Verizon Accused of Slighting Copper Infrastructure 249
High Fibre writes "Regulatory hearings in Virginia raise questions about Verizon's stewardship of its copper infrastructure, with workers accusing the telecom of cheaping out on maintenance in Virginia due to its preoccupation with its FiOS network. Ars covers the fracas and gives more time to Verizon than the local media do. From Ars: 'During testimony given before the Virginia State Corporation Commission last week... workers painted a dire picture of the state of Verizon's copper network, saying that the equipment required to make repairs — including tools and cable — is not even available.' Verizon disagrees, saying that while it's a challenge to manage and maintain both networks, they are not neglecting their copper infrastructure." A union official gave written testimony about the Verizon problems, presumably so that individual workers would not have to testify in public and open themselves to retribution.
I would suspect Verizon normally... (Score:3, Insightful)
But I suspect unions even more. Most likely, they are concerned about the jobs of their members, who maintain the copper networks.
My guess is, those involved with FIOS are either non-unionized at all, or are much younger and thus not as dear to the union bosses.
Verizion's actions not suprising... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Customers don't complain loudly enough about such things, so I personally have little sympathy for most people here in the US. Just one more reason for me to keep looking for greener pastures elsewhere in the world. Sad thing is on my trip to China I just got back from that it's more competitive with it's own consumers than the US is with it's own
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>Just the government is getting it's cut in the action from all sides usually there.
And that would be different from the US how?
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Dave, If I'm paying $40 month for internet access, I expect unrestricted, high speed bandwidth in both directions. I expect choices and quality of service. My home phone costs about $40/month, my cable TV costs $40/month, my internet access costs $40/month and I'm certain it should be much less.
The loca
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You can port your landline phone number to Vonage. I did it, moving a Southwestern Bell number to Vonage a few years back.
OT background: I moved from the 3rd floor to the 4th floor of my building. SBC (now AT&T) wouldn't move the phone, claiming there were only 2 stories in my building. That doesn't explain why they were able to hook up a phone in my THIRD floor apartment in the first place. SBC tried to
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Yes, long ago — when granting monopoly to AT&T...
I don't notice it either, really. By 2004 the majority of US Internet users were using broadband [networkworld.com].
But even if we are underserved, the increase in FIOS (fiber!) penetr
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I don't know where all the anti-union rhetoric comes from, but I suspect it comes from unions having better contracts with better benefit
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Re:I would suspect Verizon normally... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because Unions reward mediocrity.
I know someone who left here to go work in a union shop. He ended up coming back because the idiot who couldn't do shit and has a whopping year's seniority can't be fired (even though he is useless) so an idiot who doesn't do shit makes more than he was going to, ever.
It's also because unions are often famously controlled by organized crime.
Basically, there were two ways we could have gone to protect the rights of workers; co-ops and unions. But it's too hard to take over, control, and wield the power of a co-op, so unions it is.
I'll take you seriously when you're working for a democratic co-op. Unions are parasitic. They are better for the individual worker, but worse for the economy; co-ops would have been better for everyone but we're not there and probably never will be.
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Imagine how stupid this argument would sound if you were talking about SEC violations, theft, murder, etc. "There's a law against it, that means we don't need anyone watching out for employees."
The
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Salaries are too high for union workers? Before you heap any scorn on them, why don't you worry about the idiot boards of directors who pay CEOs insane amounts, especially those with a track record of failure.
Ah yes the lovely "misdirection of blame" answer for when you absolutely positively can't rebuttal a point except by hoping to distract the reader.
That is a true corruption of American-style meritocracy.
So its only corruption if it doesn't happen due to a union?
And yes, unions make it harder to fire people in general (not just incompetents). That means that the supervisor must work with HR and carefully document every screw-up, thus guaranteeing no one will get fired without good reason.
Or as example show they make it impossible to fire any union worker no matter what sorts of documentation there. Then again its mostly the incompetent and lazy people who fear getting fired, personally I have no job protection and I don't care.
