More Cities Getting Fiber-Optic TV Service

By Aman Batheja, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Dec. 13–Verizon Communications announced the first batch of North Texas cities that will have access to its fiber-optic television service Monday after the service’s September debut in Keller.

The company’s television service, FiOS TV, is now available to Verizon local phone customers in parts of northern Fort Worth near Keller (also known as the Alliance area), Flower Mound, northern Carrollton, Coppell, north-central Irving, and central Lewisville, said Bill Kula, a company spokesman.

About a dozen other area communities will get access to FiOS TV sometime in January, he said. The company plans to ultimately offer the service in 21 North Texas cities by the end of 2006, Kula said.

Fiber optics, bundles of thin glass strands that transmit information via pulses of light, allow the transmission of voice, video and data services through one connection. That allows phone companies like Verizon and AT&T to bundle telephone, Internet and TV services in one package.

San Antonio-based AT&T, formerly SBC, also plans to roll out cable-TV service across fiber optics, but it is behind Verizon in its deployment.

Verizon won’t release numbers on how many TV subscribers it has picked up in Keller, but Kula said the service has been popular enough to suggest that consumers will be interested in FiOS TV in these new areas.

“Our phones do not stop ringing for FiOS TV in Keller,” Kula said. “We’re expecting a very good response in these additional markets.”

Verizon’s aggressive rollout could pose a threat to cable providers Charter Communications and Comcast. Except for north Fort Worth, all of the areas where Verizon is launching FiOS TV this week are areas where Comcast is a major cable provider, Comcast spokesman Jim Gordon said.

“We’ve stepped up the competitive climate, and we fully expect to see continued rebuttals from both Charter Communications and Comcast as people have a new choice in in-home TV service,” Kula said.

Gordon said Comcast did not consider Verizon’s entrance into the cable market as a new frontier in its competition for subscribers.

“We’ve been competing for years,” Gordon said. “Our product is well positioned … to compete effectively for every single customer, and we will do so every single day.”

Despite Verizon’s entry into Comcast’s markets, Gordon said Comcast’s cable service had “no price adjustment scheduled at this time or for the foreseeable future.”

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