Verizon Forcing and Tricking Customers Off Copper

by
Anonymous Coward
in internet on (#3XY)
story imageThis just in: Verizon is still as evil as any taxpayer-subsidized monopoly can be. Which is to say, very.

That endlessly reliable copper telephone network that stretches across the country, carries its own power, and serves as a literal lifeline for millions of people even in the event of catastrophes? The one that's incredibly subsidized right down to the "Universal Service Fund" intended to protect poor and rural citizens? Yeah, that one. Ars Technica's got a nice write-up of how Verizon is doing everything it can, legally and illegally, to let the network fall into disrepair and to literally trick customers into switching into its "now! with a whole 8 hour battery life!" replacement over fiber.

It doesn't help that POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) over fiber is very different from the FiOS Internet+TV over fiber offering, and that Verizon has done everything possible to hide that distinction in order to get people paying for their FiOS Internet and TV service (which, in turn have moved quickly from "hey, cheaper than cable and sweet fast Internet" to "WTF who pays that kind of money for this stuff" in just a few years as they put the hook in). They can switch your regular telephone line from copper to fiber without any change in service at all. (Except for the whole "now you have 8 hours to live" thing.)

That, and getting rid of copper maintenance saves them a lot of cash internally. Oh yeah, it also means that once your copper is ripped out you can NEVER get DSL from Verizon or ANYONE else -- giving VZ and your cableco a de facto duopoly over you ever getting wired Internet access. Ever compared the cost Verizon's own $20/month DSL to its FiOS Internet-only service that STARTS at $75/month ?

This is all quite old news to anyone paying attention, but Ars lays out the sad story pretty well.

As a tiny aside I found it amusing that Verizon doesn't own the fios.com domain.
Reply 4 comments

Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-17 22:43 (#3Y9)

Except of course that the NBN is backed by the Australian government paid for by the Australian public

Re: Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-17 23:03 (#3YA)

Ah, well "Verizon" was once properly part of an even larger and more carefully regulated monopoly, AT&T a.k.a. Ma Bell a.k.a. The Phone Company, but was broken up into "Regional Bell Operating Companies" during one of our periodic bouts of deregulatory conservative fever dreams. They've been reassembling like Voltron ever since. (Verizon itself was not an original but rather was a rejoining of several split RBOCs; I'm still not clear how that was allowed to happen so soon after the breakup.)

The US has a somewhat hilarious aversion to nationalizing the things that should by any reasonable estimation be nationalized. Look at the tooth and claw fighting against anything (remotely) resembling universal health care. But I digress.

Verizon's excesses are in any case always paid for by the public, whether by local tax, federal tax, or subscriber abuses.

Re: Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-19 16:29 (#3ZD)

Verizon has it's own history that predates AT&T. I don't mean to argue with what you say, which is accurate, but Verizon wasn't sprung from the forehead of AT&T fully-formed, so to speak. They were GTE, which dates to Hawaiian Monarchy in the 1800's. Eventually they were rolled up into the giant that was AT&T, and then later split back off.

I think it's an important distinction. They are not AT&T, AT&T is still around competing with Verizon. They will never recombine, as GTE isn't the small regional company it once was. So the breakup, while not lasting at the level it once did with many small regional telephone companies, has at least created two behemoths that will always fight it out. The battlefield is also changing, as they aren't fighting over POTS maintenance anymore, but rather cellular, television, internet, and digital voice. Each of those areas has multiple large competitors, such as Sprint, DishTV, Comcast, and Vonage in that order.

So I disagree with speculation about how AT&T is recombining into the monopolistic super-power it once was.

Circling the drain (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-19 16:16 (#3ZC)

Verizon has had issues for a number of years now. There are simply not enough people that WANT copper to support the weight of their infrastructure. Yes, I know it is subsidized, but Verizon is a BIIIIG company, and there is a reason they qualified for those subsidies. (Yes, they actually do qualify, it's not simply a case of "senator so-and-so in my back pocket" though I'm sure that helps)

Before Fios came out, there was talk about further separating their successful wireless business from their failing (yup) landline business. Fios being part of landline, many in the company have looked to it as their Savior. Not surprising that they want people to switch. Fios is profitable, copper is not. If they can get enough people to switch, they can try to make the case that there isn't enough customer demand for the aging technology, and maybe, MAYBE they won't have to keep supporting it. Dumping that piece of the business would probably even give them the leverage over the unions they'd need to scale back the northern workforce (In the south, it's all contractors) It's a big deal for them.

Without copper they would likely lose their government subsidies, so is there a reason to INSIST that they support a part of their business that they no longer want to support? Yes, there are some people that want to keep copper wires because they can be more reliable.. but I've known people in my life that wanted to keep their outhouses because the new-fangled replacements weren't appealing to them, weren't as simple, relied on running water (which like HSI might not be available in a disaster/storm/lapse in payments) and yet most would agree that the advances outweigh the potential pitfalls. I haven't heard anyone in the last few years advocating outhouses.

Will cellular/digital phones vs copper be all that different in 10-20 years?