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Mod us all offtopic, although I'd submit that the premise of not trusting the union rep automagically is very much on topic.
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Re:I would suspect Verizon normally... (Score:5, Interesting)
While you have a valid point, my argument is not that such things never happen outside of a union shop, only that the prevalence is increased, and your attempt to place unions and corporations into some kind of false dichotomy has been noticed and is not appreciated.
Don't try to put words in my mouth. I don't appreciate it.
Look, this is based on direct observation, so why don't you take your patronizing attitude and blow it out your ass? I've worked in union shops (luckily, in a non-union position) and I've worked in non-union shops, and I've seen what I've seen. The plural of anecdote is not data, but every time I see a union do anything, I see certain people at the top taking advantage of the people below them in the union, and I see the union used to protect people who do not do their job from being terminated.
Is it okay for a manager to protect someone who doesn't do their job? Of course not. Is it okay for a union to do the same thing? Of course not. And the fact that managers do it doesn't excuse the fact that unions do it, or the other way around. It's all bad.
Don't try to distract people from my message with misdirection. As you can see from sibling comments, it's already failed.
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The point of unions was to prevent abuse. As a sibling says, we now have labor laws to perform the same function. The exist
Re:I would suspect Verizon normally... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not accusing you of such tactics, but don't deny that unions are full of thugs.
Wait a second... Is this story true? (Score:2)
I have no love for unions.
But this "A friend had X happen to him... and the union guy didn't do anything..." This sounds way too pat.
My B.S. meter went off here. Did anyone else get that feeling?
Can you back up what you said? Or will your "friend" get in trouble?
-Ben
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How about the flip side? Has no one seen management abuse workers? The interesting thing to me is that most people fall into the union worker category -- maybe not actually into a union, but classwise and situationwise, most people fall into the "employee" side, rather than "employer" (upper management, whatever). So, I don't see why it should be that the sentiment tow
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Watch me deny it. They are not "full" of thugs. Some people in some unions are thugs. Stop calling the millions of Americans in unions thugs. I've seen what employers do to non-unionized labor. My mom and her fellow teachers were completely mistreated until they unionized. Unions exist for a reason. People would not spontaneously start paying union dues and go without pay for weeks/months on strike unless they'd been badly screwed. I can only hope you get
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The unions, themselves were a result of bosses stomping on the rights of workers in order to maximize their own profits.
Even if you're not in a union yourself, you're probably benefiting from the literal blood, sweat and tears shed by the early union organizers in
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You're right; the early unions paved the way for what we have today as non-union members. However, I think that the unions of yesteryear that GOT that stuff done do not exist today. Unions today are a sea of mediocrity and seniority rule. More specifically: large unions are the problem. The whole "sister union" and "brother union" bullshit that allows completely unrelated sectors to go on sympathetic strike should be outright illegal, or at least pave the way for firing the entire fucking sympathetic un
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What union are you talking about? The union that I am forced to pay into (i.e. fair share) has consistently seen to it that their dues go up but our benefits go down. For example, when I first worked the state, it was in a temporary clerical pool. I, and everyone else, had to pay union dues but got no benefits. Zero. So why were we paying dues if we weren't getting bene
Where the anti-union rhetoric comes from (Score:5, Interesting)
Unions are a victim of their own success. They got better contracts and better benefits, which raised the price of the goods and services produced by union shops. Laws of the free market then shifted business away from union shops to offshore and non-union shops. Unions then resorted to some questionable tactics to "fight to keep what they have" from heavy lobbying and lawmaking to outright extortion and violence.
This fight has cost our country, and has negatively affected *your* wages as well as mine. This is not information from Faux News, just google economists and unions. E.g. , economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University calculated that labor unions have cost the American economy $50 trillion over the past 50 years alone and it also found that wages in general suffered dramatically as a result of an economy that is 30 to 40 percent smaller than it would have been in the absence of labor unionism.
