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NYC Threatens To Sue Verizon Over FiOS Shortfalls (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: New York City officials yesterday notified Verizon that the company is in default of an agreement to bring fiber connections to all households in the city and could file a lawsuit against the company. The road to a potential lawsuit has been a long one. In June 2015, New York released an audit that found Verizon failed to meet a commitment to extend FiOS to every household in the five boroughs by June 2014. City officials and Verizon have been trying to resolve the matter since then with no success, as Verizon says that it hasn't actually broken the agreement. The default letter (full text) sent yesterday by the city Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) says Verizon has failed to pass all residential buildings in the city with fiber. As of October 2015, there were at least 38,551 addresses where Verizon hadn't fulfilled installation service requests that were more than a year old, the letter said. "Moreover, Verizon improperly reduced, from $50 million to $15 million, the performance bond required [by] the Agreement on the basis of Verizon's incorrect representations that Verizon had met the prescribed deployment schedule, when in fact it had not," the letter said. City officials demanded that Verizon restore the bond and wants a response within 30 days. The default letter also accuses Verizon of failing to make records related to its provision of cable service available to the city during its audit. "Officials say they could sue Verizon unless the carrier shows clear plans for stepping up installations," and that the notice is the first step in that process, The Wall Street Journal reported. The citywide fiber agreement lets NYC seek monetary damages from Verizon if it fails to deliver on the fiber promises.
Given that I (and noone else discussing this here) has actually read the contract, there's no way to say for certain.
That said, I infer that the contract reduces that performance bond when certain milestones are met. Verizon thinks it met them, NYC disagrees.
Who is right? Well, most likely the party with the best lawyers. Because this case is going to be about specific words in specific places in the contract. And without being a lawyer, none of us are even going to understand the arguments....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
End Franchise agreements. Confiscate the existing Fiber plant, and install Municipal funded fiber plant, back to a COLO facility and offer all service proivders a seat at THAT (COLO) table. You'll see lots of creative solutions to problems you didn't even know you had..
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Benefit has nothing to do with it. It's a contractual obligation. If someone or some business were contractually obligated to provide you with some service, you would want them sanctioned for breaking that contract. Not doing so only ensures that there's no incentive for anyone to keep to the terms of a contract.
Yeah, confiscating their assets is a great way to show what happens to companies that don't fulfill their contractual obligations!