Add Pittsburgh To The List Of Cities That Say Verizon Ripped Them Off

from the maybe-you-should-read-your-contracts dept

You can add Pittsburgh to the growing list of towns, cities and states that claim Verizon is ripping them off. Verizon, of course, froze its FiOS fiber expansion years ago, instead focusing its attention on more profitable (read: capped) wireless service. The company did continue to expand FiOS in a number of east coast cities (Washington, Philadelphia, New York), agreeing to full city fiber expansion in exchange for sweetheart franchise deals, tax cuts, and/or subsidies. But as cities like New York have found out, Verizon's definition of full city fiber upgrades probably doesn't match yours.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto has started noticing that huge swaths of Pittsburgh haven't been upgraded, despite the city signing a franchise agreement with Verizon that called for uniform FiOS coverage. Peduto was one of fourteen mayors who recently wrote Verizon's CEO in a futile attempt to get the telco to give a damn about its rotting, taxpayer-subsidized DSL networks. Peduto's now considering legal action after Verizon failed to meet its obligations:

"We have an agreement with Verizon that, over the course of several years, the entire city would be provided with FiOS, and it was the agreement that allowed them to start putting their lines in the public right of way. They have now broken that agreement," Peduto said. "They do not have the city finished, so now we need to seek the damages that were agreed to through the contract. At this point, I'd have to talk with our law department."

As with New York's belated realization that they'd been swindled, the problem is that these cities signed these deals without reading them. Most of these contracts include oodles of fine print that let Verizon claim that homes "passed" with fiber (several blocks away) are the same as being "served" by fiber, or let Verizon pay a modest fine for missing deployment goals. As such, Verizon was quick to highlight that it met the terms of the deal, because technically -- it probably had:

"Verizon sent a letter to the City confirming it is in compliance with the terms of the franchise agreement and that with certain exceptions allowed under the franchise, there are no residential areas of the city where Verizon does not offer cable service. In addition, Verizon is scheduling a meeting with the City in the near future to explain its accomplishments."

While hindsight certainly helps, cities that don't want to be ripped off should either learn to read their contracts, or avoid doing business with companies with a generation of documented, sleazy behavior. Pittsburgh leaders in particular should have paid close attention to Verizon's multi-billion dollar swindle of Pennsylvania years earlier, in which Verizon promised ultra-fast fiber broadband in exchange for billions in subsidies, then just threw money at the state legislature and regulators to convince them to forget the obligation ever existed (Verizon did the same thing in New Jersey).

Of course that's just it; most politicians are so cash compromised they saw the warning signs but just didn't care, leaving the mess for somebody else to clean up (or ignore). And in Verizon's case, billions in undeserved subsidies across thousands of miles have left a fairly massive mess.

Filed Under: broadband, fiber, fiox, pittsburgh, promises, subsidies
Companies: verizon