FiOS on the North Fork? Not happening, a Verizon company spokesman told RiverheadLOCAL last week.
A planned Nov. 8 rally at Riverhead Town Hall and a lobbying effort to pressure the state Public Service Commission won’t matter, Verizon spokesman John Bonomo said.
“The PSC can’t make us do it,” Bonomo said. “This is a business decision we’ve made. We’re not seeking any new franchise agreements.”
Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter is hosting a public meeting at Riverhead Town Hall this Saturday at 10 a.m. The meeting is being promoted by the Communication Workers of America Local 1108, which represents Verizon line workers, and has been active in lobbying for the eastward expansion of the FiOS network on Long Island.
“The hope is we are going to keep raising the awareness of the public,” CWA Local 1108 executive vice president and political coordinator Michael Gendron said. “We’re going to make sure the Public Service Commission is aware of what the public wants.”
Brookhaven officials held a similar meeting in February attended by more than 500 people. http://www.southshorepress.net/2014/02/05/brookhaven-residents-rally-for-right-to-choose/
Brookhaven officials have been looking to get the FiOs network brought to the rest of the town for years, after Verizon started to install fiber optic cable in some locations several years ago, but pulled out, leaving only about 25 percent of the town with the option of FiOS service.
“The company intended to build out Brookhaven,” CWA Local 1108 executive vice president and political coordinator Michael Gendron said. “I know they were in preliminary franchise agreement discussions with Brookhaven officials.”
Gendron said Verizon, unhappy with its penetration rate in Nassau and western Suffolk, wanted to “cherry pick” more affluent Brookhaven communities for its fiber optic network expansion. Brookhaven officials objected to that approach, he said.
“That puts lower income communities at a disadvantage,” Gendron said. “The internet is a great equalizer,” Gendron said, “especially when you have high-speed internet access right in your phone.”
The Verizon spokesman said the company plans to fully build out each of the 184 communities across N.Y. where it already has franchise agreements. Even after that’s done, Verizon still won’t look to expand eastward in Suffolk County, where its network — with a few exceptions — ends at the Brookhaven Town line. It will “focus on marketing deeper into those communities,” Bonomo said.
Verizon signed a cable TV and internet franchise agreement with the City of New York in 2008.
In its 2008 NYC franchise agreement, Verizon promised to install fiber-optic infrastructure throughout the five boroughs by the end of June 2014. Once the fiber optic cable is in a neighborhood’s streets, Verizon is obligated under the deal to deliver high-speed broadband and television service to any customer who asks for it within six months to a year. Verizon didn’t meet the June deadline and is having trouble delivering the service as promised to homes and businesses in areas where the fiber optic lines have been installed. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140608/TECHNOLOGY/140609898/still-waiting-for-verizon-fios
That leaves residents and businesses in Brookhaven and across the East End with only one option for high-speed internet service, Optimum by Cablevision Systems.
Verizon offers DSL, or digital subscriber line, broadband internet service to telephone subscribers over its copper line network. But its speed does not compare with that of either fiber optic or cable networks.
“Copper is a 1940s technology, maybe earlier,” Verizon’s Bonomo said. “It’s very limiting in what it can do as far as internet service is concerned. But it’s the communications network we have.”
“Competition in the marketplace is good for business and good for customers,” the Riverhead supervisor said. “I’m happy to host this meeting.”
If competition is the concern, Bonomo asked why there’s no pressure from the union or elected officials to bring other cable providers to the area.
“Why just focus on Verizon?” he asked. “Why not pressure Time Warner or Comcast?”
The cable television workforce is traditionally non-unionized. Cablevision Systems’ only unionized technicians are in Brooklyn, where a 260-member workforce joined CWA Local 1109 in January 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/nyregion/cablevision-resists-union-organizing-fight.html Seeking wages on par with unionized Verizon workers and better health and retirement benefits, the unit is still struggling to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the company.
Time Warner’s cable technicians in NYC are unionized; they are represented by Local 3, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Comcast’s workforce is not unionized.
The two cable television giants, which both operate in N.Y. state, announced an intended merger in February and applied to the Federal Communications Commission for approval. Review of that application was put on hold by the FCC last month.
Apart from not having access to the fiber optic system here, Riverhead Verizon customers are suffering because Verizon’s massive investments in its fiber optic networks in NYC and other places mean it is not investing in properly maintaining its copper line network in Suffolk, according to CWA’s Gendron.
Acknowledging that the PSC can’t order Verizon to install the FiOS network across eastern Suffolk, he said the union is hoping to get the PSC to tell Verizon it must meet its obligations with respect to its existing copper wire network.
“Verizon is left with the choice: Do we invest in an antiquated network or do we just go forward with the right network,” Gendron said. Then, he hopes, Verizon will “do the right thing.”
The allegation that the company is neglecting its copper wire network is “just not true,” Verizon spokesman Bonomo said. “We are definitely maintaining it.”
The union’s effort resulted in petitions to the PSC signed by at least 7,000 people last year and so far another 6,000 people this year, Gendron said.
CWA Local 1108/Suffolk represents about 900 Verizon technicians, Gendron said. The telecommunications company’s collective bargaining agreements with CWA and IBEW covering 45,000 workers from Maine to Virginia — signed in 2012 after contentious collective bargaining that extended more than a year beyond the expiration of the unions’ contracts in 2011 and included a two-week strike — expire Aug. 1, 2015.
Striking Verizon workers on a picket line in Riverhead in 2011. (Photo: Peter Blasl)
