How Verizon Is Hindering NYC's Internet Service 123
Cuillere writes: Verizon promised to make FiOS available to all New York City residents. The deadline passed a year ago, and many residents still don't have FiOS as an option, but Verizon claims to have done its part. "The agreement required Verizon to 'pass' homes with fiber (not actually connect them), but no one wrote down in the agreement what they thought 'pass' meant. (Verizon’s interpretation, predictably, is that it doesn’t have to get very close.)" The situation is a mess, and the city isn't having much luck fighting it in the courts. Susan Crawford offers a solution: set up wholesale fiber access for third party ISPs and absolve Verizon of customer service responsibility.
how about a read more button? (Score:1)
how about a read more button?
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Slash dot is now run by Dice, a recruiting company that wants to demonstrate to the world that it is incapable of hiring someone who isn't an incompetent idiot to do web design ... Or management, or marketing, or customer satisfaction or more or less any other job.
Dice maintains a web presence only to demonstrate that they have no fucking clue what they are doing and that they'll be happy to whore themselves and properties out for a quick buck even if it means cutting themselves out of $100 tomorrow.
This dice ... They sell ads based on number of page views and are too racking stupid to realize making it obvious on how to get to the next page means more page views and by proxy more click through potential.
It's worth saying again, Dice and Slashdot are managed by complete idiots
Do you want your money back? Oh, wait...
Hmm that sounds familiar (Score:4, Insightful)
It's almost like treating the lines in the ground as a public resource that ISPs can compete to offer service on...
Re:Hmm that sounds familiar (Score:5, Insightful)
All that changes once you're certain you've arrived at an optimal solution. Westinghouse's AC power transmission lines turned out to be best. And now electrical distribution is operated as a public utility Arguably, cable Internet has reached the same stage. Pretty much all the cable companies have standardized on the same tech (DOCSIS modems), indicating it's an optimal or near-optimal solution. And the apparent end-game is fiber to the home. So it probably is time to start treating cable/fiber Internet as a public utility. Give one company a contract to lay down and maintain the lines, but prohibit it from providing service over those lines. Any company is allowed to offer service over those lines, and the maintenance company has to offer all of them access at the same price per GB/mo of bandwidth.
Re:Hmm that sounds familiar (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the optimal solution is to treat the wires as a public utility and permit competition in providing the data. Let the consumers pick between NAT'd filtered consumer internet for one price or raw IP for another price or caps or 80% bandwidth pricing, good peering or cheap peering, etc. In no case should there be regulated pricing per GB, because that eliminates a lot of other pricing models and options that the customer should be able to pick based on requirements.
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It seems the public utility would need to charge for the bandwidth somehow. They could charge the ISP who could decide to pass it directly to customers based on usage or to amortize it across all customers. Alternatively, the public utility could either bill the customer directly or, more likely, require that the ISP collect it from each customer based on usage as a distinct named line item. Ultimately, the number of routers and other equipment the 'public utility' part of the system needs is somewhat depen
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No, the public utility is just providing a pipe for the last mile. The public utility can (and should) have no insight into what's going on in that pipe. The ISP is responsible for terminating the pipe and getting traffic to and from it.
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So, no routers? How does the second ISP enter the business when the cable/fiber is already connected to the first ISP? Does the utility run 1000 cables/fiber strands in case 1000 ISPs join (and who pays for the other 999 if only one ISP joins the program or for tearing up the streets when the 1001st joins)?
Suppose, there ARE routers on a cable based system allowing multiple ISPs to share access to the same cable -- how do you deal with the case where one ISP's customers swamp the network? Who controls the t
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I suggest looking into lambda circuits/lambda switching. The path between the customer and the provider is not shared, and can be reconfigured to switch providers. What is shared between customers are the links from the provider's point of presence to the provider's backbone to the internet, and the quality of those links is one of the things that providers can use to differentiate their service. The scarce resource is space at the handover point between the utility and the provider, and that's something th
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Save us! (Score:4, Funny)
We need the government to save us from the consequences of the bad deal the government made last time.
