Still waiting for Verizon FiOS in New York City? Are you annoyed that your neighbors have impressive broadband speeds from an all-fiber network while you suffer with DSL or cable broadband from Time Warner or Cablevision? Your landlord may be the problem.

While cities upstate clamor for Verizon’s fiber upgrades, FiOS has gone unappreciated and unwanted by more than 40 building owners either blocking the company from entering their properties or ignoring repeated letters from Verizon requesting permission to begin upgrades. In many instances, Verizon has tried to make contact since 2010 with no success. Some building owners want extra compensation (sometimes to the extreme) before they will grant permission. Others don’t want the phone company performing work inside their buildings, period.

Now Verizon is appealing to the New York State Public Service Commission to ask for their intervention.

Verizon has the right to install cable television facilities, regardless of the landlord’s objections, under Section 228 of the New York Public Service Law, which states: “No landlord shall interfere with the installation of cable television facilities upon his property or premises ….”

Verizon has promised it will bear the full cost of the installation of its equipment, wiring, and other facilities to offer the service, as well as indemnify the landlord for any damage caused by the installation work.

In April, Verizon was criticized by New York City public advocate Bill de Blasio for falling behind schedule providing access to FiOS in low-income communities.

“Five years into one of the biggest franchise agreements issued by the city, roughly half of homes still have no access to fiber network connections—most of them concentrated in low-income areas like Upper Manhattan, the South Bronx, Western Queens and Central Brooklyn,” said de Blasio.

The public advocate added:

Under Verizon’s 2008 franchise agreement, all New York City residents are supposed to have access to fiber optic networks by June 2014. As a benchmark, the contract required the company to reach more than three-quarters of City residents by the end of 2012, but according to data released through the New York State Office of Information Technology Services, only half of New York City’s 3.4 million housing units had access to fiber broadband services at year’s end—putting the company far behind schedule. Brooklyn and the Bronx lagged furthest behind, with only 40 percent and 46 percent of household having access to fiber, respectively.

de Blasio

Verizon and the Bloomberg Administration dispute de Blasio’s findings, noting fiber upgrades often depend on surrounding infrastructure. Where overhead wiring predominates, Verizon FiOS is available nearly everywhere in New York City. In other areas, Verizon says it is meeting its obligations and points to landlord impediments for slowing down FiOS expansion.

But de Blasio’s maps of FiOS availability do depict a pattern of preference for FiOS service in areas where higher income residents live. In areas where average annual income is below $20,000 annually, there are obvious service gaps. Neighborhoods like Washington Heights, High Bridge, Astoria, Woodside, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick have been largely excluded from FiOS to date, according to de Blasio.

Verizon’s franchise agreement with the city only requires the company to make service available to buildings, not necessarily within them. A landlord can delay Verizon’s entry into a building or the company could choose to prioritize some buildings over others for service.

With large sections of New York covered by multiple dwelling units like apartments and condos, some could find themselves without FiOS service for several years, particularly if a property owner decides to make life difficult for the phone company.

Among the latest who have:

On May 24, Verizon notified the PSC the following property owners had complied with their request to conduct a site survey inside their buildings and were requested to be dropped from the list republished above:

• Sama Los Tres LLC – c/o Metropolitan Realty Group
• Lenoxville Associates – c/o Metropolitan Realty Group
• 2816 Roebling Avenue LLC
• East Village Gardens
• 194 Bleecker Street Owners Corp.
• US Manhattan II Housing Corp.
• 40 Renwick Street LLC

All Arcadia, N.Y. town supervisor Dick Colacino wanted was for Time Warner Cable to consider using some of their profits to expand their cable system by one or two roads a year to offer service where it has earlier refused to go.

Time Warner Cable’s response? No.

But Time Warner might turn that “no” into “yes” if customers offer to cover the cable company’s estimated cost of $22,000 per overhead mile to extend cable service down ignored rural roads. Underground wiring costs much more.

Every year, elected officials in just about every small town and village get an earful of complaints from bypassed residents who cannot get cable broadband service.

