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Verizon To Pump $18B Into FiOS

Posted by kdawson on Thu Sep 28, 2006 08:32 AM
from the and-where's-my-rocket-car? dept.
Networking Communications
larytet writes, "LightReading reports that Verizon will invest $18B into FTTH. The company says its fiber-based service will become profitable after four years, and expects by then to have 7 million customers using FiOS for Internet access." For perspective, have a look at Bruce Kushnick's book $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. His site has a page detailing phone company promises of fiber since 1993. We have been paying for these undelivered promises for years. By now we should have 86 million homes wired with FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec.
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  • We have been paying for these undelivered promises for years. By now we should have 86 million homes wired with FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec.

    This goes so against my usual feelings on how big companies treat the general populace, but...

    With all the companies that make huge promises but never actually delivering, I willing to let it slide when a company delivers something pretty close to the original promise, even if it is just a little late.

    - Tony

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by plague3106 (71849)
      Well, I'm in the 'who cares' boat. My city is rolling FTTH RIGHT NOW. I'll be hooked up by next year, at the latest.
      • My county has been rolling out FTTH for what seems like a year or so now. But, lately, it seems to have stalled. Maybe they're currently installing it in places I don't normally travel. But one thing is for sure: my neighborhood is really low on the list to get it :(

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ZachPruckowski (918562)
        That's not the point. The point is that at my house (or my parents' house, since I'm at college), we have dial-up, because there's no other option. It's not even 56k broadband, the max speed is 36.6k, and then there's all of AOL's overhead. Everyone should have broadband by now, even if it's only 256k

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by plague3106 (71849)
          Well, I don't consider 256k broadband by any stretch.

          I do think broadband should be available everywhere as well. I guess my point was that we should have never waited for the telcos to do this; we should have gotten municipalities to do it for us a while ago.

      • Re:Better late than never? (Score:4, Informative)

        by kevinl (38843) on Thursday September 28 2006, @09:01AM (#16228551) Homepage
        You're fortunate that you don't live in a rural area where Verizon is busy trying to sell off their landlines. From today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/technology/28ver mont.html [nytimes.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kabocox (199019)
        Well, I'm in the 'who cares' boat. My city is rolling FTTH RIGHT NOW. I'll be hooked up by next year, at the latest.

        Grrr you are what's wrong. You are in the who cares boat because your city is getting fiber now? You should be in the I'm bloody pissed that its taken more than a decade for them to rollout fiber to my city! At this rate, it'll take 2-3 decades for most of the nation to be wired up to slow speed fiber. You are most likely going to get alot slower than 100 Mbits/sec up and down and will be thri

    • Re:Better late than never? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Secrity (742221) on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:58AM (#16228487)
      The difference is that most of the companies that make huge undelivered promises are not regulated monopolies. When supposedly regulated telephone companies makes huge promises, ratepayers and taxpayers start giving concesssions and possibly paying for portions of those promises at the time that the promise is made.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by saleenS281 (859657)
      ... verizon isn't delivering ANYTHING close to their original promise. Uncapped, unadulterated 100mbit service is nothing like the port blocked, don't upload too much in a month POS they're currently providing. Sure, it's leaps and bounds above DSL... but that should not get them off the hook.

  • FiOS more real than many of those broken promises (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EVil Lawyer (947367) on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:37AM (#16228149)
    For perspective, have a look at Bruce Kushnick's book $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. His site has a page detailing phone company promises of fiber since 1993. We have been paying for these undelivered promises for years. By now we should have 86 million homes wired with FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec.

    Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic. But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.

    I'm in New York and have FiOS. It's a very nice service. Happily, in New York, the slowest speed tier is 10 down / 2 up, and it's quite affordable compared to cable modem service. I'm looking forward to the FiOS TV service, and the day I'll be completely rid of Time Warner (not that Verizon itself is such a wonderful company).

    • Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic.

      Broken promises are one thing. Broken promises that you have been paying for are quite another. The phone companies have had extra charges tacked on to your phone bill for years to pay for the development of FTTH.

