Is Verizon No Longer Betting On The Future?

from the that-would-be-bad dept

Mon, Mar 15th 2010 9:18pm — Mike Masnick

Back in 2003, we had written about how Verizon's CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, was betting big on future technologies. It was in response to a Business Week profile that oddly positioned the idea of installing fiber-to-the-home as being a huge risk. Lots of investors were against it, because it was expensive. But if you looked at where the market was really heading, you could see that it would position Verizon way ahead of the competition. Broadband keeps getting faster. While other companies were focusing on minor incremental improvements, Verizon wanted to leapfrog them all -- and has done a damn good job of it. In many of the markets where Verizon FiOS is now offered, the competition is left in the dust.

But, now, it sounds like the bean counters with a shortsighted quarterly focus may be winning out. Broadband Reports is noting that Verizon is basically giving up on any more FiOS implementations. If you're in an area that's not covered, don't expect Verizon to show up at your door with a fiber optic cable any time soon. In fact, they're using the "threat" of not installing fiber to try to get more cash from the government:

But according to long-time industry analyst Dave Burstein, Verizon's essentially cutting and running on additional deployment plans, leaving a very large chunk of their footprint on last-generation DSL and copper-based voice networks.

Burstein tells Broadband Reports that he doesn't see Verizon expanding any further (with the exception of major cities where they've signed franchise agreements) unless they get money from Uncle Sam. "They want to get on the gravy train, although I think the new, less competitive leadership is the primary explanation," says Burstein when asked why. Seidenberg, the driving force behind the first wave of FiOS, is on his way out -- and his replacements aren't quite as bullish on angering investors for the sake of this whole "future" thing.

Of course, they can do that when there isn't any real competition on the horizon. We can hope that Google's toe dipping into high speed broadband turns into a bigger deal (at which point Google becomes the disruptive future-looking company instead of Verizon), but there's still not much of an indication that the company is planning to ever roll broadband out on a widespread basis. In the meantime, of course, other countries that have much greater competition are also enjoying much faster speeds. And, rather than dealing with that, the FCC is talking to puppets (literally) about protecting kids from the evils of broadband. And we wonder why we're so far behind other countries in broadband speeds.

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Filed Under: broadband, competition, fios, high speed
Companies: fcc, verizon

22 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 15 Mar 2010 @ 9:20pm

when google discovers that installing the fiber is only part of the game, they too will cut and run. google has horrible customer service as it is, i cannot imagine them as an isp.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Mar 2010 @ 10:18pm

Re:
I actually expect Google to become a dumb pipe, leasing access to their pipes to other providers who deal with the customer service end.
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:), 15 Mar 2010 @ 11:00pm

Dug.
The government should be dugging big tunnels between cities.

http://www.crookedbrains.net/2007/07/japanese-sewers-photo-gallery-first.html

Then the cost to run or replace infra-structure will be less.
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:), 15 Mar 2010 @ 11:01pm

Dug.
The government should be dugging big tunnels between cities.

Then the cost to run or replace infra-structure will be less.
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:), 15 Mar 2010 @ 11:07pm

Digging.
The government should be digging big tunnels between cities or using new road construction to build a road that will have places to put fiber and other things inside with an access port for easy maintanance also they could use all that metro train tunnels to run fiber all over cities that do have them.
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harbingerofdoom (profile), 15 Mar 2010 @ 11:08pm

and why not?
thanks to our currently elected pot of crap we call representatives, there is not a single reason that any ISP should do anything about moving forward and keeping up with other countries.

there are no incentives, there are no penalties, there are pretty much no reasons for anything beyond status quo.
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McBeese, 15 Mar 2010 @ 11:51pm

I'm OK
I live in Dallas.

Verizon FiOS Internet service. Rocks.

AT&T 3G service. Rocks. (Dallas is AT&T HQ, people would be fired if coverage didn't rock around here.)

Clear 4G wireless for all my wifi devices (tablets, netbooks, etc.). Rocks. 4M down, 1M up. No way am I going to pay for a data plan PER DEVICE.

No state income tax in Texas. Rocks. Oops, sorry, off-topic.

Life is good here for broadband consumption.

OH - almost forgot. Verizon FiOS cable TV. Sucks!! Expensive, retarded bundles, horrible DVRs. I think I'm no more than a year away from abandoning CATV offerings in favor of the Internet.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 4:34am

Re: I'm OK
Yeah ... but it's Texas
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DevConcepts (profile), 16 Mar 2010 @ 4:40am

Re: Re:
All I want is a big fat dumb pipe.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 5:56am

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/16/life.without.broadband/index.html?hpt=C1

no hermit left behind.
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Ricky Berlin (profile), 16 Mar 2010 @ 6:50am

Verizon & Future
This fits in with Verizon's recent announcement that it is getting out of the land-line phone business in 14 states and that it has already sold out in 3 other states. Maybe they see the future as entirely wireless.
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Bob Varettoni, 16 Mar 2010 @ 7:10am

Verizon's view
I am a spokesperson for Verizon. Just a few points: Verizon said it would spend $23 billion for FiOS deployment through the end of this year -- and we're meeting that commitment. That's about $22 billion and change more than any other company in America will have actually spent by the end of this year in bringing ultra-fast fiber-based broadband directly to homes.

