Verizon workers attend a mass rally at Verizon headquarters on July 25, 2015. (Image: CWA)

If Verizon management and its unionized workforce cannot come to terms on a new contract by this Saturday, up to 39,000 Verizon landline workers from Massachusetts to Virginia will begin a strike industry observers predict could last for weeks.

Verizon Communications has increasingly shifted attention and investment away from its wireline networks, which include copper landline service and its FiOS fiber to the home network. The workforce of line technicians, installers, and engineers that are trying to keep Verizon’s wired networks running well are under pressure to accept concessions the company says reflect the reality of a dwindling number of landline customers and competition for its FiOS network.

As of Monday, representatives for the Communications Workers of America District 1, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 2213 and IBEW New England Regional committees continued to call out Verizon for insisting on a list of benefit and job security reductions:

• Eliminating protections against layoffs and mandatory transfers/temporary reassignment to different Verizon service areas, including those in other states;
• No Cost of Living increases;
• Adding Sunday as part of the basic work week;
• Possible elimination of corporate profit-sharing;
• Eliminating caps on overtime and limiting payouts to 1.5x regular pay;
• Reduce the notice given to workers if Verizon has plans for any major technological change (ie. getting rid of rural landlines, selling FiOS, moving customers to wireless, etc.);
• Reductions in medical benefits including higher deductibles, co-pays, premiums, and co-insurance;
• Eliminating the union’s ability to negotiate retiree health care benefits, often at risk in other companies;
• Eliminate the lump sum pension option and introducing new restrictions on pensions and new fees on 401K plans;
• Eliminate accidental disability coverage;
• Eliminate family care leave.

Verizon spokesman Rick Young countered that Verizon has offered workers a straight 4% wage increase but admitted many existing contract provisions are decades old and no longer reflect current business reality. Young added Verizon union network technicians are paid $160,000 a year on average in total compensation, including salary, pension and health care. But Verizon management is insistent on cutting back the company’s health care costs, noting Verizon successfully reduced the cost of covering nonunionized workers to about $16,700 per family while union workers still receive coverage worth $20,000-24,000 a year per family.

Union officials counter Verizon was able to manage that by slashing non-union employee benefits and forcing workers into high deductible medical plans that offer lower levels of coverage. In 2011, Verizon fought its unions over the same issues, including a company demand workers accept health care plans with a $5000 out-of-pocket deductible before medical coverage kicked in. That led to a contentious two-week strike.

“Negotiations are going poorly,” Communication Workers of America’s Bob Master told CBS News this week. “We are far apart.”

With 86 percent of union members voting to strike if negotiations fail, it seems an almost certainty workers will be on the picket lines by next week if negotiations remain unsuccessful. Workers believe Verizon’s profits have been shared mostly at the top through executive bonuses and ever-increasing compensation packages while ordinary workers are asked to forego benefits and job security.

In solidarity with Verizon customers, the unions are also fighting to force Verizon to further build out its FiOS fiber network to more customers and stop allowing its copper network to deteriorate to the point of unusability.

“On the one hand, Verizon refuses to build its high-speed FiOS network in lower-income areas and on the other, they are systemically ignoring maintenance needs on their landline network,” said Ed Mooney, vice president for CWA District 2-13, which covers Pennsylvania to Virginia.  “This leaves customers at the mercy of a cable monopoly or stuck with deteriorating service while Verizon executives and shareholders rake in billions.”

Trainor

A highly critical audit of Verizon’s FiOS rollout in New York City found that Verizon failed to meet its promise to deliver high-speed fiber optic Internet and television to everyone in the city who wanted it, claims the union.  During its negotiations for a city franchise, Verizon promised the entire city would be wired with fiber optic cables by June 2014 and everyone who wanted FiOS would get it within six months to a year.  The audit found that despite claiming it had wired the city by November 2014, Verizon systematically continues to refuse orders for service.  The audit also found Verizon stonewalled the audit process.

The CWA also contends rates for basic telephone service have increased in recent years, even as Verizon has refused to expand their broadband services into many cities and rural communities, and service quality has greatly deteriorated. Verizon’s declining service quality especially impacts customers who cannot afford more advanced cable services, or who live in areas with few options for cable or wireless services.

