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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."
Years of experience with poor areas have provided a lot of understanding of how different areas of the USA react to upgraded networks.
In wealthy areas residents apply for new plans.
In poor areas local residents fill a shopping cart with new network hardware and plan the best way to push the full cart to a scrap merchant.
Until an area has undergone full gentrification existing networks stay in place.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That is not how verizon works.
Verizon is broken into a few dozen 'verticals'.
Very true.
Very few of them work together.
Not quite true. Some staff within the various "verticals" want to work with staff in the other "verticals", but issues like government regulations, pricing, and the always dreaded "internal politics" & "management attitudes" can stymie (delay) or even halt any attempt in that company to "work across the verticals".
All of the money for building out residential is funding the wireless verticals.
Actually it is the other way around. Revenues from wireless have been traditionally "funneled" back into the corporate coffers for use elsewhere in the business. The traditional telecom business (aka "wireline"), and FiOS is a part of that "vertical", has been a "break even at best" operation for quite a number of years now. With the ongoing "flattening out" of the revenue "curve" in the overall wireless industry, the days of VZ Wireless giving loads of money to corporate every year may be coming to a close, or at least the revenues from wireless contributed to comporate may decrease. Expect to see some interesting staffing changes (reductions, layoffs) at wireless by the end of 2017 or 2018, so I hear.
Unless the current CEO leaves nothing will change.
It's worse than just the CEO; the CEO's "head is in the clouds" and detached from reality. Most of the very top level management (execs, EVP, SVP, AVP) at Verizon are part of the problem, not part of the solution; they focus more on the "bottom line" of their part of the business and not the "bigger picture". Nobody at Verizon in top level management is looking at "the bigger picture", just the "bottom lines" & other numbers. Look at the boondoggle they got into with the proposed purchase of Yahoo. There may be no way out of that boondoggle. Marissa Mayer is getting her "golden parachute" in the deal, around 24M USD or so I hear, along with a number of "C" level Yahoo execs.
One of the biggest problems that Verizon executives have is a lack of understanding regarding the "various tools in their toolbox" and how to use them like a conductor conducts a symphony orchestra. Huh? They don't understand how to truly integrate all of the differently "parts & pieces", or "verticals" if you wish, that make up the company. They let the "verticals" all run in their own separate directions, and even within the "verticals" some groups "do their own thing"; there is no "team work" but they sure do talk about it alot. Ok, they try to de-duplicate a number of staff positions by consolidating those positions into "corporate overhead", but the Verizon execs lack "the vision" to see what could possible if they conducted the corporation like a symphony instead of a pack of cats, and with my deepest apologies to cats.
They are quickly offloading everything with a wire hanging off it to put wireless in its place.
They are trying to put the genie back in the bottle. The wireline ROI is flat to no growth.
Quite true.
Wireless on the otherhand is growing.
Actually that statement is false. Revenue growth in the wireless "vertical" at Verizon is flattening out. There is slow but steady "device growth" still taking place, but ask yourself this: "How many wireless devices do you really need? Do you have time to manage all of them? Would it not make your life easier if you could consolidate the number of wireless devices you have down to just the number that you really need?"
Why do you think Verizon is laying off employees? They do it quietly (5000+ people in 2015 alone from across most of the "verticals", but did you hear about it or hear the actual numbers involved?). The headhunting & outplacement companies all know about it and no one company could handle "the load" from Verizon in 2015.
Why to you think Veri