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How Verizon Is Hindering NYC's Internet Service
Cuillere writes: Verizon promised to make FiOS available to all New York City residents. The deadline passed a year ago, and many residents still don't have FiOS as an option, but Verizon claims to have done its part. "The agreement required Verizon to 'pass' homes with fiber (not actually connect them), but no one wrote down in the agreement what they thought 'pass' meant. (Verizon’s interpretation, predictably, is that it doesn’t have to get very close.)" The situation is a mess, and the city isn't having much luck fighting it in the courts. Susan Crawford offers a solution: set up wholesale fiber access for third party ISPs and absolve Verizon of customer service responsibility.
how about a read more button?
It's almost like treating the lines in the ground as a public resource that ISPs can compete to offer service on...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Verizon is in the business to make money - Providing access to Internet is just one of the by-products of Verizon's quest in making money
When Verizon promised to provide FIOS to NYC it hinged on one thing - profits
Verizon will do whatever it can to provide the best kind of net access to places where it knows it can get plenty of ROI - such as Wall Street
On the other hand, places such as the Bronx, where the only real way to make money is to sell drugs, where is the impetus for Verizon to provide FIOS there?
TFA didn't describe it as a contract. No mention was made of money changing hands.
But, somehow, I can't see Verizon (or anyone else) spending the money to put fibre even kind of near everywhere in NYC without being paid.
So, where's the contract, and what was the fee paid for this?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
For this model to work you need a benevolent entity running the fiber network. Verizon runs a highly profitable wireless internet network which in many cases competes against high speed fixed internet. It is in their interest to kill fiber to the curb not keep it going. This might work if you spun off the fiber business or handed it over to a traditional utility like ConEd or National Grid. But then those electric utilities would probably end up using internet service to subsidize keeping the old electric grid going as that business enters its death spiral.
Absolve Verizon of customer service responsibility? How about just telling them that they failed and allow other ISPs compete -- perhaps with subsidies? Why absolve Verizon of anything at all? I don't understand that in the slightest. It's like rewarding them for failure.
Looks like it boils down to Non-technical people making technical decisions.
This is more directed to managers, VP's, and C-Levels. Before you agree to a contract for technical services, you really should have a skilled technical person read it and tell you where you are about to get screwed.
I have seen contracts to outsource L1 and L2 where it stated "Any ticket that can not be handled by L1 or L2 support personal will be forwarded L3 personal provided by XXXXXXXXX." Where XXXXX was the name of the company that was outsourcing the jobs to India. Sounds good tell you find out that the Indian company hired 1 guy to do both L1 and L2. He had no computer knowledge and simple passed all tickets to L3 with the comment "Do the needful" The Indian company always met their SLA's because it was a ticket that could not be handled by the guy they hired. (Note: That one was for 1500 servers)
Another contract I was shown listed a guaranteed uptime of 96%. When I questioned it, my VP replied "There management did not understand anything technical. 4% down time was sold to them as reasonable. So don't worry about it, we will always make our SLA's" (Note to managers: 99.99% uptime is reasonable, 99.999% uptime is what you want!)
My favorite was one that stated that the customer was responsible for all documentation and procedures on servers, access, and support. That one was a huge pile of steaming fecal mater which suddenly leapt into the air oscillating device when they were SOX audited. The company they were outsourced to met the SLA's and could not be held liable because it was in the contract that the customer was responsible for the documentation.
So, take it from someone with over 20 years in IT. When you outsource technical functions you need to have your technical people vet the contract and you need to keep them to monitor and make sure that the company, you are outsourcing to, does their job.
Verizon committing fraud. I'm shocked, I tell you, absolutely shocked.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This is the wide open United States, not some densely packed EU country. How can you expect a provider to provide fiber to all those people over all that distance and still have enough money for bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbying? Wait, this was for New York City? Well then, uh, hmmm, what, nevermind....
IIRC, ambiguous language in a contract, or that which is not defined or poorly defined, should generally be found to be in favor of the person receiving the contract. In other words, if Verizon wrote the contract and implied that "pass" meant to bring fiber to all residents, or the city believed in good faith that "pass" meant to provide a fiber outlet / headend / demarc readily accessible to every resident, then the courts should find in the favor of the city. The reverse is also true, though. If the city wrote the contract and didn't specify what they meant by pass, then Verizon gets to define what they meant (within reason, of course).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The ISP monopolies behave like monopolies.
I know... lets hire another monopoly. Or the people that think they're really being crafty will say "lets have the government do it"... because that isn't a monopoly... right guys? Right?
This isn't going to stop until you open up the right of way to run cable to everyone.
In new york there is PLENTY of room in the conduits to run as much cable as people could possibly want to run.
An individual building for example could run the cable for itself. The cost is trivial if we don't charge the licensing fees which tend to be extortion in the first place. Sort of like the cab medallions. The company pays more and gets a monopoly.
Charge less and open it up to more people to run cable.
The cost of running fiber from a building to the trunk is at most a couple thousand dollars in equipment. And we have so much dark fiber because it was determined that fiber is so cheap that it actually makes sense to over build your needs because the labor to install exceeds the cost of the equipment. Thus if the equipment cost is a couple grand... lets say the labor is another couple grand... compare that to how long the cable will last and how many tenants you have.
The whole last mile ISP concept is stupid. The only real ISPs are the people the ISPs BUY bandwidth from in the first place. Qwest communications, L3... sure, ATT and Verizon own some trunk line but the majority of it is specialized players in that market.