It's business (Score:1)
Verizon is in the business to make money - Providing access to Internet is just one of the by-products of Verizon's quest in making money
When Verizon promised to provide FIOS to NYC it hinged on one thing - profits
Verizon will do whatever it can to provide the best kind of net access to places where it knows it can get plenty of ROI - such as Wall Street
On the other hand, places such as the Bronx, where the only real way to make money is to sell drugs, where is the impetus for Verizon to provide FIOS there?
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Verizon is in the business to make money - Providing access to Internet is just one of the by-products of Verizon's quest in making money .....
On the other hand, places such as the Bronx, where the only real way to make money is to sell drugs, where is the impetus for Verizon to provide FIOS there?
Nice claims but I honestly doubt that verizon (or anyone else) cares if they are paid with drug money, employeement money, wall street money, etc.
When Verizon promised to provide FIOS to NYC it hinged on one thing - profits
I don't work to break even on my monthly bills. I work to make as much money as I can - even if it's more than I "need." I do not understand why people think that buisness should be started and ran with a different principle.
Re:It's business (Score:4, Interesting)
So what? Do you advocate lying, cheating, and stealing to make that money? I ask because Verizon signed an agreement to make FIOS available to everyone in the city and they are now trying to weasel out of it.
How do you suppose you'll do if you sign an employment agreement towards the goal of making more than you *need* and then only bother showing up for work once a week?
Why should that strategy pay better for Verizon?
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So what? Do you advocate lying, cheating, and stealing to make that money? I ask because Verizon signed an agreement to make FIOS available to everyone in the city and they are now trying to weasel out of it.
My comment was toward the quote (which I quoted in my comment) that buisnesses should not be expected to live up to their promises and the implciation that profit is evil.
To answer your question: if I was losing money working for a company, yes I would break my contract and leave - and I would understand that I may be sued for breach of contract.
I've read several articles on this and while Verison is not blameless, the issue is not as simple as you make it out to be. Should they break into the buildings/ap
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To answer your question: if I was losing money working for a company, yes I would break my contract and leave - and I would understand that I may be sued for breach of contract.
But I'll bet you wouldn't expect to continue driving the company car.
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Should they break into the buildings/apartments that refuse to allow to install FIOS despit the tennants wanting it?
They were pretty good at convincing the government that everyone needs a telephone, and they got government backing behind laws that make telephones available to everyone. Why not the same for Internet?
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Sorry no.
I recognize that things have become skewed and enforcement is incredibly lax these days, but first and foremost, a corporate charter is contingent on the existence of the corporation being in the public interest. There is no such thing as a corporation's natural right to exist, it is a creation of the state (and by extension, the people). But for vast amounts of money and corruption, a corporation that continues to break the law would be denied existence (as it isn't in the public interest to creat
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No they are not required to lie and in fact there are laws against lying. Another word for lying about what you intend to do is fraud.
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Um, I'm not sure what service you have, but it doesn't sound like FiOS. Perhaps it is really Comcrap?
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This attitude reminds me of a quote from Grosse Point Blank. To try to justify his actions, the less (an assassin) defend himself with:
No, a psychopath kills people for no reason, I kill people for money!
The fact that actual people on Verizon are acting badly for money doesn't somehow make it right, neither does the fact it's technically within the law.
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It's called a contract. If Verizon received money to perform X and they fail to perform X, they need to repay the money and any costs or damages associated with their failure to perform.
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What I said is that you will only make money in the Bronx if you are selling drugs
Citation required
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They value control more than profit (Score:2)
Telephone company DNA does not focus on making profits. They are, at heart, control freaks, and will gladly give up profits if they can keep control of their wires and the content. These are folks who fought tooth and nail to prevent attachment of customer owned telephone sets, modems answering machines, and other devices, even though they made a ton more money once these new applications expanded use of their networks.
