NYC's Verizon audit: "a litany of corporate incompetence"

Capital New Yorkdescribes New York City’s recent audit of Verizon’s FiOS rollout as “a litany of corporate incompetence” and explains how a lack of regulation prevents public servants from addressing consumer complaints:
 

The audit is a litany of corporate incompetence: Verizon has not run enough cable through city neighborhoods to meet its commitments under the 2008 franchise agreement. Its own records say FiOS is “unavailable” at particular addresses despite its claims it is available to all. And even if Verizon agrees to provide you FiOS, it might be more than a year before it’s actually installed.
 

The “biggest question” of the audit was why competition “hasn’t worked out.” Despite the promise that deregulation and competition would drive investment and quality, the reality is that Verizon’s “customer service stinks, and their data speeds are slower than what's available elsewhere in the world.”

In addition to failing their FiOS rollout, Verizon customers complain of poor service with the company’s copper lines -- a common complaint. “In many areas of New York City,” the audit reads, “the legacy copper infrastructure is in such poor condition that copper failures due to weather conditions can cause long delays for service restoration and Commission service quality standards are missed.”

Read the full Capital New York article here, and NYC’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications audit of Verizon’s FiOS service here.

Speed Matters reported on the Verizon audit before, noting Verizon’s pattern of failing to deliver promised services and ignoring customer complaints.

Links:

City FiOS audit shows cable system flaws (Capital New York, July 21, 2015)

Verizon FiOS Implementation Final Audit Report (NYC Information Technology & Telecommunications, June 18, 2015)

CWA urges FCC to address Verizon abuses (Speed Matters, June 28, 2015)

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