No FiOS In Boston? We'll Make an Ad Anyway 202
Zott writes "The Boston Globe has a front-page story about Verizon's FiOS that recounts what many of us here in Boston and some surrounding urban areas know already: Verizon won't invest in the physical plant and actually offer the fiber optic Internet and TV service here in the 'hub of the universe.' This hasn't stopped Verizon from launching a new advertising campaign with Donnie Wahlberg (member of New Kids on the Block, actor, and well-known Boston native) standing in Copley Square and the Charlestown neighborhood touting the product. It goes even further, though — according to the Globe's article, '"This is New England, where people tell it straight," says Wahlberg... "No phonies, no fakers, no shortcuts."' Except for the shortcut in the fine print that's presumably in the ad somewhere: 'FiOS not available in all areas.'"
Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
-A summary which says there is no FiOS in boston
-An article behind a paywall, the preview to which only says that some very minor celebrity said something about FiOS in boston
-An AC which says he is in Boston and has FiOS.
I'm going to listen to the non-famous Walhberg and the AC and believe there is probably FiOS in boston. As I don't live in Boston, it really doesn't matter. The much bigger issue is paywalls. Lets not submit them anymore or link to them, mkay?
FiOS Is A Sham. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in Maryland, we received FiOS flyers in the mail; they hung advertisements on our door knob; they put advertisements under our cars' windshield wipers; they made phone calls (because we were current Verizon ADSL customers, I presume, the phone call was legal); they even came out to the house in person at one point, all trying to sell us on FiOS. We still see TV ads on our local TV stations (just over the air; we don't have cable).
Being that we are big-time Internet content consumers -- video, photos, Linux distros, gaming -- FiOS was a huge deal for us. From the first time I heard the acronym, I wanted it. I couldn't wait to free myself from the unreliability and below-average speed of ADSL.
That was in 2008. But suddenly, a shift happened: instead of Verizon spamming *us*, we found ourselves spamming *them*. We'd call them on the phone and ask if they were offering FiOS yet. "Nope, it's not available in your area yet". Over time, the reps started leaving the "yet" off, as if to imply that it would never be available. Turns out they were right.
I was making pretty good money at the time, so I called Verizon and asked how much they wanted to connect the fiber from what I assumed was a local switching box to our house. I told them I'm willing to pay an amount they'd typically charge a business. They declined to quote a price, simply repeating that FiOS is not available in my area, over and over again, like a broken record. Meanwhile, I posted on the dslreports forums inquiring about it, and someone who lives about half a mile down the road said they have FiOS, and they thought our entire town was wired up with it. Apparently I'm not part of the town I live in. Who'd have thought?
Then I read this story: http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=631
It's no wonder FiOS never came. It was a profiteering scam all along. Verizon's plan was basically to:
(1) Tell the government that they need a lot of money to roll out the next generation internet service to America to keep us competitive with the rest of the world; this convinced politicians sufficiently well that they received a big chunk of change from taxpayers.
(2) Using money that they'd normally be spending on PSTN (telephone) infrastructure, deploy a *token* amount of FiOS in areas where it's the most profitable and lowest cost / barrier to entry to do so, and tell the politicians, "See? We're doing it!" -- meanwhile they were doubtless placing neighborhoods inhabited by Congressmen and Senators at the top of the priority list.
(3) Once the government seemed satisfied, stop the deployment entirely, except for finishing off areas that they already promised local or state governments they'd roll out to.
(4) Keep all the money that the government gave them for FiOS, and hand it out to their top executives as bonuses.
It's a devious, scheming, unabashedly evil plan, which succeeded with flying colors, as far as lining the executives' pockets. Meanwhile, not only did they screw taxpayers out of their money, but they didn't even follow through with the service they said they'd provide, for the vast majority of the people.
Meanwhile, through price fixing and industry collusion, even with arch-rivals such as Comcast and AT&T, they have managed to keep a damper on innovation, cloud hosted services, HD video streaming, and other premium internet services in the U.S., by intentionally restricting the internet access of the common man to about 7.1 Mbps, give or take.
This is all nothing new. Verizon is a shining example of exactly what is wrong with the United States: corporate greed, flying in the face of the government's best intentions, abusing taxpayer money for corporate gain, and preventing Americans from having an equal footing with the rest of the industrialized world on the "Information Superhighway". The first chance we get, we should lock their top executives and investors away in solitary confinement for life. But of course that will never happen, because nobody gives a shit that the crooks get away with this. And they know it, too, or they wouldn't have done such a thing in plain sight.
Re:Not sure why this article made the cut. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why did Slashdot choose this article? Do they like Marky Mark or something?
Because Verizon, a supposed common carrier, is refusing to offer services in a city that is a)one of two major tech capitals of the United States, an area with a long history of computer industry tech b)the largest city in New England.
There are a couple of factors at play. One is that Verizon wants an exemption from the state's requirements that TV cable providers secure franchise agreements with each town. The state basically forces cable companies to bid against each other. So that's why, for example, many MA towns have a cable studio in one of their schools, or at least some sort of community access station. That's important, but Verizon doesn't want to play ball against Comcast, RCN, Cablevision, etc. They just want to be able to offer TV services statewide.
The second factor: Verizon has studiously avoided low income (ie minority) areas in rolling out. They can run fiber down a street in Weston and get ~$200/household for internet, phone, and a fat TV package...and not need to feed that connection much in the way of data. In the city, people don't have as much disposable income, don't want phone service, and don't sit on their couch watching TV as much either because they're busy working or they're out taking advantage of more things the city has to offer...plus there's a LOT more internet connection sharing via wifi.
The end result is that we have only one real internet service provider in the city: Comcast. There's no competition, in a supposedly free market economy, in one of the oldest tech hubs in the country. Boston is the Silicon Valley of the East Coast; Massachusetts actually used to be as much or more of a tech powerhouse than SV was. DEC, Wang, HP, Sun, SGI, Oracle, Microsoft, and virtually every other major tech company used to have a massive presence here on either the Route 495 or 128 belts (495/128 and the spoke roads...93, 2, 3, 90, etc are why Boston is referred to as "The Hub")
All the tech elite/execs out in the burbs have awesomely fast internet and a choice in providers, but anyone in Cambridge, Somerville, or Boston don't. Similarly, if you head out to Needham you get 5-6Mbit/sec download speeds on your cell.
Re:Um (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's anything like my last employer's Syracuse and Albany offices, FiOS availability is very patchwork... a little here, a little there, always available the next block over but not where you need it.
If it's anything like any broadband solution that's ever existed, availability is "very patchwork" at some point, in most places. I remember when DSL was super-exotic; there were two phone exchanges in all of the metropolitan DC area that had it, and I was fortunate enough to be in one of them.
The way FiOS works, it's partially incumbent upon groups like homeowners and condo associations...or apartment building management...to request that Verizon come in and install the local infrastructure for "last mile" delivery. It's not just a situation of them coming up to one home and plugging you in, otherwise. We recently went through this in the condo development where I live, and it was an involved process...but when you want fiber to your home, guess what? You have to have someone install the fiber, which means asking them to do so. Hence the advertising to build up demand.
Could the ad have been a little more up front about this? Sure. But it's not actually silly that they are doing this.