Arcadia (pop. 14,900) is a small community in Wayne County, east of Rochester. Time Warner Cable dominates western and central New York, with cable service from Albany west to Buffalo. In Wayne County alone, Time Warner is the only cable provider in the 23 largest municipalities. But the company has routinely skipped over potential service areas it considers not worth a wiring investment. That leaves bypassed residents with one choice for broadband — Verizon Communications, which has not expanded DSL service in the area for some time.

The New York Public Service Commission has mandated that cable service must be available to any area where 35 homes per mile are located within 150 feet of the road.

Time Warner representative Chris Mueller says the cable operator has already cut that benchmark to 20 miles per home, but areas remain that do not meet even that reduced standard. Without an appropriate return on investment within a certain time frame, Time Warner Cable won’t wire those areas for service.

Colacino told Mueller he was very unhappy with that decision and intended to pursue the matter at franchise renewal time, possibly in coordination with other communities that also have a number of bypassed residents. A community can negotiate for changes during franchise renewal talks, but in almost every case, the incumbent cable operator holds the strongest position, knowing a community looking for another provider will be unlikely to find one willing to serve.

Colacino has battled with the cable company since at least 2010 because of complaints from area residents and businesses who cannot get service.

That year, a Time Warner Cable government affairs representative offered Colacino a novel solution to the problem — agree to refund collected franchise fees to Time Warner Cable, after which the company would consider using the money to expand service to more roads in Arcadia.

The only problem with that solution is that it is illegal.

“You can’t do that,” town attorney David Saracino responded. “It’s an unconstitutional gift of public monies.”

“I will be dead in the ground before Verizon gets around to restoring my phone line, and I have been their customer for 72 years,” says Irene, 95, one irate now-ex Verizon customer in New Jersey.

She, like many others, lost her Verizon landline during Hurricane Sandy and has waited for its return ever since.

“She has the patience of a saint, but if Verizon was in charge of admitting people beyond the Pearly Gates, there would be a line stretching endlessly across the heavenly clouds,” shares Irene’s daughter Agnes.

Irene and her late husband had their telephone hooked up by Verizon’s predecessor three days before Pearl Harbor. For the non-history initiated, that was Dec. 4, 1941.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941 a Day of Infamy. Irene’s family calls Oct. 29, 2012 “The Day After Infamy” after Hurricane Sandy slammed ashore in the northeast and wiped out phone service up and down the tri-state coastal area. She is still waiting for her dial tone to return on her 1972 rotary dial phone.

“Everyday I pick it up just to see if there is anyone there, and of course there isn’t,” Irene tells Stop the Cap! “I used to worry about the cat knocking the phone receiver on the floor, but it does not make much difference anymore.”

Irene cannot understand why Verizon is allowed to get away with such shoddy service.

“Just a few years ago, if your phone was out for three days you would have a supervisor apologizing and sending repairmen out even if their supper was waiting on the table getting cold,” Irene remembers. “Those days are over I suppose.”

Irene lives with her daughter in a home that escaped the worst of the storm, but unfortunately her phone service was not so lucky. Verizon has not provided fiber optics in her part of New Jersey yet either, so FiOS is not an option.

“You call Verizon and they are very apologetic on the phone and keep writing up service calls, but unfortunately nobody ever comes and nobody will tell us anything,” Agnes said. “We even tried praying, but Verizon answers to a different God.”

Irene’s great-grandchildren visit with cell phones in hand and cannot understand why Irene still bothers with her home phone, and the family purchased her a cell phone for Christmas to use in the interim but Irene has thrown it in a drawer.

“My phone has been with me since Richard Nixon was in the White House and it is all I have ever needed or wanted,” Irene says. “Agnes will answer the cell phone and hand it to me but the sound on it is terrible, like everyone is in the shower when they are calling.”

Agnes also dials outgoing calls for Irene, and her grandchildren helped her compose the e-mail sent to Stop the Cap! asking if we could help.

“My kids told me Verizon has installed these wireless boxes and screwing them into the wall and I don’t want that,” Irene insisted. “I just want them to fix the phone line and leave it be.”

