NYC Threatens To Sue Verizon Over FiOS Shortfalls (arstechnica.com) 44
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: New York City officials yesterday notified Verizon that the company is in default of an agreement to bring fiber connections to all households in the city and could file a lawsuit against the company. The road to a potential lawsuit has been a long one. In June 2015, New York released an audit that found Verizon failed to meet a commitment to extend FiOS to every household in the five boroughs by June 2014. City officials and Verizon have been trying to resolve the matter since then with no success, as Verizon says that it hasn't actually broken the agreement. The default letter (full text) sent yesterday by the city Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) says Verizon has failed to pass all residential buildings in the city with fiber. As of October 2015, there were at least 38,551 addresses where Verizon hadn't fulfilled installation service requests that were more than a year old, the letter said. "Moreover, Verizon improperly reduced, from $50 million to $15 million, the performance bond required [by] the Agreement on the basis of Verizon's incorrect representations that Verizon had met the prescribed deployment schedule, when in fact it had not," the letter said. City officials demanded that Verizon restore the bond and wants a response within 30 days. The default letter also accuses Verizon of failing to make records related to its provision of cable service available to the city during its audit. "Officials say they could sue Verizon unless the carrier shows clear plans for stepping up installations," and that the notice is the first step in that process, The Wall Street Journal reported. The citywide fiber agreement lets NYC seek monetary damages from Verizon if it fails to deliver on the fiber promises.
Re:They can't even cover Rhode Island (Score:5, Insightful)
End Franchise agreements. Confiscate the existing Fiber plant, and install Municipal funded fiber plant, back to a COLO facility and offer all service proivders a seat at THAT (COLO) table. You'll see lots of creative solutions to problems you didn't even know you had..
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Yeah, confiscating all of their assets is a great way to encourage others to do it! What an example you'll be setting for them about the benefits of doing business in your jurisdiction.
I bet you could even pull it off in just five years with the right planning.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, confiscating their assets is a great way to show what happens to companies that don't fulfill their contractual obligations!
Re: (Score:1)
Their assets paid for by our tax dollars and our subscription fees that they were allowed to have by adhering to agreements that they have defaulted on more than once.
As to the benefits of this, the benefits have been shown multiple times over in other places were this allows multiple companies in an area and actually compete over the same lines which leads to better prices and support.
I am amazing what you can accomplish when you actually set up a system where they have to compete and the barriers of entr
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, confiscating all of their assets is a great way to encourage others to do it! What an example you'll be setting for them about the benefits of doing business in your jurisdiction.
I bet you could even pull it off in just five years with the right planning.
That whooshing sound you hear is the patently obvious point sailing right over your head. Seize the cable plant and adopt the public utility model. That will be a great way to encourage others to live up to the terms of the agreements they negotiate, not to mention a clear message to others to not to try similar bullshit in the future. Verizon had their shot, they missed, or more likely never intended to deliver at all. Fuck them and their shareholders. Regulations either have teeth or they don't.
evidently (Score:3)
somebody in the government bureaucracy didn't get paid (enough.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:evidently (Score:4, Funny)
Nah the mayor moved house and found out he couldn't get fibre.
Back up the threat (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Back up the threat (Score:5, Insightful)
File the lawsuit (Score:2)
The threat the city has made is to sue Verizon unless Verizon caves into the city's demands voluntarily.
What I don't understand is why this is even a story on slashdot, nothing has happened until a suit has been filed. I suppose any story about a big evil mobile network provider is good clickbait.
Re: (Score:2)
The threat the city has made is to sue Verizon unless Verizon caves into the city's demands voluntarily.
verizon signed a contract, the city wants to hold them to it.
Lemme know when "the city" grows some balls and actually does hold them accountable.
Imagine if a cop pulled aside you as you were doing 90 in a 55 and said, "Hey! We've been watching you speeding for years. We told you about it back then, and again, and again, and you keep doing it! You're doing it right now! We're seeking for you to stop speeding, or give us a response, within 30 days." That's pretty much what the letter asked for. How is the any more newsworthy than the last time they complained?
Performance bond (Score:2)
Given that NYC claims Verizon failed to perform, shouldn't NYC have already made claim to that $50 million performance bond (before Verizon had a chance to "reduce" it, which I don't understand how they can unilaterally do anyway)?
Re:Performance bond (Score:5, Interesting)
Verizon claimed they'd met standards that would allow the reduction of the $50 million to the $15 million and give them $35 million back. Apparently NYC agreed to it without doing any actual audit that the standard was met.
In fact, it seems they didn't do an audit to determine whether "every household in the 5 boroughs" was able to get Fios service until a year after that was supposed to be complete, and from there it took another 15 months to call them on it. And this is probably someone's full time job.
Re: (Score:3)
But do you understand how long it took for that person to go to every residence in NYC to check?
