Is Verizon No Longer Betting On The Future?

Predictions

from the that-would-be-bad dept

Back in 2003, we had written about how Verizon’s CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, was betting big on future technologies. It was in response to a Business Week profile that oddly positioned the idea of installing fiber-to-the-home as being a huge risk. Lots of investors were against it, because it was expensive. But if you looked at where the market was really heading, you could see that it would position Verizon way ahead of the competition. Broadband keeps getting faster. While other companies were focusing on minor incremental improvements, Verizon wanted to leapfrog them all — and has done a damn good job of it. In many of the markets where Verizon FiOS is now offered, the competition is left in the dust.

But, now, it sounds like the bean counters with a shortsighted quarterly focus may be winning out. Broadband Reports is noting that Verizon is basically giving up on any more FiOS implementations. If you’re in an area that’s not covered, don’t expect Verizon to show up at your door with a fiber optic cable any time soon. In fact, they’re using the “threat” of not installing fiber to try to get more cash from the government:

But according to long-time industry analyst Dave Burstein, Verizon’s essentially cutting and running on additional deployment plans, leaving a very large chunk of their footprint on last-generation DSL and copper-based voice networks.

Burstein tells Broadband Reports that he doesn’t see Verizon expanding any further (with the exception of major cities where they’ve signed franchise agreements) unless they get money from Uncle Sam. “They want to get on the gravy train, although I think the new, less competitive leadership is the primary explanation,” says Burstein when asked why. Seidenberg, the driving force behind the first wave of FiOS, is on his way out — and his replacements aren’t quite as bullish on angering investors for the sake of this whole “future” thing.

Of course, they can do that when there isn’t any real competition on the horizon. We can hope that Google’s toe dipping into high speed broadband turns into a bigger deal (at which point Google becomes the disruptive future-looking company instead of Verizon), but there’s still not much of an indication that the company is planning to ever roll broadband out on a widespread basis. In the meantime, of course, other countries that have much greater competition are also enjoying much faster speeds. And, rather than dealing with that, the FCC is talking to puppets (literally) about protecting kids from the evils of broadband. And we wonder why we’re so far behind other countries in broadband speeds.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fios, high speed
Companies: fcc, verizon