But the company is not hurting for money, argues union officials.

“Verizon made $9.6 billion in profits in 2014 and reported $4.4 billion in profits just in the 2015 second quarter alone,” said Dennis Trainer, vice president of CWA District One in a statement.

“In 2012, during a time of great economic stress, the company came to the union and after 15 months of bargaining, including mediation, reached an agreement that the company said they had to have to survive,” wrote an official updating workers represented by CWA District 2-13 (Mid-Atlantic region) in a bargaining update. “Since then, every year they have made billions of dollars in profits and not one executive officer at Verizon has made a single sacrifice like they told us they needed us to do. The latest insult being [Verizon CEO] Lowell McAdam getting a 16% raise in one year while we have paid more in healthcare, lost pensions for new hires, froze pensions for current members, made significant changes in incidental absence payments and made other changes to our contract that have resulted in stressful working conditions and excessive discipline to our members.”

CWA officials in District 1, representing New York and New England workers, were more blunt in responding to an unsolicited email sent to every worker signed by Marc Reed, Verizon’s executive vice president and chief administrative officer.

“Reed suggests in his e-mail that he has a concern for you and your family,” wrote one official. “Ask yourself, if he really gave a shit about you and your family why is he proposing to gut the contract that provides for you and your family.”

Vice President Biden in Rochester, N.Y.

Vice President Joe Biden and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo today announced Rochester, N.Y., a city notorious for its slow broadband, will be the home of the $600 million Integrated Photonics Institute for Manufacturing Innovation, a hub supporting the development of photonics — technology that powers everything from fiber optic broadband to laser surgery.

Rochester, the home of dramatically downsized household names like Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch and Lomb, could see thousands of new high technology jobs created in the western New York city to develop new products and services that depend on light waves.

“The innovation and jobs this institute will create will be a game changer for Rochester and the entire state,” said U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, (D-Rochester). “This is a huge win that will shape our region’s economy for decades to come.”

Slaughter reportedly spent three years working to bring the center to Rochester and helped secure $110 million from the Defense Department and another $500 million in state and private sector funding to finance its development. The project could prove transformational for a community ravaged by downsizing, most dramatically exemplified by Eastman Kodak, which had 62,000 workers in Rochester during the 1980s but employs fewer than 2,500 today.

Today, Rochester’s largest employers are no longer manufacturers. Health care service providers now lead the way, including the University of Rochester Medical Center/Strong Health (#1) and the Rochester General Health System (#3). Upscale grocery chain Wegmans calls Rochester home and is the community’s second largest employer. The bureaucracies that power the Rochester City School District and Monroe County Government are also among the area’s top-10 employers.

Despite the job shifts, the fact 24,000 workers in the region are already employed in photonics-related jobs may have been a deciding factor in selecting Rochester for the center.

“The photonics center we are now bringing to Rochester will harness the power of the Defense Department and the prowess of Rochester’s 24,000 employee-strong photonics industry and focus it like a laser beam to launch new industries, technologies and jobs,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

Employers, small business start-ups and workers moving into the region are likely to be considerably less impressed by Rochester’s incumbent telecommunications service providers. Although institutional and large commercial fiber networks are available to those with deep pockets, with the exception of Greenlight Networks, a local fiber to the home retail overbuilder providing fast gigabit fiber Internet to a tiny percentage of local residents, the area’s fiber future remains bleak.

Time Warner Cable, by far the largest Internet provider in the region, has left Rochester off its Maxx upgrade list, leaving the city with a maximum of 50/5Mbps Internet speed. Frontier Communications still relies on 1990s era DSL service and the anemic speeds it delivers, evident from the company’s poor average speed ranking — 11.47Mbps — less than half the minimum 25Mbps the FCC considers broadband.

Rochester is hardly a broadband speed leader in New York State, only managing to score in 332nd place. (Image: Ookla)

The performance of the two providers has dragged Rochester’s broadband speed ranking to an embarrassingly low #336 compared with other communities in New York. Suburban towns in downstate New York enjoy more than twice the speed upstate residents get, largely thanks to major upgrades from Verizon (FiOS) and Time Warner Cable (Maxx). But even compared with other upstate communities, Rochester still scores poorly, beaten by small communities like Watertown, Massena, and Waterloo. Suburban Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany also outperform Rochester.