Irene adds she has paid The Phone Company more than her fair share during the last seven decades.

But during a recent emergency family meeting, a decision was made to deal with a half-year of the “Verizon Problem” once and for all. After corresponding with us, they are signing up for Comcast phone service instead.

“The man at Comcast said I could keep my current phone and I don’t have to have an ugly box screwed into my wall, which suits me fine, but they should know I don’t care for their prices or all of that nonsense they put on the television.”

Comcast installed the family’s phone service yesterday and all is well, at least until the cat knocked the phone off the hook again.

Irene asked her last name be omitted for privacy.

Verizon Voice Link: The company’s landline replacement, works over Verizon Wireless.

The New York Public Service Commission has granted limited approval for a Verizon Communications plan to replace traditional landline service on the western half of Fire Island with a wireless voice service some users complain is unstable and unreliable.

Verizon claims its landline network on Fire Island has been damaged irreparably in places, and argued it needed to immediately deploy a wireless alternative before the arrival of thousands of tourists on the island, a popular summer destination.

On May 3, Verizon asked the commission to approve the use of Voice Link, which provides fixed wireless phone service, anywhere in the state if the company can prove there is an equal competitor or if existing copper-based facilities are damaged or too costly to upgrade.

Stop the Cap! reminded local politicians, union representatives, and consumer advocates Verizon’s CEO earlier promised it would decommission its copper wire networks in rural areas in favor of wireless, mostly for financial reasons. The New York State Attorney General’s office took careful note of McAdam’s commitment to abandon copper in their objection letter to the commission.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam in 2012:

The vision that I have is we are going into the copper plant areas and every place we have FiOS, we are going to kill the copper. We are going to just take it out of service and we are going to move those services onto FiOS. We have got parallel networks in way too many places now, so that is a pot of gold in my view. And then in other areas that are more rural and more sparsely populated, we have got LTE built that will handle all of those services and so we are going to cut the copper off there. We are going to do it over wireless.

Verizon’s efforts to rush a tariff change without adequate public notice or formal hearings brought complaints from affected customers, unions, and area politicians.

The Communications Workers of America called Verizon’s emergency “self-made.” The company could have begun repair work on Fire Island as early as last November, but instead only came to regulators earlier this month with its Voice Link proposal, while much of the western half of the island remains out of service.

CWA officials are concerned Verizon is using Hurricane Sandy as an excuse to carry out its broader agenda of abandoning rural New York’s landline infrastructure in favor of wireless service.

“Playing on sympathy for the plight of customers whom it has left without service for more than six months, Verizon proposes to implement broad, generic rules that go to the core of its obligation to serve,” said CWA vice president Chris Shelton.

The union considers Verizon’s wireless alternative less adequate than the wireline facilities Verizon wants to abandon. The CWA wants the PSC to study Voice Link’s performance during times of peak cellular usage times, power outages, adverse weather, and inadequate reception.

Thomas Barraga, a legislator in Suffolk County, says his constituents with Voice Link service are already unhappy with its performance and reliability.

“Residents and business owners who had Voice Link installed after Sandy say the connection is unstable and unreliable, and doesn’t provide for DSL Internet or fax service,” Barraga wrote in a letter to the PSC.

“Internet service is so much a part of everyday life it should be consider a basic service and they should be mandated to provide this as well,” writes Fire Island resident Robert Gonzalez. “They should provide this for the same fees and usage rates as they had previously been charging.  As of today they are price gouging.  Prior to Sandy we paid approximately $50 per month for unlimited Internet access.  Now they are putting low limits on our usage for the same $50 per month with severe penalties for going over.  You can opt for higher usage plans at a much greater cost and they are not offering an unlimited plan.”