Sorry, I know it's good for you and your family right now, but you can't mess with the free market without consequences down the road.
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That's one of the models spread by corporatists. For a more accurate one, see below ...
Raised prices to better match social costs, right. As one would expect of a free market: one which takes account of all costs, rather than externalizing them. Of course, there's also a strong point to be made that such costs should be raised for all
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Never.
and stop automatically trusting the corporations which demonize them.
I don't, and I never will.
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not all out to get me.
Re:Where the anti-union rhetoric comes from (Score:5, Informative)
I myself am not a union worker, I'm an engineer/software developer. There are probably 60 people total at our company that are office workers in sales/engineering/management that are not union, only the shop floor workers are.
Some of the negative things I've seen the union do:
-Block the lay-off/firing of dead weight employees that have statistically cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars due to simply being able to perform their job like 90% of the other workers in the shop. I've also seen them bring legal retribution to the company when they fired them anyway and forced them to bring the employee back.
-I've seen them hold meetings encouraging (borderline ordering) union workers to vote for X candidate in local and national elections
-When the shop floor falls behind in production and decides to re-open Saturday to make up for it (which can happen for weeks at a time across a few months) union official demand that X% of office workers work on Saturdays as well regardless of whether there is work for them to do, and despite the fact that while most shop floor workers are getting paid time and a half office workers are salary and don't get paid so much as a dime extra for their time. Saturday work days are optional for shop floor workers and typically there is an overabundance of volunteers suggesting that they don't have a problem coming in for the extra cash.
-I've seen union officials keep the company from switching to a more suitable insurance plan that not only would offer more coverage but be slightly cheaper (the insurance company was phasing out the old plan and making a good offer on the new one to entice people to switch) simply because the old plan better suited them despite the fact that the new plan was better suited for a vast majority of the other workers in the shop.
Some of the negative things I've seen the union do:
-fight to keep bonus plans reasonable and generally increasing on a year-to-year basis
-fight for higher overall wages of the union workers (which are actually lower then our non-union sister plants)
On a whole most of the office workers don't seem to have a problem with anyone but the union reps (for forcing Saturday labor etc.), yet I constantly catch bits of conversations from the shop floor workers who seem to constantly carry an "us vs them" mentality against anyone who works in the office.
Also we're the only company in our field that is unionized, we've been losing more and more business on a yearly basis because our competitors are able to produce similar products at prices lower then our labor rate/scrap product ratio alone. As a result we started outsourcing labor last year just to stay competitive, we haven't laid anyone off in the process but we had numerous threats of violence (including a man in the parking lot who called in to tell us that he had his rifle trained at the head of the HR department) when we cut back the number of people needed for overtime work. Even after outsourcing our company hasn't had any mass layoffs in the last 15 years.
I went into this company with a positive view of unions from my father's years of praise... after 3 years my view is dramatically less impressed. I see it as just another corrupt systems like so many other corrupt systems we deal with on a daily basis.
I can't speak for unions in general, but at my small company in my small NH town we don't have any million dollar salary CEOs, nor do the engineers make all that much more then the shop floor staff. We don't have the best management but on a whole I genuinely feel that most of the management make what they feel are the best decisions for the company. I can honestly say that from my first hand dealings with my company's union I think my company would be much better off without them, and in the future I will probably avoid any company that uses union labor based on my experience here.
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Raised prices to better match social costs, right. As one would expect of a free market: one which takes account of all costs, rather than externalizing them.
It doesn't matter what you think t
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This is the part I have most trouble with. It's so sad to see my friends still working as a 'temp' after so many years. Just beyond my belief. May be it is different in different industry?
Re:I would suspect Verizon normally... (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to agree, but there are some exceptions. Sometimes unions can destroy companies by refusing to compromise. Eastern Airlines was put out of business because its unions refused to change their contracts. Mainly though, they're a great deal for anyone who's in them. Whether the conservatives admit it or not, the unions were what grew the middle class in the 50s and 60s. Having a steady job you won't get fired from on a whim allows you to buy a house/car/whatever and not worry so much about where your paycheck is coming from. Also, I think that if labor was stronger, you wouldn't see things like CEOs getting $50 million pay packages for doing nothing.
