October 7, 2008
Verizon FiOS Deal Sent to D.C. Council
As we reported in August, the District is moving closer to ending Comcast's virtual monopoly over cable television service in the city. Today the D.C. Office of Cable Television announced that a franchise agreement negotiated with Verizon for its fiber-optic service has been submitted to the D.C. Council for review.
Don't go running to Comcast and telling them where they can shove their notoriously bad service, though. According to the press release, if the D.C. Council gives the go-ahead before the end of 2008, it will take as little as a year or as much as three years before any District neighborhoods are hooked up to Verizon's all-in-one FiOS service. And even then, the service will be limited to a number of neighborhoods on opposite ends of the city -- Barry Farm, Brightwood, Cleveland Park, Crestwood, Fort Stanton, Friendship Heights, Historic Anacostia, Petworth, Shepherd Park, Sheridan, Tenleytown, Van Ness and Woodley Park. (Talk about geographic and demographic extremes, huh?) Many of the District's remaining neighborhoods may not see service until 2014, including Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Shaw and the Southwest Waterfront.
A hearing before the Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs, chaired by Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), is to be scheduled before the agreement is submitted to the full council for a vote. We're pulling for the agreement to be passed, not so much because we love Verizon, but because any type of competition in the District's cable television market has to be a good thing. The question of the day is how many lobbyists Comcast might now send over to the Wilson Building to convince the Council either to sit on this or outright reject it.
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Funny, you'd think that they'd want to wire up the most densely populated areas first, even if it costs more to get the cables installed. I can see the headache that it causes. For FiOS, Verizon installs new fiber optic lines to each individual customer... so I wonder how in the world that will work in apartment buildings?
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From what I hear, the fiber is coming from Maryland, so it makes sense on wiring up the outer ring neighborhoods first. I'm sure that there will be more logistical issues trying to run cable in the older and more densely packed downtown neighborhoods.
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"We're pulling for the agreement to be passed, not so much because we love Verizon, but because any type of competition in the District's cable television market has to be a good thing."
Agreed, and agreed. I've personally had far worse experiences with Verizon, but Comcast is certainly reputed to be horrendous (and their customer service representatives have always struck me as about as intelligent as cave mold). Hopefully competition will spur both to improve service and/or lower prices.
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Verizon; mining for your copper.
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Holy crap. I just watched Verizon's video about its installation process for apartment and condo buildings. Bottom line: The installation process is a building manager's nightmare and apartment dwellers won't be seeing FiOS for a loooooong time.
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If that list is accurate, then the negotiators at Verizon and the DC Office of People's Counsel are not just idiots, they are INSANE. Why the hell are they not offering service DOWNTOWN, which has a hugely higher concentration of internet and cable users per square mile than any of these first-round neighborhoods?
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Okay... I am not a technical expert or anything but here is how I understand it...
FiOS uses Fiber optic cable to deliver very high speeds. Where the fiber ends, so does the high speed.
In single family residential units you can run fiber all the way from the street into the house relatively easily and go straight to your modem/router etc.
With an apartment/office building or any multi tenant building you will have to run fiber to each individual unit. This is a BIG deal. Currently most apartment buildings (as an example) have a room where the cable and phone lines come in from the street. There are then "distribution panels" separate that out to each unit. This is why if you live in a building with only Starpower from the street it may be a hassle to get Comcast (or vice versa) depending on who paid for the installation of the cable runs from the central room to the units. Some buildings got the cable providers to cover the cost of running coax cable from the central rooms to the apartments by one provider or the other and there can be contractual issues with this. We went through this in my building. When I moved in we only had Starpower and we had to lobby Comcast to come in!
So this is probably why those neighborhoods are initially targeted (in addition to the fact that the fiber is/maybe coming from MD) and why they would not initially go into areas with more density.
Make sense?
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Hmm, what ever happened to those shiny new condos in Near Southeast (love that one) that advertised 1st FIOS in DC?
Assuming that they need to wait for the "deal" to go through, the time will come quickly, as astutely pointed out by JDland.
Given this, I am most surprised that Capitol Hill proper did not make this list for rollout anytime soon, whereas Historic Anacostia did.
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Hoorah! First-round neighborhood. Mama loves living in an outlying 'hood.
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goddamnit, you forgot bloomingdale! :)
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Burying fiber is no simple task. This will take forever, for good reason.
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FYI to all you v.Fios prospects. not sure it's still true but it used to be that when a customer sealed the deal in MD & VA w Viruson the fios installation pak included removal of your CO lines. This meant that you were locked into to whatever Viruson services are available to you unless you went satelite. I think an alert consumer can force their hand and demand your copper lines remain untouched.
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IIRC, an alert consumer can badger the tech into leaving the lines, but they are owned by Verizon and I wouldn't be surprised if they go around at some later date to collect that unused copper.
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I live in an apartment in Arlington and I have FIOS. I could still switch back to Comcast if I wanted to (and I don't, at all).
The building was outfitted with fiber all at once; for us it runs inside the molding at the top of the hallway wall. When we ordered FIOS, they just brought that into the house like you would any other wire or cable, then hooked it to the existing copper connection. It wasn't the quickest process, but it wasn't an ordeal either. It's so much better than Comcast, and the pricing is an improvement as well. I pay roughly the same for more channels (in the basic package, plus I got Showtime/Starz/Encore/TMC/etc.), better customer service (but still not great), and faster, more reliable internet.
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I can't imagine that FIOS is going to be run to apartment buildings and additionally run from the main pipe to each unit. That seems unnecessary and way to cumbersome. It'll get split into different lines just like the comcast is. I can't see anyone losing much speed over the 100 yards of coax the data has to travel within your building. Mind you, I guess that could mean that everyone in your building has to switch to Verizon to make that work.
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Politburo, let's be more specific 'cuz i don't think we are in disagreement. They own the co lines under the street and can do what they want; They (maybe) share ownership of the lines from the street to your house but cannot do what they want legally without your permission. When given the chance, they will yank the CO lines in your house which they do not own.
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I to live in an apartment in Arlington and have had FIOS for about 16 months now. Installation was an all day affair but I assume they have improved that time by now. Overall, its totally worth it. I don't care the Verizon pulled the copper wires because I've been landline free for almost eight years now. Verizon's TV service is great although they have been adding so many channels its gotten kinda ridiculous although many of these are duplicates in the form of HD or Spanish language channels.
Setting up TiVo to work with the VZ box was a test because I was an early customers but its a breeze now. FIOS internet is fast and stable so I have no complaints. My one complaint is with the Motorola boxes Verizon uses. These things are terrible, well maybe not terrible but they are kinda slow and both my boxes have little glitches that annoy me every now and then. Overall, great service.
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It's good that you like it now, I hope that continues for you. I'm always looking for options and saving money is really important to me.
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I don't think we're in disagreement either. I was just saying that you may be able to convince the tech to leave the lines, but that doesn't mean you're in the clear for good. I could be mistaken but my understanding is that the phone company owns everything on their side of the box, and you own everything on your side (I imagine it's a little more complex for apartment buildings).
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Yeah, I thought all those new stadium condos/apts in SE were pre-wired for FIOS. My house is, but that's because we can't fucking wait for FIOS. Except we're in Cap Hill...If I have to wait another six years...Those Jenkins Row people had better let DC Access put a dish on the top of their building because Comcast is driving me crazy!