Telcos vs. Cable
Dionne Searcey and Peter Grant write in The Wall Street Journal that Verizon and Cablevision are in a street brawl. At issue is Verizon’s build-out of it’s FIOS fiber access network which can deliver digital IPTV video, and very high speed internet access plus pain old telephone service (POTS).
Cablevision sees Verizon as its mortal enemy, and is playing a very rough and tumble game as it fights FIOS.
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In its fight against Verizon, Cablevision has filed a suit and backed an ad campaign against the phone company, supporting a group that printed fliers accusing Verizon of littering manicured suburban landscapes with refrigerator-size equipment boxes. The same group mailed fliers attacking James Altadonna Jr., the mayor of Massapequa Park, on New York’s Long Island, for giving Verizon permission to roll out its new video service inside the town’s borders.
Cablevision says Verizon doesn’t want to serve low-income customers in the targeted municipalities around New York. Verizon denies it will discriminate against anyone. Verizon has also sent letters to several mayors of towns where it is seeking permission to roll out video warning them to expect “intimidation tactics” from Cablevision. The phone company distributed coupons for free bologna sandwiches to “offer an alternative to cable’s baloney.”
On a related note, some people think the outdoor cabinets Verizon uses for FIOS equipment are, well, UGLY:
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To be sure, some municipal officials complain they feel bullied by Verizon, “They came storming into our village and started putting up all these ugly green boxes. It was such a horrendous thing,” said Anthony Panzarella, mayor of Malverne, N.Y. A Verizon spokesman said the objectionable Malverne boxes were relocated and the company has since redesigned its boxes to make them smaller.
November 25th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
The most disturbing part of Internet based TV is that we are not seeing any competition on content providers, aggregators, and individual channels. If you want IPTV from Verizon, I don’t see any sign of non-Verizon providers of HBO, ABC, etc, either single channels or a bunch.
Cox (and I suspect Comcast) won’t even let you stream video more than 15 minutes on their Internet service, a total lockout. Besides in five years there has been no significant increase in their speed from 3-5 mb/sec … we should have gotten a few doublings by now so we can get some real video content variety and competition. (some real upload speed would allow person video systems.)
All of these providers are counting on you not using a various high percentage of your bandwidth anyway, so maybe it would work. It would be nice to know the limites in the TOS for FIOS.
Sad. A repeat of the kind of weird restrictions that limited an explosion of self-broadcasting.