In contrast, in Raleigh, N.C., home to the Power America Institute — another federal manufacturing center — broadband life is better:

• Raleigh is a Google Fiber city and will receive 1,000/1,000Mbps service for $70 a month, around $20 more than what Time Warner charges for 50/5Mbps with a promotion;
• Raleigh is a Time Warner Cable Maxx city with free broadband speed upgrades ranging from 15Mbps before/50Mbps after to 50Mbps before/300Mbps after;
• Raleigh is an AT&T U-verse with GigaPower city with 1,000/1,000Mbps service for $120 70 a month.

This article was updated to correct the pricing of AT&T U-verse with GigaPower in Raleigh, N.C., with thanks to reader Darrin Evans for the corrected information.

The New York State Public Service Commission today notified Charter Communications its merger application with Time Warner Cable will require a “more detailed review of the petition,” which means a final decision is unlikely before the end of this year or more likely 2016:

We have received the petition of Time Warner Cable Inc. and Charter Communications, Inc. dated July 2, 2015 seeking authority, pursuant to Public Service Law Sections 100, 101, and 222, to transfer a controlling interest in certain Time Warner Cable telephone systems, cable systems, franchises and assets to Charter and to issue debt. On July 10, 2015, a Supplement was received seeking further approval under PSL § 99(2) for a transfer of Time Warner Cable’s telephone franchises.

According to Sections 99 and 100 of the Public Service Law, such an application is deemed approved after ninety (90) days of filing unless the Commission or its designee notifies the petitioner in writing, within the time period, that the public interest requires the Commission’s review and its written order.

[…] A preliminary review indicates that the public interest requires a more detailed review of the petition. Therefore, pursuant to Public Service Law Sections 99,100, and 101 we are informing you that the Commission will review your petition and will issue a written response in this proceeding.

The PSC has set a deadline for comments on the merger of Sept. 16 with reply comments due two weeks after that. But on-the-record regional forums will also be held across the state to gather more comments from consumers and stakeholders. Locations of the forums have not yet been announced.

As with Comcast’s merger proposal, a significant review period is expected as the merger of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable will have profound implications on the entire state. Outside of Long Island and a few boroughs in New York City, Time Warner Cable is by far the most dominant provider serving every major population center in New York.

Two letters have already been added to the record about the merger.

The Rochester Business Alliance filed this letter in “strong support” of the proposed deal, quoting almost entirely from press releases and merger advocacy documents issued by Charter Communications. Time Warner Cable is a “partner member” of the group, better known as the Regional Chamber of Commerce.

“The Rochester Business Alliance advocates for an environment that will promote the success of its members and the local economy,” the group writes on its website. “We help our member companies and their employees stay connected to the issues as well as to the people who can make a difference.”

Michael Kaplan is the first consumer to weigh in on the merger, and he is opposed.

“Just like the Comcast we now have to write to you to ask that you reject this merger,” Kaplan writes. “The only people who benefit from this are the three or four people who will get very rich from it. The rest of the people you are supposed to be protecting? We get much higher cable/Internet rates because they are taking on so much debt that it’s obvious they will have to raise rates significantly. How does this help New York State?”

Kaplan also doesn’t believe Charter’s promise not to usage cap its broadband customers because the commitment expires after three years:

They also promised not to cap or throttle broadband users for three years. Is that a joke?

Time Warner has (due to public backlash) never capped or throttled their Internet. They have not placed data caps on their service which everyone knows is a cash grab.

If you are politically forced into doing this than at the very least Charter MUST keep the current arrangement Time Warner Cable has forever. FOREVER. No data caps, no overage fees, no throttling. Never.

Robert Marcus stands to make over 90 million dollars from the sale of Time Warner. Since his inception as CEO his mission has been to sell the company so he can cash out. He should improve service, equipment, work for us.

We the people are getting sick and tired of it and we are especially of a CEO who is only thinking of his end. What he will personally make. He doesn’t care on how every single person in NY State will get screwed.

One of the few “white space” wireless broadband projects deployed in the United States to deliver broadband to rural residents has won the “Most Innovative Project” award, presented during the 2015 New York State Broadband Summit.