      In legal circles, I believe that they call this 'fraud'.

    • Blocked Ports, and that little move where they pull out your copper connection to the street ( so that you're NEVER going to get DSL again... ) remind us that VZ is still as evil as they ever were.

    • I'm in New York and have FiOS. It's a very nice service. Happily, in New York, the slowest speed tier is 10 Mbits/sec down / 2 Mbits/sec up, and it's quite affordable compared to cable modem service. I'm looking forward to the FiOS TV service, and the day I'll be completely rid of Time Warner (not that Verizon itself is such a wonderful company).

      Um, you are happy with 2 up when you should have 100 Mbits/sec up and and 10 Mbits/sec down when you should have 100 Mbits/sec down. I'll give my local the benefit

    • Re:FiOS more real than many of those broken promis (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Thursday September 28 2006, @09:46AM (#16229411)

      Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic. But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.

      Maybe you should read the above book. The number of homes with decent high speed internet in the US is pathetic. Compare, for example, the internet service in Sweden. It is faster, more reliable, lower cost, and each citizen paid much less than each American citizen has in government subsidies. They also have about the same population density. Sorry, but the US is falling behind the world, except in a small number of very urban locations. I'm happy you have good service, but don't mistake the situation in new York for most of the US. I've lived in three of the ten largest cities in the US and in each place I had a choice of a crappy cable service bundled with Cable TV I don't want or an incredibly expensive DSL line bundled with a phone service I don't want.

  • Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by laughingcoyote (762272) <barghesthowl AT excite DOT com> on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:38AM (#16228159) Journal

    Well is this unexpected? They were begging for money and consideration at the time, but they were also lobbying. In effect, they say "Oh it'll be fine, you'll see, watch what we'll give you!" Of course, since the promises weren't written into the law as a mandate, with real consequences if they went unfulfilled, what they gave us, predictably, was as little as they could get away with for as much as they could charge.

    Now, in addition to tax revenue and right-of-ways, they want us to give up net neutrality. "Oh, but look what we'll give you!" I imagine they'll do just as well as last time.

    • It's noticeably better than their DSL but if they need to dismantle core Net principles like network neutrality in order to "incentivize" FiOS then they can bite my bum.
    • Of course, since the promises weren't written into the law as a mandate, with real consequences if they went unfulfilled,
      I'm a big believer in putting everything that needs to be said into the text of a law.

      So why did they wait so long? Profitable in 4 years, but they waited 13.

      Maybe thats how long it took their old equipment to depreciate. (ya know, write the costs off for tax purposes)
  • between home and work- both with comcast pro connections
    pings are pretty sweet,

    18ms for the same roads that take me 20 miles to drive.

    it's still not enough bandwidth for me to access my files live, I use synchronization software to keep my
    'active' documents in place at both ends.. if I could have that increase in speed and keep my ping times, I'd likely loose the synchronizer and work off all my files from my home setup..

    The problem then is, I don't have my 'other location' backup when I pull a boner...

  • And this is why subsidies are bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MikeRT (947531) on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:39AM (#16228181) Homepage
    Subsidies are frequently abused and allocated for all of the wrong reasons. They skew the market, create a new base of lobbyists and generally increase the scope of government intrusion. We wouldn't have people like Ted Stevens be the norm in Congress if the American people could bring themselves to follow what's in the Constitution, and subsidizing business isn't one of the enumerated powers of Congress. If it were a dry, boring job that made them more like "law book janitors" than power brokers, most problems would go away within an election cycle.

    But no, we just need to change where and how the government gives away money, not whether or not the government should be involved at all.

  • Actual Dollar Amount $23b (Score:5, Informative)

    by cdrudge (68377) on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:40AM (#16228201) Homepage
    According to this article [fortwayne.com] in my local paper, Verizon is planning on spending nearly $23b on FiOS and that's for about 1/2 their network. The $18b figure mentioned in the summary comes from discounting the $5b in projected savings from not having to maintain the aging copper physical plant. The linked to article sort of mentions this, but it's not real clear.

