FORT WORTH, Texas -- Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) announced today that all of its fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) talk will soon become a reality for the residents of nearby Keller, Texas.
The carrier still didn't say specifically when the service will be turned on but did provide a few more data points -- including some pricing -- that it wasn't ready to give back in May, when it held a press conference that promised the moon (see Verizon Flaunts Fiber Plan).
The upshot is that Verizon is still committed to the plan, but the carrier is having to lay out lots of cash to catch up to its competitors in some regions.
The carrier revealed today that its FTTP customers will have a choice of three data speeds: For $34.95, customers can expect 5 Mbit/s downstream and 2 Mbit/s upstream and a local and long-distance calling package. For $44.95, customers can expect 15 Mbit/s downstream and 2 Mbit/s upstream and a local and long-distance calling package. Pricing for 30-Mbit/s connections will be announced later.
But Verizon's effort in Keller is still one away from a triple-play [ed. note: ain't that just the story of my life], the company acknowledging it won't provide video or TV services until sometime in 2005.
In Texas, Verizon says its FTTP network will pass about 100,000 homes. The population of Keller, where Verizon has so far spent $15 million on its FTTP network, is estimated to be only about 33,100 strong by the North Central Texas Council of Governments.
For, even if a full one third of the residents in Keller subscribe to Verizon's FTTP network, the carrier's network will have cost it about $1,360 per customer served. Supposing one third of Keller's population does subscribe to FTTP services at the $45 monthly rate, Verizon would take about two-and-a-half years to make its money back.
One carrier is already delivering triple-play services to parts of Keller and nearby Southlake, Texas. OneSource, a CLEC and cable operator that counts Keller City Hall as one of its clients, offers customers basic phone service, 77 cable channels, and an Internet connection up to 2 Mbit/s for $84.95 a month.
That competitive pressure is, in part, what is driving Verizon towards its goal of passing 1 million homes by the year's end. It's noteworthy, too, that the carrier is still extending its copper network in areas where FTTP isn't feasible (see Verizon Wrangles Remote DSLAMs).
Verizon says it will pass 100,000 homes around Huntington Beach, Calif., and another 100,000 homes around Tampa and parts of Hillsborough County, Fla.
People do seem to get confused about appropriate classifications and about the boundaries used to discriminate. TELCOs and CableCos claiming they are private companies which operate in a competitive market is not the only example. The separation of church and state is another.
And when nonprofit organizations violate the separation of church and state they should be taxed.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chu_poli.htm
IRS regulations:
In the U.S., the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) grants non-profit status to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and other religious organizations. This is of tremendous financial benefit. Meanwhile, clergy and other employees are guaranteed free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They are free to voice their opinions and beliefs, and advocate changes to legislation. [snip]
However, there are some strings attached. Non-profit religious institutions cannot give financial or moral support to specific political candidates. Thus, a clergyperson cannot deliver a sermon in which she or he recommends that the members of the congregation vote for a particular candidate or a particular political party. To do so would endanger their non-profit status. [snip]
A growing number of religious groups are ignoring the IRS regulations. Others have organized PAC groups which are kept separate from the religious organization.
And then there are the confused flip floppers from Texas who say Unitarian Universalists shouldn't be given nonprofit status ...or maybe they should.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, via Knight Ridder Newspapers (USA), May 17, 2004 http://www.twincities.com By R.A. Dyer
AUSTIN, Texas - (KRT) - Unitarian Universalists have for decades presided over births, marriages and memorials. The church operates in every state, with more than 5,000 members in Texas alone.
But according to the office of Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Texas Unitarian church isn't really a religious organization - at least for tax purposes. Its reasoning: The organization "does not have one system of belief."
Never before - not in this state nor any other - has a government agency denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group's religious philosophy, church officials say. Strayhorn's ruling clearly infringes upon religious liberties, said Dan Althoff, board president for the Denison, Texas, congregation that was rejected for tax exemption by the comptroller's office.
"I was surprised - surprised and shocked - because the Unitarian church in the United States has a very long history," said Althoff, who notes that father-and-son presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians.
Strayhorn's ruling, as well as a similar decision by former Comptroller John Sharp, has left the comptroller's office straddling a sometimes murky gulf separating church and state.
What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world's great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller's office."
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (USA), May 25, 2004 http://www.thevictoriaadvocate.com By Jay Root
AUSTIN - Reversing an earlier decision, state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn said Monday that a Unitarian church in Denison on the Texas-Oklahoma border will get tax-exempt status.
