It only took New York City nine years to realize that Verizon is just not that into them. Having not fulfilled their promise to make their Fios high-speed internet available to all New Yorkers, New York City filed a lawsuit yesterday.
In a complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the city contends that Verizon is in breach of a 2008 franchise agreement. That contract called for Verizon to build a citywide Fios network by the end of 2014. But, the city says, Verizon has failed to make its service available to at least “tens of thousands” of prospective customers and has refused to accept service requests from many others.
For two years, city officials have been pressing the company to satisfy its obligations, in the hope of avoiding litigation. But the two sides reached an impasse this winter, and on Monday the contentious tone of the standoff became public.
But guess what, New York City? Verizon wants you to know that the middle finger they are holding up means they don’t care.
"In negotiating the agreement, both parties understood and agreed that Verizon would generally place its fiber-optic network along the same routes as had been used for its copper network, and would use similar strategies for accessing individual buildings," Verizon General Counsel Craig Silliman wrote to Anne Roest, commissioner of NYC's Department of IT and Telecommunications (DoITT), in a letter seen by Ars Technica. Verizon confirmed the letter's authenticity to CNET.
According to Verizon's letter, the agreement with the city omits traditional language specifying that a household is "passed" only when fiber-optic cables are installed in front of a house or apartment. Absent that language, Verizon apparently believes it has more wiggle room for its Fios rollout than the city acknowledges.
To put this into perspective, New York City—THE New York City you’ve read about or lived in or seen in movies—doesn’t have a fully functioning high-speed internet infrastructure. Nine years ago, the ginormous telecom Verizon promised to make that happen, and they were given all kinds of subsidies to make it happen. Since then they have dragged their feet and collected the cash.