If IT were unionizable, I'd be on-board in a second. Think about all the stuff you don't typically get as an IT employee... Generous vacation you're actually allowed to take. Clear definitions of your work hours, duties and rules. Not having to play the salary-negotiation shell game. Encouraged long-term employment, and therefore better domain-specific knowledge within your industry. Paid training. Etc.
Sure, they have their problems. But faulting people just because they have it better than you is not a good way to go. Heck, if you told me to give up a small percentage of my salary for guaranteed high wages and raises every year, I'd say you were crazy not to sign up. Just having someone negotiate the terms of your employment for you is reason enough.
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I have all that, all without the union overhead. Good pay, 15 days vacation per year (starting from the d
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No, they are a great deal for the average worker who can't rise above the masses on his own abilities. They are a horrible deal for the individual who outperforms and finds his advancement blocked by the very organization that is supposed to help him.
anti-union rhetoric (Score:4, Informative)
A trade union is a monopoly. A trust concerning itself with (mostly — anti-competitive) efforts towards maintaining and ever increasing the prices of its members product (labor).
Nobody likes monopolies — the sooner you are busted with RICO and other anti-trust laws, the better. Your corruption [nlpc.org] and violence [nrtw.org] have made you far less likable, than most corporations are or deserve to be.
Those, who have grown up in a Soviet Union and similar countries, have particular dislike for trade unions — workers' solidarity, May 1st, class warfare... As far as I am concerned, for example, your sorry Socialist union-official neck belongs on a lamp-post... Nothing personal.
Those (truly) poor, who wish to immigrate to this country to work, are appalled by your arguing, that Americans are, somehow (by birthright?), entitled to better jobs, than Mexicans or Thais or Uzbeks.
And all — including the natively born and raised Americans — still remember the crookery surrounding the name "Hoffa", and the recent NYC-transit strike. We are all wondering, for example, why using the electronic EZ-Pass is only $0.5 cheaper, than going through a unionized toll-collector (EZ-Pass would've fazed those bums out, so extra is being collected for your undeserved pensions). Etc.
I do strongly dislike Microsoft. But:
- it is possible to not buy them;
- they don't slash anybody's tires;
- they don't beat the competition up on the street;
.Much like the Luddite's of the past, you tend to stand in the way of progress — except now you phrase yourself differently. Instead of the honest "this will eliminate my job", you are lying: "it is not safe" (witness the union opposition against automated subway trains, for example).
Got the idea, on where the subject comes from, yet?
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1) The "Screw you I'm Union" attitude that they cop whenever performance is an issue, or, especially, when you ask them to help with something that is not explicitly covered in their contract. As far as they're concerned that job is their property, and it can't be taken away without a huge costly fight, and so they know they're not going to be held accountable.
2) The near-unbearable sense
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As for your other specific scenario
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The only thing I know about unions is that when my dad started a little business (wont say where) and had the carpenter hes worked with for decades came by and do the interior some local union decided to picket. They picketed a tiny business. Fine, thats freedom of speech. Nothing came of it but later that week the air conditioner on the roof magically had a big hole in it around opening day. The air conditioning guy thought it was shot with a pisto
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Unions are labor monopolies and are compensated as such.
Of course there's resentment from the rest of us. You get to gouge consumers, just like other monopolists, while the rest of us are forced to compete with each other. You get the benefits of low prices due to labor competition witho
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Well in my case it comes from intimate knowledge of the B.S. that unions pull in many Verizon centers. My cousin works in one as a LAN Manager (non-unionized employee).
