According to a Bloomberg News report, Verizon is preparing to retire its ”traditional phone” lines and move to VoIP within the next seven years. USTelecom’s daily news digest took it even farther, headlining its reference to the Bloomberg report by saying Verizon was “eyeing the end of an era for its copper phone lines.”
Whoa, Nelly. That seemed a little preposterous for me. As it turns out, some confusion and some exaggeration seem to be at work here. The story was based on an interview with Verizon CMO John Stratton, conducted at CES, but the conclusions are a little off base.
According to Eric Rabe, senior vice president of media relations for Verizon, and the go-to guy for all tough questions, Verizon has no plans to phase out its copper network, and no definitive plans for moving everyone to VoIP, although Verizon will begin moving its FiOS voice customers to a VoIP offering, probably very soon.
“You will see us move to VoIP for our fiber customers fairly near term — 09-ish, probably first half,” Rabe said, adding that this isn’t a definitive time table. “That will let us deliver some additional services.”
Having voice, data and video as part of the same IP-based service clearly facilitates convergence offferings.
As for the copper network, when Verizon started building its FiOS fiber-to-the-home network, it would remove the copper drop to each home it connected. Some people objected, Rabe said, so that practice was stopped. Now, aerial fiber lines are lashed to the existing copper lines and underground copper equipment is only removed if necessary for space reasons, Rabe said. While ultimately Verizon would love to operate only its fiber network, that won’t be practical for many years to come, Rabe said.
Verizon does have a VoIP service, called VoiceWing, which Rabe said has a small customer base and isn’t something Verizon actively markets.
Couldn’t help but notice that the erroneous (mis)interpretation here, of an end to Verizon copper by 2016, is actually much less dramatic than the prediction made by AT&T Worldnet and ITXC cofounder Tom Evslin less than 2 years ago. He said then, “I don’t think the copper plant will last past 2012.”
See: http://connectedplanetonline.com/access/news/copper_landlines_gone_052507/index.html
Verizon is absolutely consolidating it’s copper network. Eventually this will enable Verizon to dispose of their Central Offices as the fiber backbone will be terminated to new locations. This is part of a long term plan to eliminate access to the end user customers by Verizon’s competitors. Services terminated on the “new” fiber network do not have to be shared with competitors. No copper no “1+” access, no T-1 access no way for competitors to use Verizon to access customers. In major urban areas there is certainly competition, in the outlining areas, suburbs, etc the choices will be the cable company or the ILEC (Verizon & ATT)
People in the industry have known this for years. Verizon will continue to move toward their goal of crushing the competition by litigation or network conversion. Time is on their side and the public ultimately will hav e to pay the bill.
Certainly, the death of a century-old technology is painful.
But speaking from experience – having lived in Boston for 30 years, where we swore the phone lines were actually installed by Dr. Watson – good riddance!
Economics alone dictates the change. Old copper has no chance of supporting broadband and new copper is useful only when it’s short. Maintenance of aging copper infrastructure is so expensive that converting to fiber can pay for itself in saved truck rolls. Copper really will not support the revenue-generating services that consumers are willing to pay for, and neither will most wireless.
Jim Hayes
President, The Fiber Optic Association, Inc.
http://www.thefoa.org/
Fortunately the Obama administration is neither ideological nor tech-phobic and has broadband on their list of viable projects. The surely know that for 1/3 of what we’ve given as a Wall Street and the Banks as a Financial Bailout, we could fiber every household in the US.
Technological change is traumatic for some but having lived through 40+ years of it, I know it’s for the best.
Not that’s a good investment in infrastructure.
Andrew, I agree Verizon is consolidating their copper network, but they aren’t doing any rapid cut to push everyone to VoIP in seven years, which is what the Bloomberg story said. And they say, at least, that they have stopped cutting copper lines every time they install a fiber line.
I’m aware of the competitive industry’s complaint that copper access lines should be maintained and that’s certainly something the federal government or state regulators should act on, but right now CLECs aren’t going after the residential customers to which this story referred.
I am a rural Verizon customer. All of the surrounding cities have FIOS. If Verizon is emphatic about getting rid of dial tone they need to get fiber to my home. Don’t hold your breath. Verizon has abandoned the copper customer. They should provide quality service but they are doing no rehab on the copper plant. My distribution cable is full of water and there is inside wire laying in the ditches to bypass bad sections. Quality service. I don’t think so.
Verizon has not abandoned the copper customer. As is true with any new technology, it takes time to deploy to the entire footprint. And as is true with any money-making corporation, they are going to deploy the new technology to the places with the most money making potential first …. hmmm where do you think they might have the most potential customers? Oh that would be cities. If you are truly in a rural area, then I’m sure you know that the rural areas are the most expensive per home areas to serve with any utilities. The rural areas are the last ones to have copper cable laid to them. And in general they will be the last ones to get fiber. If you don’t feel you are getting quality service then you should complain to your local public utilities board or escalate the issue to Verizon management.
Let’s face it as the growth of Wireless has eliminated the need for phone lines. Take a walk in the mall and look at the kios and you will find it crowded with people wanting wireless services and phone upgrades . The major difference is it’s personal as opposed to just one or two lines for the whole family getting the family packaging of services provided by wireless services. Low cost bundle services would keep cooper lines alive especially base on the cost of the rollout of FTTP. I agree it’s exaggerated.
Although the only buzz seems to be about cellular technologies, I do not see anyone giving up their 52 inch HD TV’s for a 2″ x 2″ cell phone screen. It is obvious that the biggest growth potential for the ILECs is going to be video served over FTTX networks. Verizon seems to be maintaining its focus on FiOS, while AT&T is slowing the deployment of their Uverse somewhat. The latter is missing a huge market as far as brownfield or override deployment goes. MDU deployment for video is a huge market, and installations are becoming quicker and easier as technicians gain experience and new products and processes appear.