Verizon is now controlled by its wireless subsidiary, which wants to disinvest in wirelin
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The control freak nature was an attempt to control and prevent competition. It served/serves them directly to stifle competition thereby protecting revenue and preventing change. So in short, they are consumed by money and the best way to protect their revenue is through being control freaks. Control of a means of communication is power and money.
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No, they want control even if it loses money.
General Motors makes cars. They do not own the dealerships. They let dealers sell the cars. This is good for business. If Verizon made cars, they'd insist on owning the dealerships too, and would not let anyone else repair the cars, or sell parts. They might lose customers to other car companies who were more open, but they'd rather have 100% of $x than 80% of 2*$x, even though that's less. It's dumb DNA, but it's ingrained.
What other business routinely prices
Re:It's business (Score:5, Insightful)
Verizon is in the business to make money - Providing access to Internet is just one of the by-products of Verizon's quest in making money
When Verizon promised to provide FIOS to NYC it hinged on one thing - profits
Verizon will do whatever it can to provide the best kind of net access to places where it knows it can get plenty of ROI - such as Wall Street
On the other hand, places such as the Bronx, where the only real way to make money is to sell drugs, where is the impetus for Verizon to provide FIOS there?
You don't know anything about the Bronx outside of the movies. There are tons of middle-class & working-class neighborhoods where there are absolutely no crack or drug problems. Verizon could make a ton of money in the Bronx as well as plenty of neighborhoods outside of FiDi (Wall Street).
This is an infrastructure issue with tons of politics, corrupt city officials, fucked up Verizon execs, greedy landlords, and tenants stuck in the middle of a giant clusterfuck. For instance I know for a fact that Verizon FIOS is available to my building but my landlord is not required by the city to provide us with ISP options. So we just get fucking one and, surprise, surprise, it costs out the ass. There is nothing free market about it, we are held hostage to our landlord's ISP choices (and god knows if he gets kick backs from the ISP). My landlord is content to suck on the cities tit for all of the infrastructure it provides him (mostly at our cost as tax payers) and charge seriously fucking high rent. But when it comes to moving a hand to provide us with a choice of ISP, he won't move an inch.
Why don't you stick (and whoever the fuck up-voted your post) to not commenting about cities you don't know anything about outside of blatant stereotypes.
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Misuse of standard jargon (Score:4, Informative)
In the cable business, "homes passed" is a standard metric. It means that service is available to those homes. When Charter is figuring out how much to pay for TWC, they ask about homes passed, because these are potential customers.
Verizon used other meanings of the term, from street English, to mean something else. If it goes a couple of blocks away, it sort of passes, by their standard. If it goes right by the house but they won't offer service, it is still "passed". No cable company would say that, and that's not what the City meant when they negotiated their deal with Verizon.
So, what was the nature of this agreement? (Score:2)
TFA didn't describe it as a contract. No mention was made of money changing hands.
But, somehow, I can't see Verizon (or anyone else) spending the money to put fibre even kind of near everywhere in NYC without being paid.
So, where's the contract, and what was the fee paid for this?
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As it's the second sentence in TFA, I can see how you missed it.
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So, what was the nature of this agreement?
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so why pray tell is verizon not using this wonderful argument if they have it at their disposal?
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I have been following a bunch of the links but can't actually find what consideration Verizon got in the contract. But I did see that the contract is called a "franchise agreement" so I'm assuming that the city offered to use its power to prevent anyone else from competing with Verizon in exchange for Verizon agreeing to, among other things, provide service to the entire city. And now the city is shocked, shocked that a company that is too lazy to want to compete is also too lazy to actually provide the ser
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There's zero exclusivity in the franchise agreement. Anybody can get one (who can show the financial wherewithal, etc.). The city does have the ability to decide who gets to offer TV service in NYC, and, since Verizon wanted that right (non-exclusively), they had to sign a franchise agreement.
