A Verizon Sale Question

[lastone]

Here's a question I haven't seen answered. Verizon is not selling the internet service....so how will we get the service thru the new wire owner and at what cost?

Verizon is offering big deals here for internet, only to sell the wires out from under you.

[The Interpreter]

The Verizon proposed sale DOES include the DSL business.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Veri ... ocomment=1

In fact, Frontier is trumpeting it will do more to market DSL and make it more available (they do not trumpet the fact they usually want to cap service and raise prices...)

[fearpeddler]

it doesnt matter either way, the phone lines in most of this state are crap as it is....

[CoolBreeze]

I listened to the owner of Fibernet the other day on a talk show.

He said that Verizon has rotten copper wires all over the area that will have to be replaced. He also said that many of the poles were in the same shape. This is why poles broke that shouldn't have during the big snow. He went on to say that Verizon was never willing to maintain their lines like they should have, pocketing the money they saved. He said that Frontier was always much easier to deal with than Verizon.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

The Union employs have pulled out all the stops in order to stop the sale to Frontier. They are scaring people with the idea that they wont even be able to dial 911 half the time. The funny thing is that customers of Verizon have been complaining for a damned decade now over the lousy service provided, and the Union knows this. That's why they've resorted to outright lies to prevent the sale.

[DJSHOCKLEY]

I listened to the owner of Fibernet the other day on a talk show.

He said that Verizon has rotten copper wires all over the area that will have to be replaced. He also said that many of the poles were in the same shape. This is why poles broke that shouldn't have during the big snow. He went on to say that Verizon was never willing to maintain their lines like they should have, pocketing the money they saved. He said that Frontier was always much easier to deal with than Verizon.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

The Union employs have pulled out all the stops in order to stop the sale to Frontier. They are scaring people with the idea that they wont even be able to dial 911 half the time. The funny thing is that customers of Verizon have been complaining for a damned decade now over the lousy service provided, and the Union knows this. That's why they've resorted to outright lies to prevent the sale.

Yeah, I've seen their TV scare ads... Does them more harm than good...

[AmpedNow]

Verizon doesn't give a damn about WV. And since wireless is the future, they definitely don't give a damn about the landlines.

Even on the wireless side, their WV expansion has been painfully slow. They should have had voice and 3G blanketing the state a long time ago. But they have deemed everywhere else more important than here.

The biggest losers are the people of WV, as usual... We are years away from any kind of FIOS-type service now.

Whether or not they stay or leave, the wire infrastructure will continue to crumble. The only hope is for some of that Obama stimulus money to build a fiber optic network throughout the state and slowly phase out the copper.

[Tom Taggart]

Copper works when the power goes out.

Cable dies. Fiber dies.

[cgarison]

it doesnt matter either way, the phone lines in most of this state are crap as it is....

You have no clue about crap phone service. Move to Philadelphia where the twisted pair copper was run back in the 1920s and has not been updated in many parts of the town. Sure. It works fine for voice, but it is not worth a crap when trying to pass a DSL signal through it because it is worn out and has too much resistance.

I hate to say this, but until Verizon replaces every stand of copper with fiber in Philadelphia county, Comcast is the only choice for service.

FWIW: I am at my fiance's place with Verizon FiOS and the speed war between Comcast and Verizon is making the service here as good the Comcast in the city.

[Oldiesdude]

3.0 Docsis

Common DOCSIS 3.0 speeds are listed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

[Mike]

Try having WV Fibernet as your primary ISP.

Sucks ass.

Even though they suck up to Champion because we are one of their largest clients, they are like any other telco, as any IT professional can tell you, ALL telcomms follow these rules:

1: Overpromise
2: Underdeliver
3: Overcharge

I do credit them though for a crisis we had last month... Our fiber link was broken (somewhere on 5th Avenue). They fixed it overnight. I was actually put in a hotel monitoring the situation all night (ie: they had my iphone number).

Since we put the fiber link in, ALL our communications, from data to voice goes through it.

And as usual, this happened on my way back from the worst hellhole on Earth, Morgantown. How I despise that city. It may even be a worse cesspit than Louisville.

[bluegrassin']

"I listened to the owner of Fibernet the other day on a talk show.