THOSE are the real ISPs. Cut the last mile monopolies OUT of the market by letting more people run cable. You want to have some more control over it? Not just have it be literally any asshole doing it? Fine. FINE. But if you restrict who gets to lay cable to ONE organization be that public or private you're going to get fucked... there will be no lube... and while its happening the bastards will expect you to be a good girl and thank them for caring enough to give it to you. Don't even dare argue the point. They've fucked over pretty much every market they've been given dominion over and then they walk around expecting everyone to tell them what wonderful people they are for the privilege.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Want Verizon to sit up straight and come around? NYC is the *perfect* place for community access broadband. Enormous population density with probably high 90% subscribership. Even if it's not possible to use Verizon's fiber I wonder if the conduit is fair game by FCC rules.
Heck, I'm willing to bet a good technical plan and an indieGoGo campaign could get things going.
It is only the one without the resources to have a competent lawyer to make the contract understood that gets that "Most reasonable beneficial" assumption.
Another company would be presumed to either have competent counsel or to be willing to hire it for a such a contract.
You, as a common citizen, would not.
Funny how managers and executives eventually learn this lesson and then quickly forget about it when there's a whiff of out sourcing. The funny thing is that word will get out and the rumor mill will always make it out worse than the reality.
NYC has an exceedingly poorly documented infrastructure. There are still functioning electrical drops originally installed by Edison (Tom, not the company) and his folks for DC power in the 19th century. There are feeders that use the lead pipe and surrounding soil as a return (leading to things like dogs getting electrocuted when peeing on a metal cover that happens to be in the wrong place, field wise).
NYC isn't special here. When they were building the Metro in DC in the 70s, a big problem was that every time you'd dig, you'd find undocumented pipes, wires, etc.
Telephone company DNA does not focus on making profits. They are, at heart, control freaks, and will gladly give up profits if they can keep control of their wires and the content. These are folks who fought tooth and nail to prevent attachment of customer owned telephone sets, modems answering machines, and other devices, even though they made a ton more money once these new applications expanded use of their networks.
Verizon is now controlled by its wireless subsidiary, which wants to disinvest in wireline except for pulling fiber to the wireless towers. So FiOS investment is ending. They'd sell off the rest of wireline if somebody would take it, but other than FiOS it's terribly run down. The "LoopCo" plan that Susan Crawford suggests is the only practical way forward, as it restores utility status to the fiber and opens it to creative users. But that reduces Verizon's control, so they'll fight it, like the scorpion fighting the frog on whose back it's riding.
Verizon claims to have done its part. ... no one wrote down in the agreement what they thought 'pass' meant. ... The situation is a mess, ... isn't having much luck fighting it ...
If only we had sent Verizon into the Middle East...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The lack of effort from Verizon is not *hindering* anyone from obtaining internet service from anyone else. That's like saying LeBron James not playing on your basketball team is hindering your team.
We need the government to save us from the consequences of the bad deal the government made last time.
"Absolve Verizon of customer service responsibilities"?
Why would Verizon take that deal? As far as they're concerned, they already aren't particularly responsible for customer service. But they can rake in the fees from their captive customer base.
What NY seems to be asking Verizon is "Pretty please, lay in the last mile of fiber and then step away."
You'll have to seriously sweeten the pot (such as extortionate wholesale service fees) to make it more profitable for Verizon to do this, vice continuing to squeeze its current copper-service victims for sunk-cost mostly-profit revenues. And for companies like Verizon, "less profit" is a non-starter.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
For this model to work you need a benevolent entity running the fiber network. Verizon runs a highly profitable wireless internet network which in many cases competes against high speed fixed internet. It is in their interest to kill fiber to the curb not keep it going. This might work if you spun off the fiber business or handed it over to a traditional utility like ConEd or National Grid. But then those electric utilities would probably end up using internet service to subsidize keeping the old electric grid going as that business enters its death spiral.
Think about the fortune they must have made in the financial district after the hurricane. I heard from someone who works there that the flooding took most of the hard links offline for IIRC months as infrastructure needed replacement (and drainage), most people switched to wireless and connections got slower and slower...
And while I haven't run into a problem with verizon techs in particular, I know cable guys up there can be pretty damn competitive, by which I mean blatantly telling you shit and lawbreaking. Cutting or disconnecting competitors' lines in apartment buildings and telling you fiber won't work because fibers break all the time, that kind of thing.
Unions
So, take it from someone with over 20 years in IT. When you outsource technical functions you need to have your technical people vet the contract and you need to keep them to monitor and make sure that the company, you are outsourcing to, does their job.
The reverse lesson is also true. When you make vendor/purchaser agreements or service agreements on which a lot relies, you should have your lawyer vet the contract. (A lot of the time people don't and wind up with how-the-hell-did-we-agree-to-this down the road). If it's for the sale of goods, make sure your lawyer knows and understands the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) as it applies in your state. A lot of them don't.
In the cable business, "homes passed" is a standard metric. It means that service is available to those homes. When Charter is figuring out how much to pay for TWC, they ask about homes passed, because these are potential customers.
Verizon used other meanings of the term, from street English, to mean something else. If it goes a couple of blocks away, it sort of passes, by their standard. If it goes right by the house but they won't offer service, it is still "passed". No cable company would say that, and that's not what the City meant when they negotiated their deal with Verizon.
NYC should have tied the payments to Verizon to the number of homes wired up or number of customers signed up.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact