Verizon Just killed Your Dreams of Getting FiOS

Oh look. It's the invisible hand of the market fisting us without lube. For "freedom."

Most areas there is one ISP that is "fast" (IE: Cocmast) and DSL (which sucks balls). This is "competition."

Get used to it. Grovel before your corporate oligarchy lords. Get your ATT phone, watch your ATT TV, on your ATT internet. Want "choice?" Get your ATT DirecTV. Better use a VPN if you don't want too much "oversight" since ATT didn't meet an NSA dong it didn't love to blow.

Around here we have redneck telco "Frontier" running Fios. When Verizon bailed they stopped the build out and got the local pols to sign off on DSL as being the same as fiber. They've done nothing to boost perf since then.
 
I don't get why this is news. Verizon said this years ago and again and again and again...

They have zero interest in expanding FiOS fiber. Its much more lucrative for them to overcharge you for shitty and spotty wireless LTE. LTE is their TOTAL game plan for the next 10 years. They will probably try to move FiOS customers off fiber over time in fact.

They can my Fiber when they pry it from fucking hands...
 
The problem with Verizon is that any place they move into already has a cable provider. And that cable provider just watches, if FIOS comes in they go upgrade equipment and cut their prices. Since the cable investment happened years ago they don't have as much cost.

The big problem is that Verizon is trying to be a premium service. What they should have done is try to fight back and push rates down and or match cable rates and just give more bandwidth.

Sometimes I think that internet should be like a utility where people just pay a tax then the people can vote on if they want to upgrade or not. And everyone in the town gets the same price / same service. After all that is basically what all the unlimited no caps people argue is how it really works right?

But due to a specific experience I am not sold on that idea. I went to a town in MI called Wyandotte and they had the local government running a cable service. I looked over their rates and speeds and it was interesting to note that they had pretty much copied the cable providers. They had similar prices and different plans / tiers. So maybe in reality governments cant run internet any cheaper or better than the cable cos can.
 
SGA76 said:
You know, with the way our current ISPs treat us, I''m dying to see the day Google and Amazon spread out, beat the living shit out of them then bury them.
Click to expand...

And then the cycle repeats itself verbatim with new contenders :)
 
Exavior said:
This is the problem that people seem to have. Nobody can figure out why there aren't 30 choices for fiber in their town, or why everyone isn't putting fiber in the ground as quickly as possible to get everyone super high speeds.
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One big issue that you totally skipped over in your argument about more companies/choices, they get sued. New startup wants to build in a major ISP's neighborhood? Lawsuit. Municipal internet? Lawsuit. City-wide free wifi? Lawsuit.
 
rudy said:
Sometimes I think that internet should be like a utility where people just pay a tax then the people can vote on if they want to upgrade or not. And everyone in the town gets the same price / same service. After all that is basically what all the unlimited no caps people argue is how it really works right?

But due to a specific experience I am not sold on that idea. I went to a town in MI called Wyandotte and they had the local government running a cable service. I looked over their rates and speeds and it was interesting to note that they had pretty much copied the cable providers. They had similar prices and different plans / tiers. So maybe in reality governments cant run internet any cheaper or better than the cable cos can.
Click to expand...

Chattanooga, TN seems to have got it figured out. I'm not sure as im not a resident.

100Mb min, 1Gb next tier up
https://epbfi.com/gigsupport/
 
shade91 said:
Verizon and Comcast have beautiful business models.. the kind that only crooked capitalists could come up with:

1) Offer terrible services
2) Refuse to offer better services
3) Sue all newcomers into extinction so no other options exist
4) Pay off government officials in the form of campaign donations to fend off anti-trust lawsuits.
Click to expand...

They do not need to offer cutting-edge technology or fantastic customer service. Anti-trust laws exist to protect the big players in each of the respective industries. They do not foster or protect competition -- in fact, they do the opposite. Were the government to abolish all economic laws and policies, we would see an improvement in all industries.
 