  • Believe it when you see it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by qwertphobia (825473) on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:41AM (#16228243)
    I'll believe it when I see it. I have Verizon phone service, and I live in a well-populated area, but I cannot get DSL yet. It turns out that some of my local loop is running over copper, and the rest is running over fiber. I cannot get DSL because of the fiber but I also cannot get FIOS because of the copper. So I''ve been waiting, but I might just have to bite the bullet and get Comcast...
    • I could not get Verizon DSL in my town, but it was the first in my area to get FiOS. I now have 30Mbit down and 2Mbit up with 5 static IPs. It's also infinitely more stable than my Comcast was.

      Don't give up hope.
  • Well, it looks like at least one of the telcos is making an attempt to deliver on their promise (albeit a little late). When/if a formal investigation is launched into the whole "fiber to the home" scandal, Verizon will have something to hold up in their defense.

  • I'll take two. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by oc255 (218044) <milkfilk@yahoo. c o m> on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:43AM (#16228271) Homepage
    I've been hitting the submit button on the "Can I get FiOS?" site in Northern Virginia since I heard about it in 2004. So far, all I've gotten is a web redirect to their DSL offerings.

    Speaking of DSL, I talked to Speakeasy (my dsl provider) and asked them if they'd ever be able to offer their open hosting policies over FiOS. Speakeasy said no because FiOS is regulated differently than your POTS lines. So this really put a damper on things because I won't get port 80 etc over blazing optics. Unless they strike a deal (unlikely?) or an act of congress happens (lobbying?). I'd love to know exactly why fiber is treated differently.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by curlynoodle (1004465)
      FiOS is an "Information Service", where as POTS is still a "Telecommunication Service". I think this is the distinction.
  • What exactly does one do with a 100 Mbps FTTH connection other than downloading a 700 MB DivX movie in 1 sec @ 12500 MB/sec ? p.s :Did I get the no's right?
    • little b is bits, big B is bytes - the bigger one is the bigger unit (100Mbps is about 12MB/s). To get your 700MB file, you'll be pulling down 5600 bits plus overhead, and it'll take a little over 1 minute on a fully saturated link. Real world, you'll be waiting a little longer.

  • I'm a little surprised by Verizon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chaffed (672859) on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:51AM (#16228369) Homepage
    I'm surprised by Verizon because you don't need a Verizon PC to use FIOS. Imagine that! Those clever engineers figured out a way to make a service profitable without proprietary lock in. Gee they are great!

    Okay I do have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to Verizon.

    Now imagine if Verizon FIOS was operated like Verizon Wireless.

    You would be required to sign a 2 year contract and pay $1000 for a PC that can barely take advantage of the basic features of the service. If you wanted something that could give you the full experience that would be a 2 year contract plus $2000 for equipment.

    All the while the PC they sold you would be locked to FIOS and have many features disabled. Some features I can imagine being disabled would be File Transfers via FTP or any standard protocol. You would be required to use their application at a fee for every transfer.

    You would be locked out of using other media services like Apple, Yahoo or audiable.

    Your information services would be limited to their partners, probably fox news...

    Finally they would happily hand over your personal information to those willing to pay or a government with no probable cause or a warrant.

    This all sounds very familiar now that I write this all... Net Neutrality anyone? or a lack there of...

  • Have no fear! (Score:5, Funny)

    by rlp (11898) on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:51AM (#16228375)
    Congress is actively dealing with this right now! You won't get fiber to your house, but you will get a larger series of tubes. And your representative will mail you your very own Internet.

  • It's about f-in time (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KalElOfJorEl (998741) on Thursday September 28 2006, @08:52AM (#16228377)
    That book about the scandal sheds a lot of light of just how screwed over customers have been the past decade+. If anything Verizon has a moral obligation to start something like this from the fact that their customers have been paying extra for it for years and the fact that America is getting its ass kicked in regards to infrastructure compared to some countries in Europe and Japan. China is also planning on sinking billions into its infrastructure as well, so it's about time one of these money whoring telecoms stop the douchebaggery and start fucking doing something instead of syphoning capital out of its customers for service in which the cost doesn't justify the performance. Maybe this will trigger Comcast, ATT, Qwest and others to stop their stupid fucking complacency and start doing something to improve this companies infrastructure instead of holding their monopolies and using the legal system to force out municipally owned service [windley.com].