We have additional commitments to build out FiOS in certain jurisdictions beyond 2010 that we will also meet. Our focus now is on making our FiOS network available for sale -- and selling FiOS services! -- to all the homes we have passed (there's still additional work to be done after a home is passed -- to provide TV, for example, we need a local franchise).

At the same time, we have also invested more than $9 billion in spectrum for a nationwide LTE network -- which will be up to 10 times faster than today's wireless technology. Our LTE spectrum covers the entire lower 48 states plus Hawaii, and will give Verizon customers nationwide bandwidth and coverage, whenever and wherever they need it. We plan to launch our LTE network in 25 to 30 markets in 2010 and cover virtually our entire current nationwide 3G footprint (our "map") with 4G LTE wireless broadband by the end of 2013.
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mark, 16 Mar 2010 @ 7:24am

Hey, Bob, it's nice that you're willing to respond in this space, but: I live in the nation's capitol and can't get your service, even though you advertise it relentlessly in my local media. What you spend nationally is meaningless to me if you're unwilling to do business on my block. I wish you would stop bombarding me with ads for a product I can't buy.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 7:30am

Re: Verizon's view
Can you deliver the FIOS product over 4G network?
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Bob Varettoni, 16 Mar 2010 @ 8:30am

Re: Re: Verizon's view
The simple answer is "no" -- because by definition FiOS is fiber-based and LTE is wireless-based. The broadband capacity of fiber is greater than that of even LTE -- so while you wouldn't expect Verizon to offer, say, "FiOS 3D TV" over LTE, you can expect great download and upload speeds over LTE for mobile video applications... and a mobile Web experience that will rival what we now think of as wireline-based broadband.
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Bob Varettoni, 16 Mar 2010 @ 8:42am

Re:
Mark - I understand... especially your point about advertising. I will let people know here. I wouldn't interpret this as unwilling to do business on your block, though. We just started offering FiOS in DC, where in early 2009 we announced a nine-year buildout commitment.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Mar 2010 @ 9:16pm

Re: I'm OK
and what's the population density in Texas vs California and NY? and how does broadband compare? Texas has a low population density yet competition seems to be helping them have better broadband.
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BearGriz72 (profile), 16 Mar 2010 @ 10:42pm

Re: Re: Re: Verizon's view
And what of those of us that Verizon is abandoning?

Verizon Sells Huge Chunk Of Network To Frontier (Wednesday May 13 2009)
"Frontier Communications will pay $5.3 billion in common stock and take on $3.3 billion in debt in order to acquire Verizon's DSL and landline networks in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin -- and some rural assets in California...
According to the two companies, the deal is expected to take about a year to close." (So about now in other words...)
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Tek'a R (profile), 21 Mar 2010 @ 11:45am

Re: Re: I'm OK
pure overall population density is mostly meaningless when it comes to looking at deployment of products like this.

Texas is a big state. I know, i lived there.
And there are a lot of people in Texas, but the 90+% majority of them live in a few metroplex clusters. DFW, San Antonio, Austin, Coastal, so on.

It is very easy to get service to those people in the cities, and it becomes scary hard to get service to the minority living out in the rural areas.

when Verizon, for example, could build 1 mile of fiber to connect to a thousand people in dallas compared to building 80 miles to connect to 20 people in Dustbowl City, you can se where the focus will lay.
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cwa13000 (profile), 13 May 2010 @ 3:38pm

ivan siedenberg
I work in phila.pa.,verizon has just decided to lay off 12,000 people due to them giving up on wirlines.But don't worry...I'm sure it can't make there customer service and repair time any worse.
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Jake, 20 Jul 2010 @ 3:20am

Small city
This sucks, big time, I'm right on the edge of where Verizon offers FiOS. can't you expand to cover just a few more suburban areas? like say Minden/Nevada?
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Jim, 8 Sep 2011 @ 7:44pm

Cable companies
Fois sucks I had it and went back to cable. I did not like their service and I my service went out once for three weeks. Also they made it sound like I get a free DVR for life and all i need is one DVR. And I can watch it in every room. Well not true in order to watch it in everyroom I need another regular box. Pluse when I got the bill it was $40.00 more then the quoted me. So I kept it for six onths and just did not see that much of a diffrence. So I had called my cable company back and that had an awesome price if I came back. Well i did and Im spending what I was before I got cable which was a it less but I feel more relaxed with my old cable line up. also the customer service blows Verizon away.
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