The collaborative project between the Town of Thurman, Rainmaker Network Services and Frontier Communications to offer high-speed Internet access to around 65 residents is seen as a successful private-public collaboration to address rural broadband issues in sparsely populated areas.

Frontier Communications provided the trunk line for the service and a $200,000 state grant helped acquire the infrastructure to power the wireless network, which works over unoccupied UHF television channels. The 12 currently subscribing households pay $50 a month for broadband, plus a $292 equipment fee when they sign up. Plans to reach more households have been delayed by a handful of town board members opposed to the project and residents who refuse to grant easements to place equipment on private property. The project had to be re-engineered to workaround some of these difficulties.

Despite the delays, there are estimates another 40-50 households will be able to get the service by the end of summer.

Customers love the service, which is faster than traditional Wireless ISP technology, and comes without speed throttling or data caps.

“By implementing an innovative white space network, Thurman found a way to provide Internet service to a rural area without the need for a large amount of costly infrastructure,” said David Salway, executive director of the New York Broadband Program Office. “Where there was once only dial-up and satellite service, Thurman citizens will have reliable high-speed Internet at affordable rates.”

 [flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Carlson Wireless Technologies Rural Connect 3-2015.mp4 [/flv]

Carlson Wireless Technologies explains how next generation white space wireless broadband can be a cost-effective solution to the digital divide. (3:41)

Verizon customers in New York are paying artificially higher telephone rates justified to encourage Verizon investment in FiOS fiber to the home upgrades most New York State communities will never receive.

Starting in 2006, the New York Public Service Commission granted Verizon rate increases for residential flat-rate and message-rate telephone service and a 2009 $1.95 monthly increase for certain residence local exchange access lines to encourage Verizon’s investments to expand FiOS fiber to the home Internet across New York State.

“We are always concerned about the impacts on ratepayers of any rate increase, especially in times of economic stress,” said then-Commission chairman Garry Brown in June 2009. “Nevertheless, there are certain increases in Verizon’s costs that have to be recognized. This is especially important given the magnitude of the company’s capital investment program, including its massive deployment of fiber optics in New York. We encourage Verizon to make appropriate investments in New York, and these minor rate increases will allow those investments to continue.”

After Verizon announced it was suspending further expansion of its FiOS project a year later, the company continued to pocket the extra revenue despite reneging on the investments the PSC considered an important justification for the rate increases.

“The commission allowed Verizon rate increases in 2006 and 2008 based, in significant part, upon the assumption that the revenue from the higher rates would lead Verizon to invest in fiber optic lines, presumably for the benefit of wireline customers,” argues a coalition of state legislators, consumer groups, and unions. “Serious questions exist regarding the extent to which funds may instead have been used to build out the network for the benefit of wireless customers. Publicly available reports, while fragmentary, suggest that Verizon may have included construction costs for significant benefit of its wireless affiliate to be included in the costs of the Verizon New York wireline company, thus adding to its costs and tax losses.”

Almost a decade later, Verizon is still receiving the extra revenue while some public officials complain Verizon is not meeting its commitments even in cities where Verizon has introduced FiOS service.

Last week New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered all future city contracts with Verizon be reviewed and authorized by City Hall. City officials complain Verizon promised in 2008 it would make FiOS available to every city resident no later than mid-2014. A year later, the service is still not available in some areas.

Verizon has blamed access issues and uncooperative landlords for most of the delays, but city officials are not happy with Verizon’s explanations.

“They [Verizon] have to demonstrate to us that they are good corporate actors if they want us to use our discretion in ways that benefit them,” the mayor’s counsel, Maya Wiley, told the New York Post.

Meanwhile, upstate New York residents now indefinitely bypassed by Verizon FiOS want a refund for the rate increases that were supposed to inspire Verizon to keep expanding fiber optics.

“Verizon has made at least $250 from me and every other upstate customer for nine years of broken promises,” said Penn Yan resident Mary Scavino. “Not only don’t they offer us fiber optics, we cannot even qualify for DSL service from them. If you can’t get Time Warner Cable in the Finger Lakes, you often don’t have broadband at all. It is them or nothing. Where did our money go?”

And, we’re done. Verizon FiOS availability map also showing areas later sold to Frontier.