    Then again, I've never associated telecoms with ever doing anything moral, intelligent or in the best interest of the consumer.
  • Am I the only one that's wondering if this much bandwidth for the average home user is a good idea? Perhaps it's time to tie things like egress filters and packet shapers to the new bandwidth to prevent threats from spreading that much faster?
    • Not so much malware, as the spam that is a side-effect of malware. With 100Mb/s of upstream bandwidth a few zombies could easily overwhelm a lot of individual and small-business mail servers. They could also be used for very effective DDoS attacks.
  • Yes, lots of other phone companies have made promises about bringing FTTH utopia, however the difference is that Verizon is already doing it. They've been rolling it out in several places around the northeast for a while now.

    Here's a blog with lots of details on how the installation is done: http://www.bricklin.com/fiosinstall.htm [bricklin.com].
  • It's about time! Now I have a reason to buy Intel's 80 core CPU!

  • About time... glad I got it. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by strredwolf (532) on Thursday September 28 2006, @09:05AM (#16228623) Homepage Journal
    Yep, they're slowly rolling it out, replacing the old copper cable. Plus, they're offering such a sweet deal with Internet and TV over the fiber: $35 for 5mbit up/2mbit down (I sometimes hit 6mbit down, strangely enough). $52 for basic 180 channel digital TV (only 18 channels analog, so you need a set top box or DVR), a STB in one room, a two-tuner DVR in another.
  • Currently, Verizon is required by law to allow other ISPs to provide service over thier DSL lines. I'm currently paying slightly more for a third party to provide better "service" as in static IP and easy to reach tech support. With fiber, my only choice is Verizon. If I want a static IP, I need to pay the Business DSL priceses.

    Yeah, profit in four years should be easy for them.

  • Major FTTH lanched 1G EUR investment in France (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here in France most of broadband is DSL oriented. For 29.99 you get on a DSL : 25Mb/s, digital TV (more than 100 chans), unlimited call to european land line (and most majour countries), on-demand video, PVR-like features, ... nothing surprising anymore.

    But since year 2000, some small ISP have lanched FTTH in Paris 15th district (Citéfibre http://www.citefibre.com/ [citefibre.com] 59/month for 30Mb/s symetrical, unlimited call to any france landline , digital TV) or other cities (like Pau see http://eco.agglo-pau.fr/I [agglo-pau.fr]

  • Public privatization (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rinisari (521266) on Thursday September 28 2006, @09:12AM (#16228757) Homepage Journal
    Dear lazyweb,

    What say you to publically owned, but privately serviced network infrastructure? For example, a city, town, or borough pays to have its own network system (cable, dsl, ftth, whatever) installed, and then has an outside company (Adelphia, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) provide the bandwidth and support. The city retains control of the lines, so in the event the denizens of the city are unhappy with the provider company, they could vote to terminate (or simply not renew) the contract with the company and seek other bids for service.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by QuantumRiff (120817)
      This has been done in a small town about an hour from me, I think in 1999: Ashland Fiber Network [ashlandfiber.net] The city got tired of being on the end of Qwest's lists for improvement, cause its small, spread out , and mountainous, and they did it themselves. Strung fiber all over town, you purchase your connection to the internet (and get to choose witch small town ISP to use for your email, support, and outgoing internet, etc) and choose who you want to get your TV from , and even which channels!

      Very cheap, and blazin

  • bad writeup! FTTH = fiber to the home (Score:4, Informative)

    by bodrell (665409) on Thursday September 28 2006, @09:13AM (#16228767) Journal
    Come on! Define FTTH before you use it twice in a writeup. It's bad enough trying to decipher ridiculous acronyms in the comments, but in the stories themselves? Bah.