Unions promote the lowest common denominator, the tyranny of the majority, and make market economies inefficient by means of using violence, pressure, or the threat of both to prevent the market from working at the local level. (E.g. pressuring people not to cross the union line of pick
Re:I would suspect Verizon normally... (Score:5, Insightful)
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But I suspect unions even more. Most likely, they are concerned about the jobs of their members, who maintain the copper networks.
fix the old or install the new (Score:3, Insightful)
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What it really means from a Government "fair play" point of view is that Verizon doesn't have to share or lease it's Fiber Network and therefore removing all competition. When folks pay for monthly phone service from verizon you are paying for the maintenance of the infrastructure of the copper network. Now that they have fiber, they could care less about copper.
I think one of the happiest days of my life was being able to kick Verizon o
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The worst part is that we've got a local telecom company that's really giving Verizon some competition. Verizon is still purely copper out here, but the local competition is stringing fiber all over the place. They have a nice bundle that unlimited VOIP and 5m
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On the other hand, why doesn't Verizon just roll out fiber as a direct replacement to copper? As the FIOS network takes over one segment, it would seem to make sense to transition that entire segment entirely to Fiber and drop the copper altogether.
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As a city dweller, I can tell you that Verizon most certainly is NOT planning on installing FiOS everywhere. All of the suburbs surrounding my small city have FiOS because the demand is there. They currently have no timetable for installing it anywhere within the city limits. This is despite the fact that the increased density of the city would yield twice as many subscribers per mile of fiber.
I'm not even able to get DSL at more than 3mbps from Verizon and, thanks to the ridiculous state government, I don'
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...and the speed of the resulting connection sounds worse and worse compared to other countries with more effective telecommunication policies. If 30/5 Verizon FIOS was available to 75% of the people in in the United States for $30/month tomorrow, we'd still be far behind a number of other countries. In other "high tech" countries, the norm for hi
Yes (Score:2, Funny)
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But it makes business sense to maintain the old even as you replace it. I worked for a company that changed their website from the old Perl-driven one to a new Java-driven one. My job was to keep the old one a) running and b) up-to-date with the new one, so when the switchover was made to the new one, it would be seamless and no one would notice the difference.
Verizon has to look at it the same way: if they neglect the copper, no matter how nifty the FiOS is, they stand to lose customers, who want decent
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Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, that's all fine and good - I can always switch to any of a number of other telephone carriers who do a better job of maintaining my phone service. Oh, right - I can't because Verizon has a de facto monopoly on telco services in my area - much of it due to government regulation and exclusive rights.
That's the problem with the infrastructure being run by for-profit corporations - there is effectively no competition. Between rights of way, exclusive rights for areas, and a century of stacked up regulations the barriers to entry are insurmoutable for all but the most dense, wealthy areas of the country. Were I king, I would separate the infrastructure from the services. Sadly, I'm not (as I hear it's good to be the king). It would not solve all the issues, but it would at least start down the road of reducing the anticompetitive behavior of the incumbent utility operators against data (and power) providers which do not own infrastructure.
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Posting my trouble ticket here (Score:5, Funny)
Can't loop the smart jack on circuit 36.QGDQ.684591..CD LC 703/26
Come on fix it....replaceing f2 pairs can be fun...come on guys.
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From a Virginian (Score:2, Insightful)
Valid, I think (Score:5, Insightful)
The net effect here is that people in poor areas face degraded service while people in wealthy, high-density areas have enhanced service and options. This is exactly what common carrier status and state funding of telecomm was supposed to avoid.
Verizon should be forbidden from doing anything other than POTS (and DSL, provided they provide equal access to it, unlike the current situation). Let another company run fiber and operate a network over it, Verizon should not be allowed to run competing services when doing so violates their common carrier status.
Don't Blame Verizon (Score:3, Interesting)
The regulations pre-date the Internet, that's the problem. Here in NH, Verizon is putting nothing into its telecomm infrastructure except in the very densely populated part of the state near Boston, where they want to sell TV over FiOS. The rest of the State they'r
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They are legally required to offer service in all areas, hence USF surcharges on telephone bills. We pay for it, they are legally required to provide it...