Google could get a franchise agreement in NYC tomorrow if they wanted to, but they'd have to agree to terms like Verizon's, which include passing all the homes in NYC, not just those in certain areas.
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Verizon takes the subsidies offered by the city/state/county/township, and is beholden to commitments made in order to get the subsidies knowing full well that they will hold up the lawsuits for failure to meet those arrangements in court long enough that no fines will get levied.
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The nature of the agreement is that Verizon can alter it. Pray they do not alter it further.
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Short version, Verizon gets the ability to offer cable television service in New York City. In exchange, Verizon has to make that service available throughout the city, not just in higher-income areas.
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So, the city didn't pay Verizon any money?
If so, I fail to see a problem - for the low price of zero dollars, NYC got exactly nothing, and Verizon spent some money for which they'll get no return.
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Nope, the city didn't pay Verizon any money. In fact, Verizon pays about 5% of their TV revenue to the city as a franchise fee.
The city did provide something valuable to Verizon, however: the right to offer TV service in NYC (along with Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, and RCN). Verizon wanted that, and agreed to buildout requirements as part of their franchise agreements to get it.
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What did NYC give to get Verizon to lay the fiber?
Permission to use the city's infrastructure without being arrested for trespassing
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I read an blog article written by Bob Metcalfe a few years ago where he mentioned that every building in Manhattan is within 150 feet of a fiber optic cable, and only a hardware install from being an OC768, if your curious that would be a monthly inernet bill of between $1.5 - 2.5M and carry 975 times the bandwidth of Verizon's FiOS. The one of biggest expense in putting in a fiber network is actually laying the fiber and laying 1 cable isn't significantly less expensive than laying 50, which is why most
Not with Verizon! (Score:4, Insightful)
For this model to work you need a benevolent entity running the fiber network. Verizon runs a highly profitable wireless internet network which in many cases competes against high speed fixed internet. It is in their interest to kill fiber to the curb not keep it going. This might work if you spun off the fiber business or handed it over to a traditional utility like ConEd or National Grid. But then those electric utilities would probably end up using internet service to subsidize keeping the old electric grid going as that business enters its death spiral.
They made a fortune (Score:2)
For this model to work you need a benevolent entity running the fiber network. Verizon runs a highly profitable wireless internet network which in many cases competes against high speed fixed internet. It is in their interest to kill fiber to the curb not keep it going. This might work if you spun off the fiber business or handed it over to a traditional utility like ConEd or National Grid. But then those electric utilities would probably end up using internet service to subsidize keeping the old electric grid going as that business enters its death spiral.
Think about the fortune they must have made in the financial district after the hurricane. I heard from someone who works there that the flooding took most of the hard links offline for IIRC months as infrastructure needed replacement (and drainage), most people switched to wireless and connections got slower and slower...
And while I haven't run into a problem with verizon techs in particular, I know cable guys up there can be pretty damn competitive, by which I mean blatantly telling you shit and lawbreak
What the fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolve Verizon of customer service responsibility? How about just telling them that they failed and allow other ISPs compete -- perhaps with subsidies? Why absolve Verizon of anything at all? I don't understand that in the slightest. It's like rewarding them for failure.
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Oh, by the way, I did read the article. The author is obviously as stupid as a brick. Well, maybe the brick has more of a clue but it cannot communicate.
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LMFAO. I just read a bit about her. Perhaps she should play a little song to herself on her violin.
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The author is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. She formerly taught at UMichigan Law. I don't think she's the brick here.
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medium.com
That says it all really.
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Most likely they didn't fail, they just define success differently and that definition is backed by precedent when a town of 2000 used a $250.00/hr lawyer tried to sue them for the same thing.
Non-technical people making technical decisions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like it boils down to Non-technical people making technical decisions.
This is more directed to managers, VP's, and C-Levels. Before you agree to a contract for technical services, you really should have a skilled technical person read it and tell you where you are about to get screwed.