    Although I may have been successful in my deciphering, I believe FTTH is not a common acronym that most people (even on /.) have heard about. And no, I shouldn't have to chase a wikipedia link to figure it out. At least the submitter didn't use the much worse acronym FTTP, fiber to the premises (which I would have thought a misspelling of FTP).

  • Chance for TRUTH in up/down speeds (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Aqualung812 (959532) on Thursday September 28 2006, @09:40AM (#16229305)
    With everyone putting in 100MB connections, now would be a great time to have FAIR access to the Internet. Here are a few ideas:

    1. Give me TRUE, dedicated bandwidth at a low level. I'm talking like 768k down, 384k up that is MINE. It can't be squashed, and I don't get nasty letters for using 768k down 24/7/365. You really are not giving everyone 30mb down / 8 mb up, at least not all the time. Own up to it and let us know what is allowed JUST FOR US.

    2. Show me my burst level. I might have 768k that is MINE, but I might be able to get 30MB down when everyone else isn't as busy.

    3. Offer unlimited access within the switch (neighborhood). If I have a 100MB pipe to my house, and my next door neighboor is on FTTP, then allow me to talk at 100MB. I understand lowering it once you hit a trunked connection, but allowing full speed COSTS THE ISP NOTHING, and has a HUGE gain. My buddy might have 30MB from Comcast, but if I tell him that if he switches to ISP A he we can talk at 100MB, I'm sure he would switch.

  • I couldn't hold a chuckle... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zaatxe (939368) on Thursday September 28 2006, @10:57AM (#16230763)
    "...and expects by then to have 7 million customers using FiOS for Internet access."

    "Fios" is portuguese for "wires"... That name wouldn't inspire many people here in Brazil!

  • Snail pace deployment (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nonillion (266505) on Thursday September 28 2006, @12:21PM (#16232463)
    By the time Verizon gets FTTH to my rural home I'll either be too old to care or dead. It's been what, more than six (6) years now; what happened to the $200 billion? Out in my area there is NO xDSL, NO Cable Internet, NO Clearwire only dial up and over priced satellite Internet service. The only way I'm connecting now is with my Verizon wireless account, a whopping 16k/bit sync.

    Since my move, I haven't had any broadband service for over two (2) years. I've more or less lost all interest in computers, my Sun boxes sit idle with no Internet connection. All the time I have been mucking around with Linux have been confined to my IBM A31p laptop, and what ever connection I can get at Starbucks, work or open access point.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MtViewGuy (197597)
      As far asw having 86 million people wired by now, have you not heard of the last mile problem. Laying the cable costs money. And takes time. After the dot bomb the telcos had to retrench for a few years until the market improved a bit.

      The dot-com collapse was a big reason why there was a big delay in getting broadband to metropolitan areas across the USA. It's only within the last three years that landline broadband has been widely available in most larger cities across the USA. Most AT&T customers now

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by kabocox (199019)
        The dot-com collapse was a big reason why there was a big delay in getting broadband to metropolitan areas across the USA. It's only within the last three years that landline broadband has been widely available in most larger cities across the USA. Most AT&T customers now have at least access to DSL broadband, and the cable companies have made broadband available to almost everyone nowadays.

        Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? Those are communications companies and not dot-bomb companies. If
    • Which means they can charge more for it. You can get dial up for $10 a month. But then they came up with DSL/Cable, which is really fast, so they charge you $30+ per month. Oh Now they have Fibre Optic, which is even faster, so they can start charging people $70 per month for internet access. It's the same with Cable TV. You can get free over the air, or you can get analog cable for $25 a month. But now they come out with digital cable, which will cost you $50 a month. Oh wait, now we have HD Cable,
      • Actually the FiOS 10/2 service in my area costs slightly less than Comcast's much slower 6/.5. Also all new products/services that are 'superior' to old ones start out costing more. Eventually the prices drop as new products/services come out, this is nothing new.
    • Oh wait, South Koreans of all ages HAVE HAD this kind of speed for some time now

      Yes, but only the old people use it.

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