Fred, a Stop the Cap! reader in the city of Syracuse, thinks the PSC should immediately revoke the rate increases and force Verizon to refund the money to customers who will not get upgraded service.

“It’s not like Verizon cannot make money in a city like Syracuse,” writes Fred. “It’s clear the CEO thinks even more money can be made off Verizon Wireless customers off the backs of landline customers, and the PSC continues to look the other way while they do it.”

Verizon claims it has lost money on its copper wireline network for years, something the PSC seems to accept in its 2009 press release announcing rate increases:

The rate increases will generate much needed additional short-term revenues as the company faces the dual financial pressures created by competitive access line losses and the significant capital it is committing to its New York network. For 2008, Verizon reported an overall intrastate return of negative 6.7 percent and a return on common equity of negative 48.66 percent. The current trend in the market is toward bundled service offerings, and Verizon believes the proposed price changes to its message rate residential service will encourage the migration of customers towards higher-value service bundles.

That migration costs New York ratepayers even more for telephone service. Verizon’s website prompts customers seeking new landline service to bundle a package of long distance discounts and calling features that costs in excess of $50 a month before taxes, fees, and surcharges. Bundling broadband costs even more. Verizon does not tell customers ordering online they qualify for a bare bones landline with no calling features and pay-per-call billing for less than half the cost of Verizon’s recommended bundle.

This Verizon discount calling program known as “Message Rate B” is only available to Washington, D.C. residents who have been threatened with disconnection or have an outstanding balance owed to Verizon. It costs $7.29 a month and includes 75 local calls.

More than three dozen New York State legislators also question whether Verizon’s “losses” are actually the result of Verizon’s purposeful “misallocation of costs” — moving expenses to the landline business even if they were incurred to benefit Verizon’s more profitable wireless division.

“The result has been massive cost increases for consumers, especially for the garden-variety dial tone service at the bottom of the technological ladder,” argues their 2014 petition. “For example, in New York City […] since 2006 the price of residential ‘dial tone’ service (one line item on the bill) went up 84%, while other services, such as inside wire maintenance, went up 132%.”

The petitioners claim there is evidence to dispute Verizon’s assertion its legacy copper network is as big of a money loser as the company suggests, thanks to “cooking the books” with accounting tricks. The petitioners want the PSC to order a review of Verizon’s books to be certain consumers are not being defrauded or manipulated.

Community leaders were arrested in 2013 during a protest outside Verizon’s NYC headquarters (at 140 West Street at the West Side Highway) to out the company for its history of avoiding taxes. (Image: Vocal NY)

From 2009-2013, Verizon New York reported losses of over $11 billion dollars, with an income tax benefit to Verizon Communications of $5 billion, and significant tax revenue losses for state, city and federal governments. Verizon New York has apparently paid no state, city or federal income tax for the last five years or more.

If Verizon is using accounting tricks to inflate the cost of legacy landline service while reducing costs to its wireless service, it could prove a win-win for Verizon and a lose-lose to ratepayers. Verizon could use its “losses” to argue for greater rate increases for landline customers while further reducing its tax obligations. On the wireless side, Verizon would enjoy praise from Wall Street analysts and shareholders pleased by the company’s apparently effective cost controls.

The best evidence of these techniques in action are the statements of company officials which suggest wireless costs are being paid by wireline customers.

Verizon’s chief financial officer, Fran Shammo, indicated to investors that Verizon wireline construction budgets are charged for expenses related to wireless service.

“The fact of the matter is wireline capital — and I won’t get the number but it’s pretty substantial — is being spent on the wireline side of the house to support the wireless growth,” Shammo told investors at Verizon at Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, Sept. 20, 2012. “So the IP backbone, the data transmission, fiber to the cell, that is all on the wireline books but it’s all being built for the wireless company.”

“It seems to me Verizon Wireless, already considered the Cadillac of wireless companies, doesn’t need a hidden subsidy from Verizon paid for by ratepayers all over the state,” Fred argues. “It seems very curious to me Verizon pioneered a large regional fiber optic upgrade that just a few years later it considers too costly to continue expanding, even as AT&T, Google, Comcast, and other companies are now entering the fiber business. A Public Service Commission that wants better broadband for New Yorkers ought to get to the bottom of this because it just doesn’t look right.”