I have seen contracts to outsource L1 and L2 where it stated "Any ticket that can not be handled by L1 or L2 support personal will be forwarded L3 personal provided by XXXXXXXXX." Where XXXXX was the name of the company that was outsourcing the jobs to India. Sounds good tell you find out that the Indian company hired 1 guy to do both L1 and L2. He had no computer knowledge and simple passed all tickets to L3 with the comment "Do the needful" The Indian company always met their SLA's because it was a ticket that could not be handled by the guy they hired. (Note: That one was for 1500 servers)
Another contract I was shown listed a guaranteed uptime of 96%. When I questioned it, my VP replied "There management did not understand anything technical. 4% down time was sold to them as reasonable. So don't worry about it, we will always make our SLA's" (Note to managers: 99.99% uptime is reasonable, 99.999% uptime is what you want!)
My favorite was one that stated that the customer was responsible for all documentation and procedures on servers, access, and support. That one was a huge pile of steaming fecal mater which suddenly leapt into the air oscillating device when they were SOX audited. The company they were outsourced to met the SLA's and could not be held liable because it was in the contract that the customer was responsible for the documentation.
So, take it from someone with over 20 years in IT. When you outsource technical functions you need to have your technical people vet the contract and you need to keep them to monitor and make sure that the company, you are outsourcing to, does their job.
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So, take it from someone with over 20 years in IT. When you outsource technical functions you need to have your technical people vet the contract and you need to keep them to monitor and make sure that the company, you are outsourcing to, does their job.
The reverse lesson is also true. When you make vendor/purchaser agreements or service agreements on which a lot relies, you should have your lawyer vet the contract. (A lot of the time people don't and wind up with how-the-hell-did-we-agree-to-this down the road). If it's for the sale of goods, make sure your lawyer knows and understands the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) as it applies in your state. A lot of them don't.
Fraud (Score:4, Funny)
Verizon committing fraud. I'm shocked, I tell you, absolutely shocked.
What about the density??? (Score:3, Insightful)
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The area is very sparse when you factor in income and cost of living, they probably don't even count households below a defined level, so on that basis the households per square mile is far less than you would think.
Undefined or ambiguous language (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC, ambiguous language in a contract, or that which is not defined or poorly defined, should generally be found to be in favor of the person receiving the contract. In other words, if Verizon wrote the contract and implied that "pass" meant to bring fiber to all residents, or the city believed in good faith that "pass" meant to provide a fiber outlet / headend / demarc readily accessible to every resident, then the courts should find in the favor of the city. The reverse is also true, though. If the city wrote the contract and didn't specify what they meant by pass, then Verizon gets to define what they meant (within reason, of course).
Your recollection is incorrect. (Score:1)
It is only the one without the resources to have a competent lawyer to make the contract understood that gets that "Most reasonable beneficial" assumption.
Another company would be presumed to either have competent counsel or to be willing to hire it for a such a contract.
You, as a common citizen, would not.
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No. This is generally only the case if one side did not have the opportunity to negotiate the contract. I very much doubt that this is true in this case.
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It's not, and there's a lot of debate between the city and Verizon about how much of the homes that don't have FiOS service available are because of buildings not letting Verizon in vs. Verizon not doing the work.
It's not easy to install FTTH in a high-rise building, particularly an pre-war building, which probably has riser space designed for enough wiring for a couple hundred watts of lightbulbs and a fridge, along with a single phone line, in a two bedroom apartment.
In my building, which is post-war, the
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If Verizon is unable to provide a connection to a resident because an asshole landlord is unwilling to allow the connection, how is that Verizon's fault?
The telephone companies were MARVELLOUSLY successful at passing laws that prevented landlords from getting in the way if the tenants wanted telephone service. If they REALLY wanted the customers they would further manipulate the lawmakers into making it ILLEGAL for landlords to interfere with Internet wiring.
Shocking... (Score:3, Insightful)
The ISP monopolies behave like monopolies.
