Verizon encourages customers to pig out on wireless-delivered streaming video.

Despite claims of a looming data usage crisis created by insufficient wireless spectrum, Verizon Wireless is introducing a new app that will encourage customers to find and watch streaming video on their mobile devices.

Viewdini premiers today on the Android platform, and Verizon hopes customers will use it to hunt down their favorite videos from Netflix, Hulu Plus, mSpot, and Comcast Xfinity, all from the Verizon Wireless app.

“We are just seeing a hunger for people wanting to watch video,” Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said in an interview with AllThingsD. “I think this will capture the audience’s imagination.”

If customers use it to stream bandwidth heavy video on a tiered data plan, Verizon will also have the customer’s attention when the bill arrives.

Viewdini, considered one of Verizon’s “key product launches” for the year, does not amount to much on examination. The service does not host videos, it merely indexes them from other videocentric websites. The app will be exclusive to Verizon Wireless, but is not the company’s first foray in the competitive video streaming marketplace.

The Verizon Video app offers streamed video entertainment, but with a twist. Many titles offered by Verizon Video cannot be accessed while on Wi-Fi and require the company’s 3G or 4G network to watch, which counts against your usage allowance.

Mead

There is no indication yet whether Viewdini will have similar restrictions.

While Mead claims the company has several early warning indicators for customers approaching their monthly usage cap, he admits the company hopes to make additional revenue from customers who choose to exceed their allowance and buy additional data.

“We look at it as great flexibility for customers,” Mead called that choice.

While Verizon joins other wireless carriers in calling urgently for additional wireless spectrum, its marketing department does not recognize any wireless data shortage, and continues to introduce new products that encourage their customers to use an increasing amount of data, from which Verizon admits it will earn an increasing percentage of its revenue.

The Russian Federation has now passed the United States in fiber broadband deployment, with more than 8% of Russians now able to subscribe to fiber Internet service delivered directly to their home or building.  The United States is effectively stalled at 8%, with most Americans getting fiber broadband from Verizon Communications, community-owned providers, or a rural phone company co-op. Those are the findings of DSL Prime.

The most aggressive fiber broadband network upgrades are in South Korea and Japan, where between 40-60 percent of homes subscribe to the service, which often delivers speeds of 100Mbps or greater to residential users. But eastern Europe and Russia are also becoming increasingly important targets for fiber broadband manufacturers and vendors, who are selling the glass-fiber cables and network equipment to private telecommunications companies that used to be state enterprises.

The Baltic state of Lithuania has achieved a leadership role in Europe, with almost 30 percent of homes wired for fiber and growing.

Much of the initial fiber broadband buildout in eastern Europe and Russia is ironically the product of former socialist state planning that existed during the Communist era.  A large number of urban residents in the region live in government-constructed multi-dwelling units, part of larger complexes. That infrastructure reduces the costs of wiring large numbers of potential customers, and some providers deploy fiber to the building and use existing copper phone wiring within to reach individual units.  The short distance of copper has little impact, with speeds commonly ranging from 50-100Mbps.

Much like in the United States, urban areas are much more likely to be targeted for fiber than rural ones, and Russia in particular also depends on robust wireless service in some cities with decrepit wired telecommunications infrastructure.

DSL Prime‘s Dave Burstein argues that fiber upgrades are a good idea in the long run, but appreciates technology improvements in both DSL and cable broadband are helping bring higher speeds to consumers as well, so long as providers continue to invest in upgrading their networks.

As uploading becomes more important, no other current technology delivers as much upstream performance as fiber broadband, which can often equal downstream speeds.

Waiting for FiOS

For those who admire the apparent pervasiveness of competition between Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Industries vs. Verizon Communications’ FiOS, the idea the Big Apple has a broadband problem seems a bit ridiculous, particularly if you can’t get your local cable company to pick up their phone and AT&T will only hand you a 1.5Mbps DSL line, if you can get it.

But according to the Village Voice, New York City broadband “sucks,” and it will continue to suck for at least the next eight years.

“Though entrepreneurs in most parts of the city can access a fast broadband connection today, many of those we interviewed said that New York’s telecom infrastructure is well behind where it should be for a city vying to be one of the nation’s two leading technology hubs,” the study notes.

What it comes down to is that New York — despite being the world’s media capital — does not have adequate access or bandwidth to support tech companies’ needs.

For example, some companies might be able to get either FiOS or Time Warner Cable, but not both, which means they can’t have broadband backup.