The problem here isn't the monopoly status, it's the failure of Verizon to comply with the CC status that comes along with it -- hence the validity of the union's claim.
I believe that if Verizon
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Right on all counts!
Tools and Equipment Are Available (Score:2)
Can you hear me now? Hello? Hello-oo!? (Score:2)
Solution: Return to single-provider phone service (Score:3, Interesting)
The local cable provider around here is very good about fixing things and running a fast network, but even they don't have the power a single provider would.
Consider some of the items you get with open-competitive comm service:
Now, think of the stuff we had under the previous system:
I think it's time to re-regulate all telecom. The private companies have been given a chance, and proven they can't police themselves.
A lot of people who didn't like the old system complain that they had to rent their phone, or that the pace of innovation wasn't as fast under a single provider. In my opinion, having reliable service is worth forgoing the buzzword-of-the-week. I'd be interested in hearing what people think about this.
Re:Solution: Return to single-provider phone servi (Score:2)
2. Everyone knows (or should know) that the worst of all possible scenarios is a government-enforced monopoly over a market but a corporation as the producer. Worst, that is, except for the producer.
3. That said, it's not like there is no overlap between land-line and other communications services. It's not as if you have copper or NOTHIN
Re:Solution: Return to single-provider phone servi (Score:2)
Re:Solution: Return to single-provider phone servi (Score:2)
Second, employment of technical advances would slow to a crawl again. One of the complaints of companies like ATT and ITT in the years before deregulation was that the local governments prevented installa
Re:Solution: Return to single-provider phone servi (Score:2)
Why Use Fiber or Copper? (Score:2)
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In short, wireless is nice, but it's no replacement for solid, wired infrastructure.
Economics and Physics (Score:2)
Each of these wireless devices will likely cost several times the length of copper/fiber that they would be replacing. The maintenance costs would be astronomical. Despite semiconductors having a nearly indefinite lifetime, batteries...even the best rechargable ones available, still wear out. Also, what you'd save in a PC by decreasing the cost of copper would also be offset several times by the increasing cost of chip grade silicon, which would be in higher demand to manufacture the electronics for the
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Not sure what Linux has to do with this...
Why maintain the shared copper plant? (Score:4, Funny)
Verizon does not need to share the new fiber plant [com.com]. The copper plant is what Verizon has to share with other people. Why invest in something you don't get all to your self. It will be interesting to try and get T1 and DS3 lines from AT&T in the Verizon footprint. Although I suspect that AT&T is doing the same thing with their copper plant.
The regulators are getting exactly what their policies have said they want.
Remember Ma Bell is back! and this time she's pissed.
Verizon Copper's Just Fine... (Score:4, Funny)
(@$!sd2
---- NO SIGNAL ----
The union isn't making this up... (Score:2)
I bought a house that had FiOS installed... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:A union official... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd trust anyone working out in the field compared to the suit and tie CEO who would could only be dragged into the trenches for photo-ops.
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What does that have to do with a union official? I mean, they COULD be someone in the trenches. Or they could be an employee of the union, and almost certainly are; they do no real work, and their entire existence can be filed under "administrative overhead".
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Ah yes, being called names by an ignorant coward. Log in, and say it again, child. Not really surprising behavior from someone who thinks that unions are the best thing ever, though.
Guess what? I don't give them a free pass for much of anything. I think that we should eliminate the entire legal concept of the "corporation" and if it ever happened I would be there to pis
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Unions Are a Decent Source of Truth (Score:2)
More notably, their members are more likely to live in areas negatively affected by 'degrading copper but no fiber' (unlike executives who were probably (magically) in early-release fiber zones).
On the other hand, the union really can't bite too hard on the hand that feeds them because, if it goes gangrenous, they're
Good service from Verizon (Score:2)
The first tech support person I got was Indian, clearly working from a script, and not listening to what I (as a pretty knowledgeable computer person) was saying. He said he couldn't help me because he was a Windows support person (even though I booted my MacBook Pr