I know... lets hire another monopoly. Or the people that think they're really being crafty will say "lets have the government do it"... because that isn't a monopoly... right guys? Right?
This isn't going to stop until you open up the right of way to run cable to everyone.
In new york there is PLENTY of room in the conduits to run as much cable as people could possibly want to run.
An individual building for example could run the cable for itself. The cost is trivial if we don't charge the licensing fees which tend to be extortion in the first place. Sort of like the cab medallions. The company pays more and gets a monopoly.
Charge less and open it up to more people to run cable.
The cost of running fiber from a building to the trunk is at most a couple thousand dollars in equipment. And we have so much dark fiber because it was determined that fiber is so cheap that it actually makes sense to over build your needs because the labor to install exceeds the cost of the equipment. Thus if the equipment cost is a couple grand... lets say the labor is another couple grand... compare that to how long the cable will last and how many tenants you have.
The whole last mile ISP concept is stupid. The only real ISPs are the people the ISPs BUY bandwidth from in the first place. Qwest communications, L3... sure, ATT and Verizon own some trunk line but the majority of it is specialized players in that market.
THOSE are the real ISPs. Cut the last mile monopolies OUT of the market by letting more people run cable. You want to have some more control over it? Not just have it be literally any asshole doing it? Fine. FINE. But if you restrict who gets to lay cable to ONE organization be that public or private you're going to get fucked... there will be no lube... and while its happening the bastards will expect you to be a good girl and thank them for caring enough to give it to you. Don't even dare argue the point. They've fucked over pretty much every market they've been given dominion over and then they walk around expecting everyone to tell them what wonderful people they are for the privilege.
Re:Shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, don't have a monopoly run it. But also don't require every ISP to lay their own fiber. Do what they do in Sweden. And no, it is not some communist/socialist monopoly. They have a single entity lay the fiber, but then let many, commercial, ISPs compete to provide the service over the fibers. It works great and is less expensive than what we have here. And Sweden is not that densely populated.
Yes, I am worried about the entity (whether it is gov't or a regulated commercial entity) that lays the fibers getting out of hand with their tariffs, but overall, it would seem to provide the best opportunity to get the US out of third world status when it comes to internet access.
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In new york there is PLENTY of room in the conduits to run as much cable as people could possibly want to run.
Really? How interesting. You really need to call up Verizon, AT&T, Level 3, Cogent, etc. etc. etc. and let them know about these hugely extensive empty conduits under NYC, since they'd love to make use of them.
The reality is that the conduits are often totally fully, requiring extensive reroutes (many date from the late 1890s). There's also a lot of dead cable in there (providers who went belly up, or old copper phone lines), but getting to the conduits to clear that out usually requires ripping up
This (and shocking for another reason) (Score:1)
NYC has an exceedingly poorly documented infrastructure. There are still functioning electrical drops originally installed by Edison (Tom, not the company) and his folks for DC power in the 19th century. There are feeders that use the lead pipe and surrounding soil as a return (leading to things like dogs getting electrocuted when peeing on a metal cover that happens to be in the wrong place, field wise).
NYC isn't special here. When they were building the Metro in DC in the 70s, a big problem was that eve
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*laughs*
Its not a secret, fucktwit. NYC is riddled with pipes of all kinds that have lots of space. In London they're actually running fiber in some Victorian brick tunnels at this point... because why not.
I'm so tired of your snarky half wise/idiot dipshits that enter every discussion, make some stupid comment that you think is clever, and then when challenged you run away thinking you accomplished something.
The city is riddle with pipes under every street. And beyond that, the fiber takes up less space th
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"I'm so tired of your snarky half wise/idiot dipshits that enter every discussion, make some stupid comment that you think is clever, and then when challenged you run away thinking you accomplished something."
You clearly spend a lot of time looking in a mirror. Look, if you want to believe that there's a huge amount of empty space running under Manhattan streets, just waiting to be wired with fiber, be my guest. You're also welcome to believe that the main problem is dealing with the CHUDs down there. Bo
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Wow... so much ignorance... I'll just skip to the bit I didn't already address.