“It’s like the elephant in the room is that bandwidth here sucks,” one entrepreneur told the researchers. “You should be able to walk into any building and have at least 150 megabit connection available to you. There has to be ways for the city to construct much better bandwidth availability for start-ups.”

Many cited told the researchers that their internet routinely goes down. And startups who want to set up shop in cheaper, industrial districts often can’t, because the cable companies would rather provide service to more lucrative residential areas. Sometimes, telecom concerns are willing to dig up streets and lay cable, but at a hefty price — around $80,000.

That $80,000 bill is handed to a prospective customer and does not come from cable operators’ capital expense fund.

Researchers gave New York a broadband grade of B to B-, which isn’t too bad considering what broadband is like in the mid-south, the midwest, and the rural west. But it doesn’t cut it for helping New York become a bigger tech city.

Waiting for "Business Class"

While Time Warner Cable and Cablevision have wired multi-dwelling units and homes across New York City, cable operators have only recently started to turn their serious attention to corporate business customers.  Time Warner Cable agreed, as part of its franchise renewal deal with the city, to invest $1.2 million per year for fiber connections to commercial buildings yet to be wired for cable. Cablevision, which can be found in boroughs like Brooklyn and out on Long Island, agreed to spend a more modest $600,000 a year for the same purpose.

Time Warner Cable has already warned investors its capital spending on wiring commercial office buildings across the country is increasing as the company sees lucrative new revenue opportunities competing with their usual nemesis — the phone company.

Verizon treats FiOS deployment in New York City as a long, long-term project. There are neighborhoods in Manhattan that can’t wait much longer for the fiber optic network as Verizon increasingly lets its old copper wiring go to pot, leaving some New Yorkers without phone service for weeks.  The city of New York has given Verizon until 2014 to wire the city, and the company appears likely to need those two additional years at their current pace, and that agreement only covers residential properties, not commercial ones.

Robust broadband is essential for many high technology startups and the multi-million dollar data centers that support them. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg considers it a top priority to reduce the city’s economic dependence on Wall Street, which generates considerable tax revenue for both the city and state. High tech enterprises fit that bill. But the city’s broadband grades do not.

“For a city that’s trying to be a tech powerhouse, we need to have an A,” said Jonathan Bowles, the author of the study, “New Tech City.”

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is convinced Verizon Communications is abandoning quality landline service for millions of New Yorkers while diverting money and resources to its more profitable cell service Verizon Wireless.

Last week, Schneiderman blasted the state’s largest landline provider for mounting complaints about poor service that now impact 92 percent of its customers, calling deregulation a failure for consumers and businesses in New York.

“Verizon customers deserve the high-quality service they’ve been promised,” Schneiderman told The Associated Press.

The attorney general reports that the number of customers enduring service outages for more than 24 hours has increased, while landline infrastructure — particularly wiring — is allowed to deteriorate.

Schneiderman suspects Verizon is shortchanging landline service as an increasing number of wired phone customers disconnect service, often in favor of Verizon’s more lucrative cell phone service.  The state Public Service Commission (PSC) fined Verizon $400,000 in March for similar concerns, pointing to the company’s intentional workforce reductions lengthening repair windows and creating repair backlogs in some regions.

Schneiderman’s office filed comments with the PSC requesting changes to Verizon’s Service Quality Improvement Plan, which was originally launched in 2010:

At best, New York’s telephone service market is a duopoly, and contrary to theoretical expectations of market controls, the presence of a single competitor has not in fact prevented Verizon from allowing customer service to continue to degrade. Rather than meet its obligations to provide wireline telephone customers with minimally adequate telephone service, Verizon is continuing to drastically reduce its workforce with the result that the company cannot meet its customers’ repair needs in a timely manner.

Verizon’s management has demonstrated that it is unwilling to compete to retain its wireline customer base, and instead is entirely focused on expanding its wireless business affiliate. It is incumbent on the Commission to take appropriate regulatory action to ensure that customers receive reliable telephone service with adequate repair performance. Therefore, the Commission should modify Verizon’s service plan to ensure customers receive adequate service quality in the future.

Verizon defended its service in New York pointing out the company has invested $1.5 billion in the state for infrastructure, including its FiOS fiber to the home network.  Verizon spokesman John Bonomo questioned Schneiderman’s claim that 92 percent of Verizon New York customers had poor service, noting 98 percent of its landline customers don’t have service problems.

Schneiderman’s highlighting of a $400,000 service fine imposed by the PSC did not account for unprecedented damage from both Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee late last summer, Bonomo added.

But the state’s attorney general notes Verizon’s service problems in New York have been ongoing well before last summer.