Re: (Score:2)
But do you understand how long it took for that person to go to every residence in NYC to check?
I know you're joking, but of the 8+million residences, I'm really surprised there are only 30-40k properties with service requests that haven't been fullfilled. Per the doc:
* 2014-12-31 : 31,313 addresses with initial non-standard installation requests for service exceeding 12 months
* 2015-10-09 : 38,551 addresses...
* today - they don't have any more up to date info listed. The last count is from nearly a year ago!
That count went up, so I'm guessing that has almost nothing to do with "passing all households
Re:Performance bond (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that I (and noone else discussing this here) has actually read the contract, there's no way to say for certain.
That said, I infer that the contract reduces that performance bond when certain milestones are met. Verizon thinks it met them, NYC disagrees.
Who is right? Well, most likely the party with the best lawyers. Because this case is going to be about specific words in specific places in the contract. And without being a lawyer, none of us are even going to understand the arguments....
Re:Performance bond (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that I (and noone else discussing this here) has actually read the contract, there's no way to say for certain
There's a link to the contract in the summary, reposted here [nyc.gov]. (That copy doesn't include the appendices, which are here [wordpress.com].)
That said, I infer that the contract reduces that performance bond when certain milestones are met.
Correct. The bond reduction schedule is on page 42 of the contract, and references performance benchmarks in Appendix F.
Interestingly, it says the bond was to be reduced to $15 million after meeting the 2011 performance numbers. It lists three more step-downs after that ($10 million, $5 million, and $1 million) that Verizon apparently didn't claim.
So a few things: First, this has been brewing for several years, and probably just boils down to whether Verizon met the 2011 benchmarks, not any of the earlier step-downs. Thus, if they didn't meet the 2011 benchmarks, the bond theoretically would only go back up to the 2010 level, $25 million, not the full $50 million. And the letter only claims 38k addresses in NYC are without service. That's a vanishingly low percentage, and according to Appendix F they only had to provide 66% coverage across NYC in 2011.
Given all that, this default letter strikes me as more of a media ploy than a reasonable expectation of legal recourse.
GrumpyCat (Score:2)
Good!
"Pass" (Score:2)
NYC: "Ok, we agree then, you'll pass every house."
Verizon: "Yup, we'll 'pass' every house. Every address shall be 'passed', you got it."
NYC: "What's the deal Verizon, not every address can get service!"
Verizon: "Yeah and? That's not what pass means. We passed everywhere, that doesn't actually mean we have to offer service where we passed."
NYC: "But that *is* what pass means, that they can get service."
Verizon: "That's not our
Fiber to the sidewalk (FTTS) (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently Verizon's strategy for laying fiber and building the next generation of Internet infrastructure for US consumers is to lay fiber buried underneath their street or sidewalk. Because you see, consumers don't actually want to CONNECT to the fiber; they're perfectly content with just the idea of it passing down the street in front of their house.
And for this, let's collect many billions of dollars in taxpayer money and funnel it to this corporation. I'm sure this will pay huge dividends for our GDP as our consumers become more connected to the global economy... through their $10/GB 4G LTE connection.
Fuck Verizon.
Re: (Score:2)
You're either trolling, or you have no idea what you're talking about. The problem is that Verizon is not hooking up even those who have requested -- no, *begged* -- for FiOS for *years*, consistently, with their complaints reaching as high as regional executives. If they were just not actively hooking up those who didn't request it, that would be fine. But they are not actually providing service to *many* households that they pass, and there is nothing that a consumer without a lot of money and influence c
the old google (Score:2)
meh Verizon is a state protected asset, nothing to see here citizen move along
In NYC, Verizon/Time Warner == Trump/Clinton (Score:2)
Nobody likes either, they both play dirty, they're sufficiently well-connected and well-funded to avoid the rules applying to them, and they make promises they never had any intention of really keeping.
Related Links (Score:2)
For once, the Related Links seem relevant.
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Explosions, multiple shootings, bombs... Channel Verizon customers' angst much? Ok, they're not Comcast. Maybe the bombs are out of line...
Whipslash, the gerbil that updates Related Links died. You might want to get a new one.
Re: (Score:2)
This is just a small scale, well publicized version of the grander nation-wide problem with the Fed giving money to the likes of Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, TWC/Charter
Re: (Score:2)
Are ass-holes like you totally incapable of reading!
Reply All covered the details (Score:2)
Reply All had a good episode on this subject ( https://gimletmedia.com/episod... [gimletmedia.com] )
What was interesting is that Verizon has run the cable through the city - but customers just need to call and ask to have it hooked up. So they met the requirement. And that is where the problem comes - Verizon doesn't necessarily own those last few feet. Plus they strung it in places where people are most likely to afford it. Or not.
Deep issue. Give the show a listen.
FTTH for everybody is uneconomical (Score:1)