Re: When will Verizon FIOS be coming to [YOUR TOWN NAME HERE]?

["Ben Eisenbraun" <user=82@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 08:18:43AM -0500, Ward Vandewege wrote: 
> On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 11:33:43PM -0500, Ben Holland wrote: 
> > Somerville is out because they don't think there will be enough people who 
> > can spend that kinda money to get it. 
> 
> Hmmm? I believe there has been talk before about Vz cherry-picking the 
> wealthiest communities for rollouts first, with less affluent towns following 
> (much) later if at all. They always deny doing that of course. 

Yeah, it sounds like there are quite a few factors at play, perhaps including 
some animosity between Joe Curtatone and the Verizon people.  Some links: 

Curtatone and other mayors speaking out against Verizon's move to have cable 
licensing be done at the state level: 

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/06/06/verizon_officials_catch_static_over_cable_tv_plan/

A Verizon rep on Finneran's Forum (a radio show) talking about the bill, and 
Joe calls in to have his say: 

http://tinyurl.com/2fhu6d

> Also, the population density in Somerville is such that it would be a very 
> attractive target for a FiOS rollout - for every mile of fiber you can hook 
> up way more people than in a lot of the other communities that got FiOS 
> already. 

This is true.  Somerville was the first (maybe second) town built out in MA for 
RCN due to the high population density.  That may explain why we have 
twisted pair on the poles in the RCN plant around here. 

As a side note on the possibility of VZ picking wealthy communities, studies 
show that low economic status is a good indicator of high levels of television 
viewership. 

> Perhaps FiOS is not in Somerville yet because there is more competition than 
> in most towns: there are two cable providers - Comcast and RCN. 

Yes, that's another good reason.  The large population also gives the city 
government better bargaining powers with the voice and video providers, since 
Somerville _is_ an attractive target. 

All of this coupled together is probably a recipe for VZ avoiding the need to 
negotiate with Somerville on a one-to-one basis for as long as possible.   
Maybe they were hoping a more favorable administration would be in place after 
the last election. 

There was actually a technical reason initially for avoiding certain towns, 
since when VZ first started rolling out Fios, they hadn't settled on how 
to install MDUs.  Since the ONTs have to be powered, how were they going to 
hook it up to _your_ power in a triple decker if you lived on the 3rd floor? 
I still haven't seen an install like that.  Does anyone know how they solved 
that problem? 

Anyway, we shall see how it shakes out with Somerville.  It's not so bad 
in Somerville; at least we have some choices and some competition. 

-b 

-- 
success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiam. 
                                              <sir winston churchill> 

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