JackNSally said:
One big issue that you totally skipped over in your argument about more companies/choices, they get sued. New startup wants to build in a major ISP's neighborhood? Lawsuit. Municipal internet? Lawsuit. City-wide free wifi? Lawsuit.
Click to expand...

Not in all places.

I have watched new ISPs pop up around me for years. They don't get sued, they go under due to nobody supporting them or shitty service. Most are fixed wireless (WISP) so nobody would care anyway. In larger cities there are more choices than people seem to realize, they just don't want to accept them as choices or don't know about them. And some might be more aimed at business level service only. But you normally truly have more than 1 choice for internet period. You might not like the speeds only being a few Mbps but the option is still there.

In some of the larger cities municipal ran services have hit walls when they do it themselves. But that doesn't happen everywhere, and in some places they don't do it themselves but find somebody willing to come in and do it for them and don't have issues since it isn't them but is a CLEC already in their area that they are working with to get better services.
 
Trimlock said:
Yes, but then they kept opening up new markets, slowly. I guess now the expansion well halt.
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It was places pending when the halt was first announced. If the money has been allocated and the contract is signed you might as well go ahead and launch. Less chance of being accused of funny business with the moneys that way. For all intents and purposes FiOS has been dead expansion wise for like three years now
 
they want to use cell data for internet and charge everyone huge amount of money because they use their 5gb in a week and then are screwed.
 
Skripka said:
Didn't they basically say this a long time ago?
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Yeah, but they collected taxes to fund it via legislation. Legislation that theoretically bound them to rolling out more than they had. They have done this before and gotten out of it. They have recently gotten away with this again. So while they said what they wanted to do before, now they are saying what has been achieved. They took public money and did not deliver yet again.
 
Iching said:
I would still take my Optimum Online over these two.
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I miss Optimum Online. The only bad thing I could say about them is that every person I knew that worked for them hated it. Their service was totally awesome.

I remember having 10Mbit service when everyone else had 1.5Mbit DSL or dial-up. Before I moved I was at 20-25Mbit with a 10Mbit plan. I have only just now gotten back to that speed with Time Warner after having them for almost 5 years in my new place.
 
I had FIOS for the three years I lived in NJ and loved it. I could push 80/40 Mbps all day long with practically no latency, no jitters, no QOS, no congestion, no blocked ports. :)

Now I have TWC and can push 20/1 Mbps on a good day. Latency is higher, packet loss is common, speeds fluctuate all the time, QOS tampering is obvious and they block several inbound ports. :mad:

Now I'm considering moving to California just to get FIOS back.
 
I do not think that you are entirely wrong Exavior, but I also think that you are missing a few things in your analysis.

First and foremost, as other users have pointed out as well, the cost of building out infrastructure is tax-deductible for the business. This is similar to a software developer buying a new server for their business. They have made an investment in the future operation of their business which reduces their tax liability over a preset amount of time (depreciation).

Second, the companies do not have to pay up front for all of the infrastructure development. Essentially, some of it may be done in cash, some may be through borrowing, and some may be slated for development, but not actually paid for until that future time at which they begin construction. These things factor into the time-value of money equation.

Third, no ISP in the history of ISPs as far as I know, has attempted to make back the cost of infrastructure deployment immediately. Even the cable companies that are now ISPs built their infrastructure over time, following these same depreciation curves that are still used today, and financed in the same ways that they are today, with the intention of making back the money over several years' time. Once they are beyond that point, it is essentially pure profit until they need to address the infrastructure again.

The long and short of it is this: if Company X can borrow enough money to expand their infrastructure, then charge a monthly fee for service that is enough to cover the costs of repaying that money, plus interest, and whatever the day-to-day costs of operation are, while still leaving them some extra in their pockets, then that is a profitable endeavor. For example, Comcast made approximately $64 billion in 2013, of which around $6.5 billion was profit. They made money.

I think the issue at stake is less about whether or not the business model is profitable and more about how profitable it can be. Everyone, especially the Wall Street power guys, are concerned with expediency at this point. They all want to make their money right away. Making money over time is considered a loss if they can make more somewhere else in the short term, but that is just as unsustainable as a Ponzi scheme.
 
Why does this conversation always go the same way?

"FUCK THE ISP's!!!"

Newsflash, it ain't the ISP's making expansion difficult, it is your shitbird local governments taking bribes and handing out monopolies. You don't think Verizon WANTS to move into your town and take your money for high bandwidth? Fuck yes they do, but your local gov already got into bed with ATT or Comcast or whatever dip fuck ISP and sold you all down the rabbit hole. I can get uVerse, FiOS, Cable (not sure the carrier) and a few small name DSL offerings. Why? My smallish city didn't fuck us all over. Open competition. You wanna run the lines, go for it, just fix the poles or bury it and you can run all the copper/fiber you want to. You help us fix and maintain our aging shit, we'll help you make money by opening up the permits and making it easier. But no monopoly.
 
It's fuck the ISPs and the local government, because the ISPs bribed the government. That's why the Bay Area is stuck with some backwards ass Comcast bullshit when it's the home of Google, Apple, Intel, Cisco, etc etc etc. Because Comcast bribed the shit out of the idiot local goverments long ago.

So yeah, fuck Comcast too. I'd switch to anything that wasn't Comcast that was even nearly as fast, but it doesn't exist.
 
Skripka said:
LOL

My electric utility built out fiber to all homes in my capitol city.

Guess what?

Time Warner turned around and bought legislation making it illegal for public utilities to "compete" in the same "market" as private corporations. All that beautiful high-speed fiber? Permanently and forever dark thanks to lobbying.
Click to expand...

The FCC may invalidate those laws.

I say bring on the municipal internet, see where that gets us.
 
mesyn191 said:
It'd be more correct to say no one wants to overpay for it. Other countries have fiber to the home for far less than it costs even in US metropolitan areas.

Stop defending shitty ISP's and their greed. Especially since much of the infrastructure they do own was paid for or indirectly subsidized with public money.
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Yea ... I bought a crayola box of 64 crayons and one was broken ... greedy Crayola. I want the 4-pack made by Carlos since the government didn't buy the cardboard box for him. Ignorance!

I don't recall any of my equipment ever being funded by any part of any government or public fundraisers. I remember replacing thousands of dollars of equipment on multiple towers many nights at terrible o'clock. I remember losing 35 grand worth of equipment due to volatile electric service that was supposedly maintained for the public and by the government.

All I have seen is that people want everything everywhere and the government said "We'll make a PSA!" and small WISPs are expected to fork out a few hundred grand for people to watch porno and download illegal stuff?

As a kid I wanted that stuff, but as I became an adult I realized I had to pay for what I got. As a business man I expect people to pay for what they get. If they want to spend 20 bucks a month to watch online videos while saving over a hundred bucks and my infrastructure can supply it to the public while saving their cost of copper wiring, paid porn, and other misc stuff that billionaire companies are able to offer ... somebody had better pay ME.

I cover ~50 miles of wireless service without running a single wire TTH. So anyone that wants to dig a 50 mile trench and pay my 5000/month bill can have at it.

So don't confuse one ISP with capitalism and unfair treatment, there are good guys trying but still must adhere to federal regulations an stupid practices. :)
 
Mr. Perfect said:
The FCC may invalidate those laws.

I say bring on the municipal internet, see where that gets us.
Click to expand...

That's assuming that your municipality can afford to get such a network started or maintained, or for that matter will let competent people run it.

If these laws come to pass, and I had the capital, I would immediately start a business like Waste Management, except dealing with cities attempting to start public broadband services. It would be the same result. One source, that everyone hates to various degrees, and the likely hood of anyone coming to compete is zero because of your contract.
 
MadJuggla9 said:
Yea ... I bought a crayola box of 64 crayons and one was broken ... greedy Crayola. I want the 4-pack made by Carlos since the government didn't buy the cardboard box for him. Ignorance!

I don't recall any of my equipment ever being funded by any part of any government or public fundraisers. I remember replacing thousands of dollars of equipment on multiple towers many nights at terrible o'clock. I remember losing 35 grand worth of equipment due to volatile electric service that was supposedly maintained for the public and by the government.

All I have seen is that people want everything everywhere and the government said "We'll make a PSA!" and small WISPs are expected to fork out a few hundred grand for people to watch porno and download illegal stuff?

As a kid I wanted that stuff, but as I became an adult I realized I had to pay for what I got. As a business man I expect people to pay for what they get. If they want to spend 20 bucks a month to watch online videos while saving over a hundred bucks and my infrastructure can supply it to the public while saving their cost of copper wiring, paid porn, and other misc stuff that billionaire companies are able to offer ... somebody had better pay ME.

I cover ~50 miles of wireless service without running a single wire TTH. So anyone that wants to dig a 50 mile trench and pay my 5000/month bill can have at it.

So don't confuse one ISP with capitalism and unfair treatment, there are good guys trying but still must adhere to federal regulations an stupid practices. :)
Click to expand...

This is exactly the problem people complain about in these threads: unless you're too big to fail you're not big enough to get any help. This is also why there are a lot of people that just say, "keep the government out of it." When the government is actively colluding with a corporation for purposes of restricting free and open access to trade, we live in a type of oligarchy called a corporatocracy, which is exactly where we find ourselves now.

The side effect of the situation is that there are increased barriers for the little guy to get up and running doing whatever it is that he is trying to do. Meanwhile, the big guys get even more help because if they have a bad quarter everyone's pension disappears...

What ever happened to providing a quality service or product that people wanted at a competitive price? That disappeared because the companies are no longer in real competition with each other. They are just pretending to have competition or agreeing to fix prices as a group in a lot of cases.

Further, this limits the possibility that a new entrant into the market will be able to unseat the established players. In the past, when a company became so big or out of touch with its customers, it failed, and someone else that had played it straight got their shot at being the next big cheese.
 
If it was declared a utility, then we could make it a Public Works Project
Nah, then it's create jobs, improve quality of life outside the sanctioned suburbias, etc...
 
shade91 said:
Verizon and Comcast have beautiful business models.. the kind that only crooked capitalists could come up with:

1) Offer terrible services
2) Refuse to offer better services
3) Sue all newcomers into extinction so no other options exist
4) Pay off government officials in the form of campaign donations to fend off anti-trust lawsuits.
Click to expand...

Where's the "socialist-smoking-pot" icon?

My FiOS 75/35 clocks in at 84/38. My unlimited calling on my land-line does exactly what it's supposed to do, all for $100 a month. Would I want it cheaper? Of course, who wouldn't. Are they a business that stifles competition to make more money and eventually try to rule the world? Probably. But if it wasn't for Capitalists civilization would be pretty crappy. People work harder when they know they are working towards bettering their lot in life. Socialist never seem to figure out that whole human-spirit thing.
 
MrCaffeineX said:
I do not think that you are entirely wrong Exavior, but I also think that you are missing a few things in your analysis.

First and foremost, as other users have pointed out as well, the cost of building out infrastructure is tax-deductible for the business. This is similar to a software developer buying a new server for their business. They have made an investment in the future operation of their business which reduces their tax liability over a preset amount of time (depreciation).

Second, the companies do not have to pay up front for all of the infrastructure development. Essentially, some of it may be done in cash, some may be through borrowing, and some may be slated for development, but not actually paid for until that future time at which they begin construction. These things factor into the time-value of money equation.

Third, no ISP in the history of ISPs as far as I know, has attempted to make back the cost of infrastructure deployment immediately. Even the cable companies that are now ISPs built their infrastructure over time, following these same depreciation curves that are still used today, and financed in the same ways that they are today, with the intention of making back the money over several years' time. Once they are beyond that point, it is essentially pure profit until they need to address the infrastructure again.

The long and short of it is this: if Company X can borrow enough money to expand their infrastructure, then charge a monthly fee for service that is enough to cover the costs of repaying that money, plus interest, and whatever the day-to-day costs of operation are, while still leaving them some extra in their pockets, then that is a profitable endeavor. For example, Comcast made approximately $64 billion in 2013, of which around $6.5 billion was profit. They made money.

I think the issue at stake is less about whether or not the business model is profitable and more about how profitable it can be. Everyone, especially the Wall Street power guys, are concerned with expediency at this point. They all want to make their money right away. Making money over time is considered a loss if they can make more somewhere else in the short term, but that is just as unsustainable as a Ponzi scheme.
Click to expand...

I do want to repeat as stated in other post of mine. I work in this field. I work for a Telco / ISP. Not one of the big guys. Just a small rural company that services 10K people between 5 small towns. My job is obtaining, installing, configuring and maintaining equipment to provide dialtone, xdsl and FTTH to our customers. You are partly correct in your statement there. We do buy equipment and over the course of 10 years we recover the cost. However we still have to pay for everything up front so we do still need cash on hand to make the original purchase. That said, we get recovery from a pool that most of the money we bring in from customers for phone and internet service goes to so we aren't so much as getting recovery but are being allowed to spend our money that we gave somebody else. Logically it all works out just in an odd way. Say you are a customer of ours. You pay us for phone service and dsl, we get to keep what you pay for calling features and long distance, all the rest we pay into a pool. This is the same for pretty much every single ILEC out there. So AT&T, Verizon, Century Link. all this money goes into a pool. Then when somebody wants to buy equipment they go out and buy it, they the then report how much they spent to the pool and over the next 10 years they get that money back. Based on your size, how much you put in you are able to spend a certain amount every year for recovery if I am to understand the rules of this correctly. The reason for all of this is say some new change comes out. Such as the new push for all IP based switching to replace old TDM switches. AT&T, Verizon and the rest have to say what they want to change to, what their intent is, how quickly and then they are told if they can start to make this change. This pool then allows all the smaller guys who couldn't otherwise afford to get that new telephone switch to purchase what they need and get the money back. So even though they might not put that much in, they are still able to take more out to stay in the field. This same pool also states what rates must be charged for your phone service and your internet service. This only applies to your local phone carrier (ILEC) so Comcast, vonage, magic jack... they don't have to follow these rules as they don't put money in nor can they take money out.

You would actually be surprised at how many little guys are out there. Some small company that might give service to 500 - 1500 people in the middle of nowhere. or might be larger to the scale for a few hundred thousand. They city of Orlando Fl actually is ran by an independent telephone company. But they would still be a small company compared to something like Frontier, AT&T or the rest as they only have that small area.

Comcast in the entire scale of things is different as you are looking at cable service not copper being replaced with fiber. You can scale cable speeds more than you can copper so they can offer faster speeds with less cost of plant then any telephone company wanting to replacing all their copper with fiber. That is why my comments were never aimed at somebody like Comcast. Even with telephone companies, the top few can afford to do whatever they want and wait for recovery. They just don't want to see less profit today even if they get it back later. My comments have been more aimed at the entire collective and why people aren't rushing out to do fiber to the home all over the place and why you don't see the market flooded with ftth companies like you do WISP.
 
tec805 said:
Where's the "socialist-smoking-pot" icon?

My FiOS 75/35 clocks in at 84/38. My unlimited calling on my land-line does exactly what it's supposed to do, all for $100 a month. Would I want it cheaper? Of course, who wouldn't. Are they a business that stifles competition to make more money and eventually try to rule the world? Probably. But if it wasn't for Capitalists civilization would be pretty crappy. People work harder when they know they are working towards bettering their lot in life. Socialist never seem to figure out that whole human-spirit thing.
Click to expand...

Why is it every time someone says something about the busted capitalist system in this country someone had to take it right the fuck to socialism?
 
tec805 said:
Where's the "socialist-smoking-pot" icon?

My FiOS 75/35 clocks in at 84/38. My unlimited calling on my land-line does exactly what it's supposed to do, all for $100 a month. Would I want it cheaper? Of course, who wouldn't. Are they a business that stifles competition to make more money and eventually try to rule the world? Probably. But if it wasn't for Capitalists civilization would be pretty crappy. People work harder when they know they are working towards bettering their lot in life. Socialist never seem to figure out that whole human-spirit thing.
Click to expand...

I am not going to get into the political side but you know that Verizon took tons of money from the government to do these projects, over promised under delivered. If you happen to be one of the lucky guys who lives in a competitive market with FIOS and cable and good DSL options great for you but for the rest of FIOS turned off the pipe and said forget running it if the government is paying for most of it.

So the irony of the statement is capitalism probably has almost nothing to do with FIOS in your area.
 
If FIOS broadband is analogous to indoor plumbing, then it seems many Americans are still using an outhouse to relieve their media needs.

Municipal broadband all the way. I am not an engineer so this idea might be totally unfeasible, but I'd like to see the water company somehow run fiber lines through their existing water pipes as conduit to avoid the expense of digging up the street in many areas.
 
Exavior said:
I am not surprised at all, the issue is cost. Everyone wants 1Gbps fiber to their home, but nobody wants to actually pay for it. So there is no reason for anyone to actually build it out.
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I'd be happy with the cost of service if there wasn't artificially tiered speed levels for what amounts to exactly the same thing. If I get the 5Mbps cable service or the 105Mbps service is there anything different between the two other than typing in a command at an office which artificially throttles me? No, there's not. The same cable that brings me 5Mbps can also bring me 105Mbps, there's zero difference on a hardware side. If it becomes a saturation issue then handle that as such and throttle the connections WHEN there becomes a saturation issue, then the onus of the quality of your network goes on the company not some abstract notion of the top 2% of users.

See these are not business models that the big companies follow because they're not as profitable, these are basically your "paying a premium for access to the fast lane" that they're having THEIR FCC push through. Yet smaller companies that are doing fine from a profit standpoint, off services with marginal differences in cost because as they even say "Bandwidth is cheap"
 
rudy said:
I am not going to get into the political side but you know that Verizon took tons of money from the government to do these projects, over promised under delivered. If you happen to be one of the lucky guys who lives in a competitive market with FIOS and cable and good DSL options great for you but for the rest of FIOS turned off the pipe and said forget running it if the government is paying for most of it.
Click to expand...
This...

AT&T announces GigaPower 300Mbps to your home... where? Oh yeah that's where... places where Google Fiber exists. And they're pricing it to compete with Google fiber. Places that have very fast cable internet? Yeah they can give you real good speeds, but with no competition you will pay a premium for it, and when so few people do pay a premium for it they'll declare no one wants speeds that fast and not expand the technology... unless they have competition like google fiber. I bet if Google set up shop in this city, it would follow shortly with plans for AT&T to bring GigaPower here, as well as Comcast finding a way to boost speeds to 200+ Mbps, and it won't cost me $199/month for it either.
 
dj_spanmaster said:
So, how do we switch from the FCC to a new regulation provider?
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You don't switch regulatory providers you change the politicians and force them to change the leadership. But as everyone has stated their just aren't enough people that care about this to make that happen. Most people have a complex set of issues they are voting on from abortion, to religion, to global warming, war, the economy and net neutrality and broad band rollout are near the bottom of the list.
 
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