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NYC Sues Verizon For Breaking Promise To Make FiOS Available To All Residents (washingtonpost.com)
New submitter erickessler writes: 1 million NYC homes can't get Verizon FiOS, so the city just sued Verizon. Verizon wants another four years to cover remaining 1 million households. Washington Post reports: "New York City has sued Verizon, saying the phone giant broke its 2008 promise (PDF) to make its Fios cable service available to all city residents. The city said in a lawsuit (PDF) Monday that Verizon missed a 2014 deadline to extend wire by every home or apartment building in the city -- in technical parlance, "passing" the home. The city also argues that Verizon hasn't installed service for thousands who requested it. Verizon disagrees with the city's definition of "passing" a home and says it has done its job. Spokesman Ray McConville said Monday that Verizon sees "passed" as meaning that it can reach every home, provided a landlord gives permission. Verizon wants to reach some buildings through other buildings. In a letter to the city Friday, Verizon says 2.2 million households have access to Fios, a phone, cable and high-speed internet network. Verizon said Monday that it is committed to expanding Fios availability to the city's remaining 1 million households."
Marissa is coming, she will fix Verizon like she fixed Yahoo.
lucm, indeed.
4 more years!
I talked to the techs about it when they were repairing my POTS copper recently. Corporate figures it's not worth their while as the building's too small and other tenants are already with Time Warner, who renamed themselves Spectre excuse me Spectrum. Heard some horror stories about the local low income high rises getting their FiOS boxes and then residents, some of whom use their net connection for health monitors and are on fixed incomes, being told - FiOS or nothing, here's your much larger bill.
Dealt with their techs a lot over the last couple of years, Sandy for one thing, and the techs are uniformly cool and mostly competent. But Verizon corporate does not intend to put FiOS anywhere they can't make an immediate buck. Then they'll claim that the super won't let them in or something which in my case is nuts as I'm the super.
It's time cities all over the country start suing these leeches. The telcos took billions and billions of dollars of tax money in exchange for upgrades they have no intention of ever providing. Fuck them all. The FCC obviously won't be doing anything now, so it's up to the courts, the only sane branch of government left.
How about upstate? I've got fiber running on the pole outside my house. They dropped a spool off last year across the road, while they were doing work on the lines. The cable was clearly labeled fiber optic. The driver of the FIOS van (two bucket trucks were there as well) confirmed it was fiber, but couldn't/wouldn't tell me what it was for or who's data was running over it.
I suspect GE or SI, as they both have a heavy presence locally. More than a bit irritated that fiber is running about thirty feet from the house, and they're not about to use it for residential service.
Verizon doesn't want to do FIOS anymore.
It looked like the hot thing once, but now the bean counters see more opportunities elsewhere.
But what to do with your promises?
Verizon said Monday that it is committed to expanding Fios availability to the city's remaining 1 million households.
Fine. What does that mean in terms of Who, What, Where, When, and How?
Because "in the sweet bye and bye" in terms of the "When" element isn't really acceptable. You've had since 2014, and it's now 2017. Where were you in 2014, and where are you now? And "passing by" a domicile isn't really helpful if persons in it wish to, you know, use fiber.
Anyway, this is really a non-issue. Regulation/Oversight==bad for business as far as the current administration believes. At this rate, I'm just tickled my milk doesn't have melamine in it or my meat isn't horse meat or my prescription medication isn't just powered lead.
Yet, anyway. Who knows what it'll be when the FDA is closed as has been promised.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
New Jersey has a similar arrangement with Verizon regarding Fios deployment, yet NJ is giving Verizon a pass on this issue...
Verizon is an expert at cheating their way out of obligations. They go right to the top. They'll bribe/lobby/contribute to state or local officials and have a law written that gets them out obligations. They've sure done that plenty of times.
This time around they may not have to do much at all. Corruption's taken root at the very top.
Why would you even want it anymore? All they'll do is build it and sell it to Frontier and turn it into garbage
At the time of signing, Verizon agreed "the FTTP Network will pass all households served by Franchisee’s wire centers within the Franchise Area".
The term "pass" isn't defined in the agreement, beyond stating that it applies to all inhabitable dwellings. So what definition does Verizon use?
While the agreement enforces a lot of metrics the network must meet, it doesn't define which third parties (eg. customers, residents) do or don't participate. That's shoddy legal work: Why didn't NYC catch such an omission?
Verizon had signed a contract with the city and failed to hold up their end of the contract. Naturally, there are provisions for what happens in this case.
