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Verizon Touts High-Speed Fiber Network

Posted on: Friday, 22 October 2004, 12:00 CDT

Oct. 22--Verizon announced plans Thursday to roll out its new high-speed fiber network in six states and hire as many as 5,000 workers over the next 14 months to help build it.

The high-speed network, which will provide Internet, voice and eventually TV service, is the phone giant's bid to compete with cable rivals who have jumped into the phone business.

Verizon said the new service will be available in parts of Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In addition, the service will be available in Rockland, Westchester and Nassau counties in New York. Verizon is already deploying the service in parts of Texas, California and Florida.

Conspicuous by its absence is New Jersey.

Verizon-New Jersey President Dennis Bone said in a telephone interview that a previously announced plan to roll out service in seven Bergen County towns is "on hold for now" because of a "less favorable investment climate" in New Jersey than other states.

New Jersey had been slated to get the new service this year in as many as 34 Bergen County towns. Last May, however, irked by a state regulatory decision regarding traditional phone service, Verizon said the New Jersey rollout would be substantially limited to only seven towns and about 20,000 customers.

Now, it appears any plans to turn on service in New Jersey are up in the air.

"The other states have moved ahead; they are ready to be turned on and we're simply not, in New Jersey," said Bone.

"Nothing has changed," he said, adding that he's confident the company can work with state Sen. Richard J. Codey when he becomes acting governor "to improve this investment climate."

Dominick Turdo, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 827, which represents Verizon workers, said he's been told by Verizon that the fiber network delay could stretch through next year unless state regulations change in favor of the company.

Last spring, New Jersey regulators gave the company permission for only a 14 percent increase on wholesale phone rates it charges competitors. The company had asked for a 57 percent rate hike, and said jobs and an investment in the state of as much as $250 million were at stake.

Verizon said it will spend $800 million this year to build a network with the potential to connect as many as one million homes. The company said it will double the number of homes connected by the end of next year.

"The engineering is complete, construction is under way, and we're on schedule," Paul Lacouture, president of Verizon's Network Services Group, said at a news conference in Falls Church, Va., to tout the new service.

The company did not provide details on where the new workers would be hired.

The company expects to offer television service sometime next year in the states where it offers fiber service, and said the offer would be "very competitive" with the kind of television service offered by cable companies.

Verizon officials estimate about 90 percent of its customers will be consumers and the remaining 10 percent will be business customers.

Along with the high speeds fiber-based networks deliver, they have advantages -- including easier maintenance -- over the company's traditional copper network, which delivers voice and DSL, digital subscriber line, high-speed Internet service.

The fiber service delivers Internet download speeds faster than DSL but at comparable speeds to cable. The upload speeds, however, are faster than most cable consumer offerings. Customers who subscribe will have a piece of gear called an optical network terminal installed to convert the optical signal into voice, data or video feeds. A battery backup will provide power for voice service during any loss of commercial power, according to the company.

A customer who buys the service as part of a package of other Verizon services would pay $35 a month for 5 Mbps (megabits per second) download and 2 Mbps upload speeds. For 15 Mbps download/2 Mbps upload, a customer would pay $45 as part of a package of services, the company said.

Although some analysts point to the high cost of connecting fiber-optic cable to every home -- industry estimates vary between $1,100 and $1,700 per home -- it appears that the Baby Bells such as Verizon, are moving ahead.

Other Baby Bells, including SBC, recently announced plans to speed up their fiber-to-the-home deployment following a decision by federal regulators to allow the phone companies to keep rivals from leasing their new networks.

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(c) 2004, The Record, Hackensack, N.J. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

VZ, SBC,

Source: The Record - Hackensack, New Jersey

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