Google's deployments are actually based on the licenses. They have a non-negotiable policy to do a roll out. They're going to do it the way they want to do it and not the way the city wants it done.
They tell you how they'll do it... and the city can either agree to it or not.
If they don't then Google doesn't show up.
NYC will probably NEVER sign that contract. Look at the cities that have. Notice how they're all over the place. Th
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Don't tell me what I want. I don't want one company to be able to dictate prices by controlling the cable.
And here someone that thinks they're being clever will just say "why not the government"... same problem. If you think that's cheaper its only because you don't understand they shifted the cost to the taxes.
You want a company doing it so there is cost compartmentalization and you don't want a monopoly.
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don't want one company to be able to dictate prices by controlling the cable.
Yeah this is why we have contractual agreements between ISPs and local governments. The local government owns the land that the cable passes through, and it can take the right to use the cables away from the company if it doesn't use the resource in a responsible manner. That's the theory anyway.
So NO, no company is "controlling the cable", your local government is "controlling the cable" and you have the ability to get involved here.
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If that were worth the toilet paper I wipe my ass on then we wouldn't have a problem then would we?
The article we're commenting on points out that NYC had an agreement with Verizon where they understood Verizon was going to hook every building up and Verizon interpreted that as simply meaning the cable was going to go through every neighborhood... roughly. And apparently the way the contract is written... Verizon has a strong case.
So there is your fucking contract.
We're done. You're too credulous to be wort
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If Verizon can freely violate the contract then NYC can violate it, too
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Except for Verizon technically isn't violating the contract. The contract as written basically f'cks NYC in the ass. All NYC can do is bite down on a wooden spoon and hope its over quickly.
Which is why you don't deal with fucking monopolists in the first place because this is what they do to everyone.
You sit down and sign these contracts with these people and you're going to get fucked. The negotiator for Verizon might as well have been Ron Jeromy. All sweaty and greasy and ready to go.
By all means if that
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Don't tell me what I want.
You want chocolate cake.
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Start a community broadband service (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, I'm willing to bet a good technical plan and an indieGoGo campaign could get things going.
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Want Verizon to sit up straight and come around? NYC is the *perfect* place for community access broadband. Enormous population density with probably high 90% subscribership.
Even easier, invite Google Fiber into town with promises from the Mayor that the city will make it a priority to clear the way for their fiber installation. It wouldn't cost the city anything other than refocusing the attention of some employees and would certainly get Verizon's attention. Plus, unlike their other installations, Google already has a large number of employees living locally.
Mission Accomplished! (Score:2)
Verizon claims to have done its part. ... no one wrote down in the agreement what they thought 'pass' meant. ... The situation is a mess, ... isn't having much luck fighting it ...
If only we had sent Verizon into the Middle East...
Worst Story Title Ever (Score:1)
The lack of effort from Verizon is not *hindering* anyone from obtaining internet service from anyone else. That's like saying LeBron James not playing on your basketball team is hindering your team.
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That's like saying LeBron James not playing on your basketball team is hindering your team.
No, it's like signing up LeBron James to play on your team, paying him to play, and he doesn't show up.
Verizon knows that's no bargain (Score:2)
"Absolve Verizon of customer service responsibilities"?
Why would Verizon take that deal? As far as they're concerned, they already aren't particularly responsible for customer service. But they can rake in the fees from their captive customer base.
What NY seems to be asking Verizon is "Pretty please, lay in the last mile of fiber and then step away."
You'll have to seriously sweeten the pot (such as extortionate wholesale service fees) to make it more profitable for Verizon to do this, vice continuing to squ
Re: (Score:2)
Why would Verizon take that deal?
Because it's a BETTER deal than being found in breach of the contract.
Unions (Score:1)
Unions
Should set the incentive correctly (Score:2)