15. DEFAULT AND REMEDIES
15.1. Defaults. In the event of any breach, default, failure or other noncompliance by
the Franchisee in the performance of any obligation of the Franchisee under this Agreement
(each such breach, default, failure or other noncompliance being referred to herein as a
“Default”), which Default is not cured within the specific cure period provided for in this
Agreement (or if no specific cure period is provided for in this Agreement then within the cure
period described in Section 15.3 below), then the City may:
15.1.1. cause a withdrawal from the cash Security Fund, pursuant to the provisions of Section 15.11 herein;
15.1.2. make a demand upon the Performance Bond pursuant to the provisions of Section 15.9 herein;
15.1.3. draw down on the Letter of Credit pursuant to the provisions of Section 15.10 herein;
15.1.4. pursue any rights the City may have under the Guaranty;
15.1.5. seek and/or pursue money damages from the Franchisee as compensation for such Default;
15.1.6. seek to restrain by injunction the continuation of the Default; and/or
15.1.7. pursue any other remedy permitted by law, or in equity, or as set forth in this Agreement, provided however the City shall only have the right to terminate this Agreement upon the occurrence of a Revocation Default (defined hereinafter).
I'm pretty sure Verizon is going to claim they are blameless in court per the Rules of Acquisition..
#17 "A contract is a contract is a contract... but only between Ferengi."
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Is this really the right approach? I get that Verizon used taxpayer funds and government brute force to obtain their state sponsored monopolistic market dominance. But then, how would suing them achieve anything? This lawsuit will result in them writing a fat check to Blasio rather than them actually rolling out fiber to anyone. If you want fiber grab your metamucil new yorkers because this isn't the way to get it.
Suing is an expensive and time intensive process, they would want to ensure the contract clauses are watertight before doing so otherwise they would be just flushing money down the shitter. Perhaps the New Jersey contracts are not as well defined and hence they don't think they would win?
The us is such a development country when it comes to internet.
In Soviet New York, evil greedy KKKorporation$ do not want your money.
I wonder, why...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Do you remember when we gave all the telcos money to build out ADSL? Pepperidge farms remembers. They didn't build out shit, $250M down the drain. When are we going to sue those slimy fucks for that?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Couple of years ago, Verizon ran ads in the Boston metro area showing happy shiny pop stars standing in Boston's Copley Plaza (local equivalent of Times Square) and extolling their FiOS service. As it happens, FiOS isn't available in the city of Boston, and--to all appearances--is never going to be.
When the mayor of Boston called them out on this, Verizon responded with some clueless marketing gobbledygook.
'Verizon sees "passed" as meaning that it can reach every home, provided a landlord gives permission'
Define 'is'
Where I live, I asked Verizon to get FiOS. They said that they didn't have a fiber run close enough to my home and were never on planning to make such a run. I live in a middle class suburb. Running fiber to my house would be fairly easy. But I can't get anyone to run the fiber. All the telcos are out of the business of running new fiber infrastructure to older neighborhoods. I guess they are waiting for 5G wireless. I would much rather have fiber.
Our coop president called Verizon many many many times to tell them we wanted FiOS. He offered to organize a meeting of nearby buildings. This is a relatively wealthy neighborhood. Eventually Verizon stopped answering his calls. Verizon took huge subsidies for FiOS and used them to build out their cellular network. The fact that the city still hasn't made a serious effort to enforce the contract shows that the city and Verizon are on the same side.
I kind of wish they would sue, the bastards. I waited for FIOS for roughly 12 years all in all, poking along on DSL. A few years back I saw a Verizon tech working on a pole in my neighborhood. When he came down, I asked him about the FIOS rollout, and he told me point blank, but consolingly, "It's never going to be available here, you'll never have it". So, Comcast/Xfinity was my only choice for true broadband.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Much as I hate Verizon, I'm aware enough of NYC's bureaucracy to figure they likely threw roadblock after roadblock in Verizon's way. And knowing NYCs unions, they probably had to pay the workers not to work while trying to clear up the bureaucracy.
Verizon committed to providing FIOS to all of New Jersey in return for a couple of wheelbarrows of tax breaks and incentives. Once they got the sweet spots connected, they convinced the BPU that providing wireless they met their commitment. For some reason or reasons the BPU let Verizon off the hook. I'm not stating they were bought or bribed, but there are plenty of places that could benefit from having access to FIOS and Verizon has stopped FIOS installations.
I don't need to mention that Verizon stopped performing maintenance on copper many years ago (neighbor was an employee). I would connect an extension cord to some wires in the pedestal on my lawn, but it probably wouldn't cause any damage.
May your central offices burn down one by one.