Stop the Cap! also continues to hear from Fire Island residents about their dissatisfaction with the service. Among the newest complaints we have received:

• “It doesn’t work with collect calls and you cannot dial “0” for operator assistance;”
• “I have to dial 10 digits for all calls, seven digit dialing no longer works even though it did before;”
• “Call Waiting and Caller ID often do not work, and my unit does not ring for incoming calls about 30% of the time and people have to keep calling me back;”
• “When you attempt to take a call when on the line with someone, you cannot get them back after answering a new call;”
• “I cannot use this with my home alarm system at all and the monitoring company keeps notifying police because they think my phone line was cut;”
• “If we had a major storm with three days of power being out, Verizon’s claim Voice Link will work for two hours without power means I would have to feed it up to 72 ‘AA’ batteries, costing more than what the phone line costs me every month;”
• “What does this do to our future? It makes us second class citizens without access to the Internet except through very expensive wireless capped usage plans that cost much more.”

The PSC ruled that allowing Verizon to deploy Voice Link on Fire Island during the peak tourist season will make sure adequate phone service is up and running as quickly as possible. But the commission also made it clear it is unwilling to approve Verizon’s request to extend the service further into rural New York without a thorough review of its performance and customer reaction.

Verizon FiOS is off limits to rural customers. Wireless voice and satellite broadband is in your future.

Verizon Communications has big plans for its “miraculous” wireless home phone replacement which will soon find itself in rural homes across Verizon’s service area as part of a larger plan to dismantle rural America’s wired telephone network.

Just as company executives promised more than a year ago, Verizon wants to transition rural customers to fixed wireless phone service that could mean the end of wired broadband for millions of Verizon customers still using DSL.

Verizon senior vice president Tom Maguire told Communications Daily Voice Link is Verizon’s answer for customers it cannot easily transition to fiber optics. He is thrilled about the prospects of getting rid of deteriorating copper networks in favor of an inexpensive wireless alternative.

“I’m super jazzed about this because I think it will be good for everybody,” he said. “I think it’ll change a lot.”

For rural Verizon customers, the changes could be profound, dramatic, and not exactly a win-win scenario:

• No more wired phone service, which means medical monitoring, many home security systems, and inexpensive dial-up service that all rely on landline technology will be rendered unusable;
• No more unlimited use DSL service, no business broadband service, no credit card processing or other electronic business transactions that depend on a wired connection;
• No enforced quality of service standards, rate oversight, or guarantee of access to quality voice service;
• No prospect of advanced fiber optic FiOS services, including high bandwidth video and broadband.

Verizon is making it clear Fire Island and the New Jersey Barrier Island are just the first steps towards the retirement of copper, either in favor of fiber optics in high profit/low-cost areas or wireless in rural areas not worth upgrading.

Maguire claims Fire Island residents did not want the company to tear up yards or streets to replace its damaged copper wire network with newer technology like fiber. But Fire Island residents and administrators tell Stop the Cap! they were never asked. Instead, residents are being told Voice Link is likely their only option for traditional phone service on the western half of the island, and some customers are unhappy they will never get FiOS broadband upgrades Verizon says are financially untenable to provide.

Verizon has quietly tested Voice Link in Florida, giving customers the option of keeping their wired service or switching to the wireless alternative. But the test may have been stacked in Voice Link’s favor, as the choice was given to voice-only customers having chronic service problems with Verizon’s deteriorating copper wire network.

Going forward, many rural customers may not have a choice. For those who want Internet access, Verizon isn’t promising its wireless network is up to the task. Their suggested alternative?

Verizon’s solution for rural broadband.

Get a satellite dish.

Maguire acknowledged Voice Link customers won’t be able to fax or do certain activities, but he said the telco never pretended they would. Verizon won’t be offering data services with Voice Link, but if Fire Island customers want more options, they can potentially choose satellite, he said.

Maguire believes that customers living with a deteriorating copper landline network will gravitate quickly towards a wireless phone replacement.

Verizon arranged a blind test of Voice Link for 40,000 customers in another company’s territory with unbranded devices. When the copper wire network performed normally, customers preferred the quality of traditional landline service. But after it rained, the poorly maintained network made all the difference.

“The copper sounded like hell, it was noisy and static-y,” Maguire said.

Maguire did not say if Verizon blind tested whether customers preferred traditional landline service, Voice Link, or its fiber optic FiOS network.

Verizon hopes to begin introducing its Voice Link service in other markets as early as June.