Philadelphia City Council holds hearings on Verizon?s FiOS build-out failure

The Philadelphia City Council held hearings on Verizon’s failure to build its FiOS networks to the entire city by Feb. 2016. Verizon was supposed to deliver FiOS access to everyone in Philadelphia in exchange for a city-wide franchise agreement – a deal similar to the one Verizon made in New York, where it also broke its promise to build out its all-fiber service.

“Verizon’s broken promise is not just a technical violation or a near miss,” said James Gardler, president of Communications Workers of America Local 13000. CWA represents represents more than 1,000 workers in the Philadelphia metro area and 4,500 in Pennsylvania. “It appears to reflect flagrant disregard for the obligations the company willingly entered into in 2009. It is worth noting that CWA supported the franchise agreement in 2009, hoping that it would lead to continued employment and the provision of a state-of-the-art broadband service to the people of this city.”

Verizon’s failure to bring its FiOS network to every household in Philadelphia is part of a larger pattern. Verizon broke its 2008 promise to bring FiOS to all of New York City by 2014. According an audit by the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications,  “there are more than 40,000 requests for service pending, about 75% of which have remained outstanding for 12 months or longer,” and a full quarter (23.7%) of NYC households do not have access to FiOS.

Verizon breaks promise to deliver FiOS to NYC (Speed Matters, June 19, 2015)

NYC’s Verizon audit: “a litany of corporate incompetence” (Speed Matters, July 25, 2015)