The decision came after the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported May 18 that the comptroller's office had ruled that the Red River Unitarian Universalist Church was not a religious organization for tax purposes.
Looks like Vz snookered the FCC and state PUCs with their FTTP bullshit. Just like they always have done and always will do. ------------------------------------
Telco Success in the Video Market Will Ride on DSL Rather Than Fiber to the Home, New Study Finds Tuesday July 27, 10:00 am ET Heavy Reading Report Warns That Local Phone Companies Can't Wait for Fiber Build-Outs to Ward Off Competition From Cable Operators
NEW YORK, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- With cable operators and wireless services eroding their core customer and revenue bases, local phone companies now have little choice but to add video services to their product lines -- and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is the key technology to enable rapid rollout of video, according to a major new study released today by Heavy Reading (http://www.heavyreading.com ), the market research division of Light Reading Inc.
> The CLECs are not investing. They are simply renting. Investing means building your own facilities. If there is not enough of a market to do that, then you probably should do something else because 4 networks per residence and business DID.
No, you're oversimplifying. "Facilities" doesn't only mean wire on the pole. CLECs are building switching facilities like crazy. Without the CLECs, telco switching would still be 5ESS, 4ESS, 1ESS, DSM-10 and DSM-100. With an occasional ultramodern GTD-5 for comic relief. CLECs gave the impetus to modernize that industry; ILECs still buy dinosaurs that are designed around VAX-11-era technology. And CLECs created the switching capacity to deliver the Internet to the masses during the dial-up era; the ILECs' alternative answer was to raise the price by applying the "Modem Tax" (switched access) to ISP-bound calls. Were it not for the CLECs, ISP traffic probably would have brought down their networks, but then that was because the ILECs had a 5-year forecasting cycle.
CLECs who simply rent are the UNE-P pure plays, and the value they add is that of arbitrageur, which is indeed a form of economic efficiency. But I don't see UNE-P as a long-term pure play. Still, many CLECs do much more than that.
The Telecom Act was a legal bargain between the different parts of the industry. The RBOCs got access to LD in exchange for competition, which explicitly included unbundled network elements. Now they're going back on their word, claiming that "intermodal" competition is all that's necessary. That's perfidy, pure and simple. That's the ILEC strategy: Perfidy, backed by paying off politicians.
And the 4-network argument is total crap. Satellite is useful for broadcasting, not telecom -- the delay is profoundly harmful for voice and data, so it's only a last resort (far-out rural areas). Cable networks were not built for common carriage. Wireless spectrum is far too precious to waste on high-bandwidth applications where fixed wires are cheaper.
The telcos should be broken up, plain and simple, and regulated like hell in the meantime.
I said, absolutely that CLECs are completely and utterly useless. Unless they do something special. If they did that then all this whining would go away. They would have business.
To force somebody to invest billions then hand it over to the competition means that no one will invest. We do want people to invest right? The CLECs are not investing. They are simply renting. Investing means building your own facilities. If there is not enough of a market to do that, then you probably should do something else because 4 networks per residence and business DID.
1 - At least 3 networks can offer video 2 - At least 3 networks can offer voice 3 - At least 3 networks can offer data.
Those services are in general sumbsitutes. Are the duplicates of one another? No! Get it they compete by doing things that are different. That is called making a competitive advantage. That is the way the market works.
What CLECs want is to create intramodal competition. What has been realized is that there is already intermodal competition. When intermodal competition did not exist, one might consider intramodal. This was true especially on depreciated facilities. Now, its useless. The CLECs were a regulatory creation. Given their failure its clear they offer nothing. Zero. All they did is rack up debt. So, the world has moved on. Poor old rj here wants local governments to put in network number 5. Good old fgoldstein wants other people to invest their money for his pleasure. You sir are just an idiot.
Lets see what a typical CLEC did. Hmmm...it put IADs at small businesses thus offering a leased T-1! How interesting! Did it offer to go on premise and manage the rest of the equipment? Did it provide unique internet services? Did it do anything that others did not do? Nope. It just tried to offer T-1 for less. Gee. That works in lots of markets. Lets see if I can name one (trying to fund a startup by providing commodotized equivalent of incumbent service) - Nope.
Best thing we can do, pretend this whole fiasco never happened.
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