, we can easily explain away the negative impacts of those monopolies by saying that some monopolists from a prior era did some good deeds.
Even the Austrian school of economic thought (among the most free-market espousing schools of thought that exists) agrees that natural monopolies require correction in order for optimal economic activity and efficient distribution of resources. So the question is, do you prefer a free market that exists because of restrictions on uncompetitive activity, or non-competitive market that results from unfettered activity?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I think that it's okay to be mad at Verizon, who seem to be in bed with whatever candidate you try to vote for.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Bipartisan legislative rules, by which Congress is run, are largely deals between the two major parties at the expense of any potential third one. Even campaign finance reform's major effect is to make it harder to break out into the public consciousness, which redounds to the benefit of existing party organizations.
The two-party system is enshrined in no law, but the structure of the system makes it certain that we end up with that.
If by "pro-business," you mean people who haven't (openly) advocated lining up business owners against a wall and machine-gunning them, then you're right -- we sure are stuck with a lot of pro-business candidates. OTOH, if by "pro-business" you only include people who haven't threatened to directly confiscate the profits of private industries, and use the money for her own ends, (IOW, people using the same rhetoric as people who went on to machine-gun business owners against a wall) well then you have Hillary Clinton, for one.
(Since I'm always challenged for a citation when I make this accusation, here's your damn link. Thank God for youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1PfE9K8j0g)
Oh, THAT kind of progressive! Well, GW Bush, Ronald Reagan, JF Kennedy, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington come to mind, for starters.
Hey, I'm game. The REAL descendants of Jeffersonian thought (I'll give you a hint, they don't refer to themselves as "progressives") happen to also subscribe to his views on the virtues of gun ownership.
....Covad DSL and Cavalier for both Phone and DSL, I can truthfully say that Verizon is doing folks a favor.
I know this is not the point, but there it is.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It's Verizon's copper. They can do anything they damn well please with the stuff. They're not "preventing" competitors from competing -- said competitors can always make the same capital investment Verizon (or rather its predecessor telcos) did and lay copper down the street.
No, a competitor can't simply lay down more copper. In most places the incumbent has exclusive access to use the Right of Way for a given purpose. In the case of the telcos, only the incumbent has the right to have telephone landlines lain down. Even if you had a billion dollars and could afford to put in cables or fiber the only way you would be allowed to is if you buy off the politicians.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Provided, of course, that one has no aversion to being exposed as a common thief.
I'd be the first to recognize that the history of the telco industry is insanely complicated, but the solution is to find a way to divide things up that takes both the private and public investments in the infrastructure into account and then leave things that way, with a clear division between public and private domains. Preferably the public part should be as small as possible to minimize the tragedy-of-the-commons issue. What's really insane is leaving the telecommunications infrastructure in its current half-public/half-private state. Trying to turn a private company into a quasi-government organization by way of intrusive regulation and handouts can only result in a combination of the worst aspects of bureaucratic inefficiency and regulatory capture.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I'd be the first to recognize that the history of the telco industry is insanely complicated, but the solution is to find a way to divide things up that takes both the private and public investments in the infrastructure
Oh, I agree. As I said many tymes I think ownership of some infrastructure should be separate from the services that it provides. For instance I think it might be better for a community to build and own the infrastructure but allow open access for any services the infrastructure can provide. Take cable, a nonprofit, for profit, or the city owns the cable but then it allows different companies to offer cable tv, internet access, phone service, or a Triple Play with all three. I would be able to go to one company for tv, another for phone service, and a third for net access.
Should there be a Law?
When I got my FIOS installed late last year they asked me if I wanted to move my phone from copper to fiber. I said 'no' and they said 'ok'. Maybe they are doing this in some or many cases, but it certainly isn't a formal policy because they haven't done it to anyone on my street. Yes, my evidence is anecdotal, but so is this story.