Service complaints, charted here from 2008-2011, show a major spike last summer and fall and remain higher than normal.

Schneiderman

“Since at least 2008, Verizon has frequently failed to meet these PSC telephone service standards essential to safe and reliable telephone service,” Schneiderman says. “Even as the number of telephone lines needing to be maintained has dwindled to half those of a decade ago (as customers choose to rely instead on wireless and/or cable telephony), Verizon’s continues to fail to meet the PSC’s service standard.”

Customers on the upper west side of New York City don’t need to be reminded of Verizon’s service failures.  Hundreds of Verizon landline customers in New York’s largest city were left without basic phone service for more than a week, only made worse by the fact Verizon told many of them they’d be without service for at least one additional week while the company worked on repairs.

Phone and Internet service went dead in multiple buildings along Central Park West April 10, but customers wanted to kill when they learned the phone company wanted more than two weeks to get service restored.

“I was like, excuse me, are you serious? Two weeks?” Iram Rivera, a concierge at 262 Central Park West, told DNAinfo.  His building was hard hit by the service outage — 80 percent of the building’s 80 apartments were affected.

“I just don’t get the feeling that there’s much of an appreciation on Verizon’s part that this is a hardship for people,” said Ken Coughlin, who lives on West 87th Street and Central Park West. “There’s no communication, there’s no updates, it’s infuriating.”

The outage only affected traditional landline service and DSL broadband over copper phone wiring. The more modern fiber-optic FiOS network that provides TV, Internet and voice service wasn’t affected, Bonomo said.

Schneiderman notes landline outages have an especially hard impact on small businesses:

In the current recession, the fragile economic condition of many small businesses puts them at risk of financial disaster if they suddenly lose telephone service, and their provider is unable to restore service promptly. Each day that these businesses are without service they lose significant revenues that many simply cannot survive without.

Small businesses depend on functional telephone service to meet the needs of their customers in numerous ways. When customers are unable to reach a business by telephone, they may assume the business is closed and purchase the goods or services they want elsewhere. Restaurants are prevented from giving reservations to prospective customers who call. Many types of businesses depend on working telephone lines for processing credit card charges, and may lose substantial sales by limiting transactions to cash or checks. Professional offices can be prevented from providing medical, legal or accounting services to their clients without working telephone service.

In Schneiderman’s view, the deregulation policies now in place in New York have failed consumers, leaving them with a duopoly of phone providers with insufficient oversight.

For competition to benefit customers with improved service, lower prices, and more innovation, there has to first be a willingness to compete, which is significantly absent from Verizon-New York’s policies and practices.

Rather than robust competition, New York’s telephone market is at best a duopoly, with as many indicators of cooperation between the two providers as robust contest for customers. Furthermore, the actual behavior of consumers in the real world is markedly different from the PSC’s theoretical assumptions about the telephone market.

When a Verizon customer experiences a prolonged service outage or installation delay, the option to switch carriers to a cable provider is of no immediate use. Finally, even if consumers wanted to compare Verizon’s service performance with cable provider alternatives, the lack of available information prevents consumers from making educated choices.

In New York, most customers are served by Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable, or Cablevision.  Time Warner Cable and Verizon recently agreed to cross-market the other’s products and services as part of a wireless spectrum transfer.

Just over a week after Verizon Communications announced it would stop selling DSL service to customers without landline voice telephone service, the company today confirmed it plans to stop selling DSL to customers who live in an area also served by the company’s fiber optic FiOS network.

New customers looking for broadband from Verizon will have to sign up for FiOS to get it.

The announcement came as part of a quarterly conference call with Wall Street investors.

Some consumers looking for the cheapest Internet access packages have gotten them from the phone company, often years earlier, and are grandfathered in at those prices.  Verizon says it does not intend to disconnect existing DSL customers, who can keep the service indefinitely, but will not sell the slower broadband service to new or moving customers.

No exact timing for the new policy to take effect was given.

Verizon’s broadband success story has been with its fiber optic network, which continues to add customers.  The same cannot be said of their DSL service, which continues to lose business to Verizon’s cable competitors, especially in areas where FiOS remains unavailable.  FiOS was designed to protect Verizon’s landline business and it seems to be doing exactly that.  At least 63% of Verizon’s landline-associated revenue now comes from its fiber optic service.

Verizon’s executives have made it clear change is coming to the traditional landline business.  The company has not said what it intends to do with DSL customers in non-FiOS areas but did announce they would decommission pay telephones and discontinue long distance calling cards in the future.