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Verizon About To End Construction of Its Fiber Network
WheezyJoe writes: If you've been holding out hope that FiOS would rescue you from your local cable monopoly, it's probably time to give up. Making good on their statements five years ago, Verizon announced this week it is nearing "the end" of its fiber construction and is reducing wireline capital expenditures while spending more on wireless.
The expense of replacing old copper lines with fiber has allegedly led Verizon to stop building in new regions and to complete wiring up the areas where it had already begun. The fiber network was profitable, but nowhere near as profitable as their wireless network. So, if Verizon hasn't started in your neighborhood by now, they never will, and you'd best ignore all those ads for FiOS.
The expense of replacing old copper lines with fiber has allegedly led Verizon to stop building in new regions and to complete wiring up the areas where it had already begun. The fiber network was profitable, but nowhere near as profitable as their wireless network. So, if Verizon hasn't started in your neighborhood by now, they never will, and you'd best ignore all those ads for FiOS.
The free market strikes again!
Yup, FiOS isn't as profitable because users won't tolerate overage charges or massive throttling on wired connections but they'll bend over when it comes to wireless. Even though their wireless connections are NOWHERE near as good as wired connections.
Yet in even some of the poorest countries you can get 20Mbit connections with no cap for less money than you pay in the US.
That is in fact exactly what the article says. While the profit margin on FiOS is apparently 4.4%, the wireless side had a 23.5% profit margin. While those numbers are heavily encrusted with bullshit, they do show the relative value of the technologies to Verizon.
I read the internet for the articles.
They're going to say they've stopped, wait for local municipalities to take care of it themselves, then pop back up and say, "Actually, we want to provide service in this area anyway - you need to give up your infrastructure to us cause FREE MARKET!"
They are making money, it's just that internet is less of a profit center than wireless so they would rather put the money where they can make the higher profit.
We paid for the fiber with surcharges in our phone bills in the 80's through the 00's -- we just never got the fiber, and the companies pocketed the cash. Money's good, if you can get it.
I tried out Fios for a while, but I have to say, I wasn't that impressed. The service went out from time to time, and YouTube and Netflix wouldn't play worth a damn. Also, they really trick you with their advertisements of low prices. Sure, the prices look good, but then you can't use your own hardware and you have to rent their proprietary hardware, which adds considerably to your service cost. And then you find out that those good prices were only intro prices and then they jack up your rates sky high.
I cancelled Verizon and went with the local cable company, if that tells you anything about Fios!
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
When I last had both available in an area, it didn't make much difference who you picked, the service was decent and close to the same cost. However, I now live in an area where only Comcast is avaiable and I am being screwed for a connection that barely sees 10% of the max throughput and Comcast couldn't care less. Even if there isn't a significant difference in cost for performance, having the option forces them both to be a little more honest.
That is in fact exactly what the article says. While the profit margin on FiOS is apparently 4.4%, the wireless side had a 23.5% profit margin. While those numbers are heavily encrusted with bullshit, they do show the relative value of the technologies to Verizon.
This will bite them in the ass eventually, if not sooner. Verizon refuses to be price and feature compeditive on wireless. They are coming under pressure from increased wireless competition. The duopoly between Verizon and AT&T isn't such a duopoly anymore- there are lots of wireless players.
I have heard very few complaints from people about the fiber service aside from "it isn't available in my area". It is a lot easier to maintain a monopoly on fiber lines compared to wireless.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Verizon is off the hook? Who is going to answer for that? Well rip me off! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... Verizon has been getting breaks since this was first signed in early nineties. HP advises 4,000 -> 5,000 (excess charges and tax breaks) per houshold paid to Vz? This rolls up to the Board of public Utilities for letting them off the hook. Time for a BridgeGate scandal check here. We have a very anti-competitive environment, where each carrier must have a handshake-certified regional monopoly in many towns. Comcast, Optimum, and Verizon seem to have cut the state into mico-monopolies, while the rest of the world is passing us by. Are our taxes too low? Nope!
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
Long back Google had a April Fool posting about toilet net. That idea is fundamentally sound. The municipality can run fiber optic cables in storm water drains. It won't cost as much as it is costing Verizon to dig up and bury the cable. But you won't get it. They have the state law makers in their pockets.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The fact that they're whining about how hard they have it suggests to me that they do have it easy. It's the new first rule of PR: if you're on top, make it sound like you're a victim of something, an underdog. Witness MS trying to make it sound like Linux is stealing trillions of dollars from them, or the religious majority of the country claiming there's a "War on Christmas."
But somehow, over in Europe where most stuff seems outrageously expensive to us Americans, people can get high-speed internet connections to their homes for a fraction of the price we Americans are paying.
I seem to recall our tax money going to these companies to pay for a fiber infrastructure. It's more like the landscaper you hired and paid for mowed the neighbor's lawn but not yours.
No you misread. FiOS isn't AS profitable, it's profitable. Someone without a conflict of interest, willing to compete with wireless, could set up a business and make money, give good service, employ people and return value to an investor. Verizon won't, they see it as a cannibalizing their wireless market.
This is an example of all that is wrong with telecom.
There is VZ and ATT, and then there is Sprint and T-Mo.
I've had all four in my area, and VZ by far has the best coverage. It isn't even close. I curently have T-Mo and the speed is much better, but coverage much worse than ATT and VZ. I'll give up a bit of coverage for better speeds.
As for Fiber vs Cable vs Wireless, Fiber will win on raw speed every time. The issue is the cost for last mile, and always will be. Which is why I recommend that Municipalities start looking at building out their own infrastructure and offering CONTENT/INTERNET providers the opportunity to compete for the last mile customers.
Right now, there is no competition, only franchise agreements that limit competition.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Just about every supermarket everywhere disagrees with you... http://smallbusiness.chron.com...
lets get the Gov't to enforce the law. It's our Government. I never said we trusted it. I don't trust fire, but I use it to cook my food.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You know... Google is your friend...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
It isn't so much that they got an obligation but they did get tax breaks as an incentive with no repercussions for going back on the deal.
A tax break==owed taxes not paid==taxpayers took up that slack. So yes, it was taxpayer funded in that sense.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
FCC proposing to Congress for broadband to be defined as 25/3.
I live in a rental apartment in a small town in Sweden. The building owner installed fiber to every apartment and I now have a choice of 8 ISPs. I can get 1 Gbps symmetrical for $80 a month. I currently pay $28 a month for 100/10 Mbps. This is the basically the norm here in Sweden, unless you live in rural areas. But even single-family homes miles from the nearest neighbour sometimes get fiber, because electrical utilities pull fiber when replacing old electrical grids. And then you have a choice which ISP to connect to. We call this "black fiber" and this really is the perfect solution to the last-mile-problem. The utility or building owner own and maintain the hardware but bit-shuffling is done by ISPs independently. It really isn't that hard.
An here in Singapore,
I pay about 30 USD for 200 mbps up / down fibre , unblocked for torrents, etc. No bundling with any other services. (M1, a local telco is my ISP).
Torrents, during uploads / downloads, actually indicate I exceed the 200 mbps speed. Same when I do speed tests, I get about 205, 210 or so, both up and down.
They just started a 1 gbps to the home for about 40 USD.
Guess I will upgrade to 1 gbps in a year when my current contract is done.
We got a few ISPs here. Competition rocks!