Verizon – Serve Us !
p2pnet.net News View:- Verizon on Shutesbury Leverett Broadband Committee DSL campaign:
“We are not amused.”
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Tales From a Broadband Black Hole
Some towns don’t have DSL, much less fiber
By Karl Bode Broadband Reports
The rural towns of Shutesbury and Leverett in Massachusetts are the kind of broadband black holes the FCC doesn’t talk much about. These are the American nooks and crannies incumbents deem unprofitable to serve, yet ironically fight tooth and nail should such places choose to wire themselves. Shutesbury and Leverett have been trying for years to get DSL service, something neighbors as close as 300 feet away already enjoy.
Locals have been innovative, using home-brewed solutions where cables hooked to business landlines are strung through the woods, and tupperware is used as weatherproofing for wireless gear. Ultimately a group was formed to tackle the issue, dubbed the “Shutesbury Leverett Broadband Committee” (SLBC).
The group has been sending letters to Verizon headquarters, insisting that local demand is high for Verizon services. “It does not seem right that we remain almost completely unserved by DSL while, in several parts of the state and country, Verizon is already replacing DSL with better technologies (like fiber-to-the-home),” the most recent letter complains.
The group has also been plastering these signs on local Verizon phone boxes and poles, in the hopes of drumming up local attention for their DSL fight. It apparently worked, as this week the Daily Hampshire Gazette published a report on their quest to get wired.
Local town official and SLBC chairman Aron Goldman tells us Verizon wasn’t amused by the grass roots campaign. The same evening the Gazette article was published, “the signs you see in the article and on our web site were replaced with this weird looking box, behind which is tucked a business card of a Verizon Local Operations Manager,” he notes, providing this photo.
The “weird box” is an old DSL splitter attached via magnets, placed there likely as a joke by local technicians. Apparently the message is that if you don’t like the sign removal and the joke, (obviously within Verizon’s right, since it’s their property), you can call and complain. Something the towns have been doing for several years.
Goldman says his town will continue pressuring Verizon to provide service, but they are also eyeing municipal broadband. “We are still trying to get it together to apply for the USDA Rural Utility Service loan,” he says. “We are also still trying to figure out the business model, cut through the wimax hype, and pressure regional incumbents to fill in our gap.”
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July 16th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
why are they fighting to have DSL? they should be fighting for cable ot satellite, both of with are faster and cheaper.
idiots.
July 17th, 2005 at 5:44 am
Satellite isn’t cheaper.
July 17th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Yes but he makes a good point about cable. DSL and cable are about the same for most people. I used to use DSL, but I found contrary to their “dedicated” bandwidth promises, my transfer rate varied according to time of day. In general it was noticeably slower than cable, and I would have interruptions. But I guess it depends on what neighborhood you live it as well.
Either way more choices is good because not one particular company can lock you in.
July 17th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
Cable is much better, but in my community not cheaper. Verizon came in to offer DSL service and it’s awful. they’ve undercut all of Charter’s prices and people here are flocking to it cause they want cheap. forget quality. I own a computer store and get so many calls from verizon customers who can’t get connected and can’t get service since verizon offers no onsite technical support. They just offer someone from India to talk with.
July 18th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
This is Aron Goldman writing. There are several reasons we are bugging Verizon and not Comcast. First of all Comcast has been very communicative. Government relations people, marketing people, construction and engineering people, and others from Comcast have engaged us and considered building out in our area in some depth. By contrast, Verizon is a brick wall. The corporate dysfnction and lack of interest in communities they serve is profound. Second, Verizon already has a physical network in our two towns and Comcast does not (although they do in the surrounding towns). All VZ needs to do is strategically place eight or so $20K DSL switches at remote terminals and our problem is solved (and VZ’s reputation is salvaged). Needless to say, it would be a multiple of that for Comcast or anyone else to build a new network. There are others, but those are the key reasons. Thanks for your interest!
July 18th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
Verizon is only interested in “serving” people in an area where they can reap exorbitant profits. Like most other multinational companies, they will fight tooth and nail to prevent any kind of competition (even future competition). They do not even want to pay American employess to do technical support. Instead they prefer to hire low paid slaves. If Verizon refuses to provide service to these people then they have no right to prevent these customers from serving themselves.
July 19th, 2005 at 3:58 am
hi aron. this is the original “why” poster writing.
i still don’t understand why you’re fighting to have something that is basically obsolete, as far as its desireability and usefulness.
as you say, you’ve got a much better response from the cable company who seems willing to put in the network. why bother pressuring verizon to do something they don’t want to do, especially when you could use your time and resourves getting a cable network running? it fust doesn’t make sense to me. you can’t beat a dead horse (verizon), so why not just move on into the 21st century? dsl is a step backwards. let verizon stay there while you move forward.
PS: sorry about the “idiots” comment, but i do think it is a bit idiotic to fight for something that’s useless when you can do much better.
July 19th, 2005 at 9:40 am
It is in the best interests of a country when the people in rural areas are connected to the various utilities and have a good standard of living. Typically the companies will only want to run their utilities in cities where there is a greater profit margin due to the population density. Public regulation would encourage companies to provide universal service to customers regardless of their location, but the FCC classifies telco DSL and cable broadband as an information service, so it is not as strictly regulated as regular telephone service. Which means that they won’t provide it to you unless it is profitable. It also means that for broadband, there currently is no equivalent of the universal service fund that exists for telephones to allow for the urban areas to subsidize broadband in the rural areas. See this article for some information on that:
http://www.legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=546
For people in rural areas there will hopefully be developments of broadband over power lines. Also some municipalities are starting to realize that they don’t have to beg to give people their business, and instead are running their own broadband services as a municipal service. Read about that here:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050718-5106.html
June 2nd, 2006 at 2:25 pm
That’s not true. If Verizon dosn’t start putting offices in other countries, even the poor ones like india they will go under. Competition is forcing them to do this. Other countries are putting up offices like Verizon and if Verizon refuses to do this they will over come Verizon by being able to offer cheaper rates to the customers. BY building other offices they are not taking away work from Americans they just arn’t adding to it