Verizon is Abandoning Its FiOS TV & Internet Service

hpglow said:
I don't know where you live, but I live in a small city in the midwest and we have Fiber to the curb DSL at up to 40 Mb/s.
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SLC, the only options are comcast and centrylink. Supposedly they offer 40mb internet but its only available only maybe one block in the entire city.
 
Limahl said:
Prior to being unemployed this year, I worked for a contractor whose sole contract was with Verizon to design the layout of their FiOS networks.

This news pretty much puts the final nail in my coffin. There's no way I'll get called back now at all.

Don't know what I'll do now, but for those that have FiOS, enjoy it.
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Well you can always go back to singing :p :D
 
You think you have it bad? The only options where I live are cable with speeds up to 6MB and a paltry 20GB cap (that's right, 20GB, not 200GB) or DSL... I'm paying a little over $40 for my telephone line and DSL service at 5MB down / 0.5MB up.

AT&T actually picked Puerto Rico up as one of their first 15 LTE markets and for $25 (plus the rest of your mobile bill obviously) their speeds are like 2-3x better, hell even ping timed are comparable. If it weren't for their small 2GB cap I'd consider switching from Sprint (no VZW down here unfortunately).

To top it all off the DSL provider had capacity issues during the holidays like three years in a row, thankfully its been two years since that because cable reliability/service isn't any better (don't get me started on HD programming, or the lack of it).

The telco supposedly offers up to 12MB DSL in certain areas (nevermind that PR is tiny), but the price is ridiculous (approaching $150 just for landline / internet).

Honestly I don't understand the massive contradictions in the telecom industry, on one hand they want to sell you more VOD services and whatnot but at the same time they're throwing down bamdwith caps and not building out a network strong enough to handle their intended use... Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

I think the last 20 years of loose regulation on coax/fiber and looser regulations on wireless have proved that the market CAN'T correct itself or appropriately meet demand.
 
Something really stinks here,why would Verizon more or less concede the internet business to Comcast? That's what they're basically doing,Fios is in a limited market,and I can tell you their DSL service is a complete joke. As much as I hate Comcast,their service is the only hope I have now for any kind of decent speeds.
 
DOOMHAMMA said:
It's not this entirely, Verizon wants to compete with cable companies using wireless. As I mentioned before, wireless is regulated differently and Verizon will have more control over its' pricing and have a stronger ability to gouge its customers for money and to limit our access to parts of the internet. It is looking more and more where most ISP's will be heading for this very reason, its' also part of why the Net Neutrality Act was fought/is being fought over so strongly.
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Who doesn't know this? That's the sad part. Sure it's on cell phones and tablets now, but I'm sure they'll want to bring it closer to home. To be honest, it's just going to rape the customer, cause it seems O.K. to charge more for wireless internet. It's O.K. to limit bandwidth. It'll never fly, and it's stupid for so many reasons.

#1 Wireless isn't reliable, and never will be. Streaming services and games will suffer.
#2 More competition won't drop prices. They'll lock you in a 2 year contract, which is something a lot of ISPs at home have abandoned.
#3 It'll never be fast. AT&T already has a hard time keeping up with demand, and I doubt Verizon will fair any better.

You can already see this with tablets. You can thank the tablet trend for this interest with Verizon. Another reason why people should stop buying those imitation laptops.
 
I've got 35/35 Fios here, hopefully they don't eventually can it, and if they do, hopefully they end up selling it to at least a semi reputable company. I think after my cell phone contract is up I'm going to ditch Verizon completely. Perhaps I'll just get a prepaid burner to use; no one ever calls me anyhow, and outside of browsing the web when I am out somewhere and bored, I could really do without my Android.
 
What do tablets have to do with anything? I doubt 3G tablets are selling anywhere near as well as Wifi tablets... I own a tablet, a netbook, and a desktop; each is ideally suited for certain tasks (tho the netbook is a bit redundant now and ill probably replace it with a llarger laptop eventually).
 
You have got to be kidding me. This is absolutely horrible for YEARS I've been waiting for FIOS to come 20 minutes up the road to my town, described by Verizon as "A rural area concerned with value and basic service", otherwise known as "Those rubes wouldn't even know where to plug it in so we're not going to waste our time; we're enjoying all your tax money and subsidy to roll out to only wealthy areas where we'll be able to double-dip !" They whined, complained etc... and finally after 5+ years the county government finally managed to convince them to come up here after they got X number of subscribers down county.

Comcast and Verizon have basically subjugated one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, and now if FIOS draws down, that means that Comcast's horrid prices/caps/privacy-hating policies will be unmatched.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - The Internet only grew to such prominence because it was a public, open system. Its too important to leave up to telecoms and other corporate greed; especially the actual hardware/backbones/lines. The nations with the best Internet performance and privacy in the world all have a high level of user-friendly regulation and hardware owned by the public - Scandinavian countries, Japan, Korea, even Hong Kong and other parts of Europe etc... everywhere the people own the fiber in the ground (and lease access to ISPs etc...) have the fastest speeds and many of the best privacy laws around (at least until the USA goes whining about how the rest of the world should follow SOPA etc..).

Its time we stop sending our tax money for private industries to pocket, deliver whatever the hell they feel when they get around to it. and then bleat that they own what we contracted them to build so nobody can threaten their monopoly.
 
Maybe because it costs many billions of dollars for them to roll it out in a market.

I swear I fucking hate San Francisco with all its regulations and bullshit, I have a view of a god damn wire mega-octo-dragon-pus outside my front window, yet they need 80000 permits to lay fiber in the streets. Even though there's proven technology of microtrenching that could easily get things done super fast and with minimal disruptions.
 
This is bullshit we need companies to invest in r&d and building out and up their network infrastructures this is why we need the fcc to mandate providers to invest money into r&d and expansion of land line services... im in Chicago and i cant get fios nor is Verizon coming to Chicago cause of an old territory agreement meaning its att or comcast for broadband or one of the smaller companies. my personal feeling is the old territory agreements should be destroyed and these huge company's should be forced to compete nation wide period.
 
This is a GOOD thing. They'll sell off the Fios business unit and with any luck, we'll have a strong competitor against standard cable but without the 'billing mistakes'
 
The solution is called local loop unbundling.

In Europe this occurred in 2000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling . Other countries do it as well.

We do it currently with land line telephone service in that you can pick whoever your provider is for phone calls, ATT, Verizon, Bell South, ANYONE. That's how it should be for internet access. The lines should not be tied to any one provider.

But you won't see it because this sort of regulation is called "job killing" and "intrudes on the free market" or words similar to that. Yet what it really does is allows for competition and thus innovation as well as lower prices and better service among providers. Providers on the other hand don't' like it because it forces them to spend money and INVEST in the infrastructure to compete. If anyone was around during the days that AOL had a huge upswing in growth and the numbers you'd have to dial for dial-up internet were busy, people switched providers to Earthlink and others. AOL then needed to invest in providing more capacity. THAT is the free market. Price discovery and competition. Regulation is needed at times for two purposes: 1) to make sure companies don't infringe on health and safety of others in the pursuit of profit 2) to make it such that when companies find a way so they don't have to compete, they make them more competitive and thus allow for free market principles to come into play.
 
SparkedFire said:
Maybe something to do with the strike too? I bet the employees will be pleased with the result of their wining.
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1) We didn't win - we still do not have a contract. If anything, the company won because we are back at work, working under the old contract for the time being. Nothing has been resolved, it does not look like anything is going to GET resolved any time soon and we are treading water waiting in the meantime.

2) The former President and CEO of Verizon, Ivan Seidenberg came up from the landline ranks. FiOS was his baby - he's the one that pushed for and got that one rolling..

3) It has more to do with Lowell McAdam being a wireless guy. Until August of this year, his entire career with the company has been in VZ Wireless. He sees no value in the landline business at all and would rather drop the whole thing entirely.

In areas where FiOS exists, the company is in competition with the existing cable providers and has to keep pricing comparable. It has to negotiate channel contracts (such as Tennis Channel). There is not really much in the way of competition in the wireless market (It really boils down to AT&T and Verizon in much of the country). And really, why would Verizon WANT competition? The only ones who benefit from competition are consumers.

Wireless is already obscenely profitable and is set to explode in profitability as more and more people demand broadband internet on the go. With Wireless. . . the company can pretty much demand whatever they want and people will pay it. These same people will run afoul of the download caps that are coming and end up paying ever more $$$ for ever less actual service. The future starts now.
 
Well Fuck. So my choices are back to crappy Verizon DSL, my current Covad/Earthlink DSL which Earthlink claims they can't increase the speed of. or deal with the scum at CableVision. Fan-Fuckin'-tastic. :mad:

Bad enough that Verizon were already cherry picking (Redlining is more like it) their FIOS deployment here.

I'd be tempted to just give up and switch to a mobile broadband card, but Sprint managed to climb further up their own asses and capped their 4G data for WWAN devices.

Moose fuckers. All of 'em.
 
Wow...the telecom companies here in the U.S. really are just a bunch of fucking pricks. They all claim to be losing money yet refuse to make the infrastructure improvements they NEED to make in order to improve and keep competitive.

Oh wait...there is no competition. Most people have only one service provider choice for their area. *sigh*
 
ecmaster76 said:
At least AT&T is still rolling out and improving uverse
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Oh yeah... you mean that service where they use a non standard interface and login system so you are forced to use their piece of crap 2wire and can't use any alternative modems? The one that doesn't have any bridging option so you can't easily use your own router instead? The piece of crap 2 wire that you have to reset frequently since it goes down often? The 2wire thing that literally takes over 5 minutes to boot up after a reset? The service thats capped at a certain gb per month where they charge you fees if you go over? The thing where it adds significant amounts of ping to online gaming, because they use interleaving instead of the better setup they use in the AT&T DSL? You mean the thing I upgraded to thinking it was going to be much better, and instead its worse in almost every way except the slight bump in bandwidth?

Yeah sure, that's improvement all right.
 
I've called and begged every few months for over 2 years before I quit bugging them to expand here. Its not like Orange County CA don't have the population or the money!
 
Well looks like when I move to Arizona, I'll have to sign up with Comcast then and their data caps. :(
 
As with all tech, the big guys don't want to pay to expand or improve it unless they are making insane profits....but will turn around and kill any projects anyone else tries to roll out that threatens their conclusive or near monopoly status in various areas.

I understand that it costs a lot to bury wire and what not, but it's the same with everything else. Putting up new towers, replacing hardware on the towers. All the old wiring they want people to be happy with despite it being buried 20+ years ago.

And then instead of taking all those profits to build up a network that is worth a damn, they turn around and throttle everything and starting messing with their pricing to control customer usage or further gouge the customer for lesser services.

I'm just wondering when government will get tired of being in the stone age in places and finally tell them to provide modern and affordable services or GTFO.
 
This is a national disgrace, and just 1 more step, among many, toward America's decline.
 
veterator said:
As with all tech, the big guys don't want to pay to expand or improve it unless they are making insane profits....but will turn around and kill any projects anyone else tries to roll out that threatens their conclusive or near monopoly status in various areas.

I understand that it costs a lot to bury wire and what not, but it's the same with everything else. Putting up new towers, replacing hardware on the towers. All the old wiring they want people to be happy with despite it being buried 20+ years ago.

And then instead of taking all those profits to build up a network that is worth a damn, they turn around and throttle everything and starting messing with their pricing to control customer usage or further gouge the customer for lesser services.

I'm just wondering when government will get tired of being in the stone age in places and finally tell them to provide modern and affordable services or GTFO.
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There needs to be a way to force telecoms to reinvest their massive profits back into the infrastructure. Something like a tax they have to pay to themselves which is marked for development of their network.
 
This is very sad. The wireless spectrum is already almost maxed out and we have people freaking out about RF radiation making them sick. Fiber optic is an almost perfect long term solution and there's almost nobody installing it for consumer grade connections. What are they going to do when people decide they need more than 100Mb/s on their cell phones? It will happen. Femtocells connected to DSL or capped cable connections? Sad.
 
Horrible. I'm a fios customer, I love the service. I sure hope they indeed continue to provide it.
 
Doesn't surprise me at all...

In fact I believe that wire based connections are going to die out in the next 10 years.

4G speeds are getting to the point where most homes could rely on it. I am willing to guess 5G or 6G will start the Cell service revolution.

Just like with phone land lines declining, internet wired service will decline.

People don't want to pay $60 for their home internet, then another 30+ for mobile connections...

They will pay 60-90$ to a cell provider for all devices in the house. Heck all carriers already offer hotspot devices, it's only a small transition to hook those up to home routers.
 
This does open the door for Google to step in though and buy up the verizon fiber and start rolling out their own nationwide. To think too google now has all these contractors out there like one of the dudes earlier looking for work and ready to lay fiber.
 
AFAIK Google already owns a good deal of fiber across the country, and they have for years... I don't think any of it services consumers directly beyond small experimental projects tho, but there is some groundwork for them to expand. Then there's Motorola's modem and set top box business...

I'm not sure how comfortable I am with Google as an ISP tho, nevermind the privacy implications, have you ever had to deal with Google directly for tech support? It's atrocious, they might as well have none... That's tolerable for online and beta services, but it'd be scary for an ISP.
 
dandirk said:
In fact I believe that wire based connections are going to die out in the next 10 years..
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I'm with you on that, but only in the US.

The rest of the world will continue to scratch their heads and be ever thankful they are where they are..
 
i don't know how this makes sense for verizon...fiber is the future and they would be giving up a huge technological advantage.
 
Yeah. Typical short shortsightedness on the part of a company only looking to the next FY.

The sold their land line stuff to Frontier here in the Northwest. FiOS net is still awesome, but Frontier is trying hard to get out of TV because they don't want to hassle with content provider for rates. They jacked up TV package costs and install rates to drive customers away and offer DirecTVs nodef compresso-vision in its place. Do not want.

It's amazing. The super fat fiber pipe enables all sorts of great scenarios that copper cannot touch but these old school telco morons at Frontier can't see it. They just want to sell phone service to grandma.
 
Markdek said:
This is a national disgrace, and just 1 more step, among many, toward America's decline.
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I'm afraid I have to agree,I don't know exactly were we rank with other countries as far as Internet service goes,but it has to be near the bottom of the list.
 
michael.pa2 said:
I'm afraid I have to agree,I don't know exactly were we rank with other countries as far as Internet service goes,but it has to be near the bottom of the list.
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According to this, 32nd. But thats probably a little inaccurate as it's not just home connections, and will only be people who took the speedtest test, which isn't going to be the majority.

According to this presentation, the US is ranked 16th in the world (out of 29, behind most of europe and east asia) with an average connection speed of 5.8mbps
 
josephnunn said:
I've called and begged every few months for over 2 years before I quit bugging them to expand here. Its not like Orange County CA don't have the population or the money!
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Most likely the reason you don't see Verizon in your area is because of the cable companies. Here in NJ the cable companies fought tooth and nail to prevent FIOS. Luckily that didn't happen.

From what I understand, the reason they're not focusing on their own service is because of this. So instead they signed a deal with the devil called Comcast. So now they can offer a bundled deal.

So instead of just having internet, I'm not given the option to have internet with TV I hardly watch, and home telephone that I never use. Oh wait, my cell is used a lot!

Christ, I'm was thinking about dropped all that extra crap and just keeping my internet. I have the triple package that 2/3 I don't use, so I don't want a quadruple package where 1/2 I don't use. .
 
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