He said that Verizon has rotten copper wires all over the area that will have to be replaced. He also said that many of the poles were in the same shape. This is why poles broke that shouldn't have during the big snow. He went on to say that Verizon was never willing to maintain their lines like they should have, pocketing the money they saved. He said that Frontier was always much easier to deal with than Verizon."

So why doesn't Fibernet place their own cable and poles? Because they don't want to spend the money to do it. They piggyback off of everybody else and really don't have any overhead. They also use Verizon employees to work their own orders.

[bluegrassin']

Verizon has spent money in WV. They have upgraded in a lot of areas to provide high speed internet. Try going into some of these backwoods hollers and building pole lines. It isn't easy and it's not cheap. You don't see companies like Suddenlink going out to far from the cities because they don't have to and they don't want to because it's not cost effective.

As far as the union goes they have their problems but when you look at other Verizon deals that went bankrupt they do have a point. Frontier promises a lot and they tout their 92% coverage of DSL but that's easier to get done when they have a lot less area to cover than Verizon does.

[Hoosier Daddy]

Verizon has spent money in WV. They have upgraded in a lot of areas to provide high speed internet. Try going into some of these backwoods hollers and building pole lines. It isn't easy and it's not cheap. You don't see companies like Suddenlink going out to far from the cities because they don't have to and they don't want to because it's not cost effective.

As far as the union goes they have their problems but when you look at other Verizon deals that went bankrupt they do have a point. Frontier promises a lot and they tout their 92% coverage of DSL but that's easier to get done when they have a lot less area to cover than Verizon does.

Well stated. Thank you.

[AmpedNow]

That still don't explain their slow wireless rollout throughout the state. Much of the state still isn't covered.

It's why myself as a 6 year customer, I finally gave up on them. I'll never go back either.

Verizon can stick it.

[cgarison]

He said that Verizon has rotten copper wires all over the area that will have to be replaced.

Yep. And it is really starting to catch up with Verizon. Instead of replacing the worn out copper, they sell it to companies like Frontier and move to fiber and wireless.

So when the fiber gets old, will Verizon dump it as well to keep from having to replace/upgrade the technology?

[lastone]

I have Verizon's "High Speed Internet". Good if all you want to do is download. My upload speed is 138 kbps. (Verizons test) Worthless. Can't use it for what I wanted. At some point I gess I'll go Comcast. No other choice here.

[Big Media]

I, too, had Verizon DSL for a little over 12 months. The price was right. I paid only $15 bucks for a megabit. But, it was totally worthless for anything other than browsing the web. Streaming video was impossible and most days, it wouldn't allow me to maintain a steady, reliable connection to our corporate remote server. It was total crap.

[Big Media]

From redOrbit

http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology ... index.html

AT&T To FCC: No More Landlines!

Posted on: Thursday, 31 December 2009, 13:10 CST

In a 32-page filing with the FCC last week, AT&T asked that the requirement that it support a landline network be repealed, allowing them to move entirely to VoIP.

This could be troublesome for the 1 in 5 Americans who don’t use a cell phone or VOIP line, and still use the old fashioned landline.

However, AT&T is claiming that the cost of maintaining a landline network is hurting their business.

AT&T said, "The business model for legacy phone services is in a death spiral. With an outdated product, falling revenues, and rising costs, the plain-old telephone service (POTS) business is unsustainable for the long run."

AT&T says that 18 million Americans use VOIP phone service, and that by the end of next year, 24 million will use VoIP powered phone service.

So far, the FCC has been reluctant to mess with any sort of landline regulations, but AT&T is a political giant that spends millions on political lobbyists every year.

AT&T said over 700,000 landlines are being cut every month.

[sportsvoice]

Dang, with so many schools going to VoIP, it's hard enough for me to get working sports remotes. I'd at least like to have a real POTS line at the studio end.

[AmpedNow]

They are correct. Copper is a lame horse waiting to be put out of its misery. There is zero future in it, esp with so many people "cutting the copper" every month.

Fiber and wireless 4G is the future of everything.

I see why Verizon wants to dump them off and move on... There's no money in it. The 20% of the population left who still lives in the stone age is not enough to justify rebuilding and maintaining a national copper network, unless it becomes government subsidized, which really would be a waste of money.

The next government infrastructure project needs to be national broadband -- both wired and wireless. Esp in rural areas.