By Mayor Martin Walsh
I recently announced something that will change Boston’s future: working closely with the City over the next six years, Verizon will rewire the entire city with an advanced fiber-optic network.
Replacing our outdated copper-based telecom infrastructure with state-of-the-art fiber will dramatically improve internet connection speeds for both residents and businesses and increased competition will help the city reach its goal of ensuring that every resident has expanded access to broadband. This upgrade will help students, seniors, small businesses, and innovators of all kinds. The bottom line is, it’s going to place Boston at the leading edge of technological firepower, and technological access, now and as we move into the future.
I want to thank Verizon for committing more than $300 million to this investment in the City of Boston. And I want to thank them for committing to a roll-out that starts in the neighborhoods of Boston where access is needed most.
I knew when I took office over 2 years ago that our city faced a disconnect. Boston is home to some of the brightest minds and best talent. But our infrastructure—the engine that makes innovation possible—lags behind. It’s insufficient for the 21st century leader that we are becoming. So we made fiber a priority. We forged a strong partnership with Verizon. And together we crafted a plan that is fair and practical, yet bold and ambitious. We’re going to go from lagging behind to leading the pack.
Our first priority was to make this service available all over the city. We’ve been working to extend the innovation economy beyond the Seaport and Downtown, with investments like Wicked Free Wi-Fi in our Main Street districts, and startup support at the Roxbury Innovation Center. Likewise, our fiber optic rollout will begin, this year, in Dudley Square as well as Dorchester and West Roxbury. Next we’ll upgrade Hyde Park, Mattapan, greater Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain. The rest of the neighborhoods will follow. By 2022, residents and businesses across the city will be able to benefit from the state-of-the-art fiber optic connection.
Our partnership with Verizon is going to make Boston a smarter and more equitable city right away. For example, Verizon is donating $100,000 to support a mobile hotspot-lending program at the Boston Public Library, bringing free internet access to families who need it the most. In addition, we’ll work together on a range of “smart city” technologies to upgrade the way Boston moves and works. We’ll start with sensors to improve safety along Mass. Ave., as part of our Vision Zero goal to eliminate fatal crashes. This fiber optic network will also support improvements to wireless coverage in Boston—so our smartphones and mobile devices always stay connected.
As our fiber network takes shape, the opportunities will only grow. And the infrastructure will not be static. It will be a platform for embracing—or inventing—whatever comes next.
That’s only fitting for Boston. We have a proud legacy of punching far above our weight when it comes to innovation. Our revolutionary history encompasses both new ideas and new progress in social equality. This fiber optic network will help ensure we live up to that legacy, with resources that can support our highest aspirations. And those are dreams we don’t even know about yet. They will come from the newly empowered—and accelerated—imaginations of our students, our entrepreneurs, and our innovators across the city.
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Rebuttal:
Hopefully Mayor Walsh managed to resolve the impasse between Verizon Communications and the City of Boston without compromising the city's expectations, which were the same imposed on the cable access industry that is already here, specifically Comcast and RCN. If not, Verizon's service will offer none of the community access services and perks that people enjoy from those companies. Further, it could set the stage for those services to end their community access channels and other items currently under agreement.
Verizon is a company in transition. Indeed it is highly surprising that they have offered to install fiber lines in Boston, especially given that they have publicly announced that they have stopped rolling out fiber elsewhere and are only "in-filling" services where fiber trunk lines have already been laid. Many cities that have desired fiber won't get it. Indeed only those major cities that have Verizon under specific contractual or legal obligations to install it, are still being cabled-up.
For those not aware, Verizon has been selling off its copper telephone networks nationwide for the last few years and transferring its focus to their wireless service that they offer. Like all wireless services, those cell towers and the signals that travel on them have been deregulated. As such, it is not like your copper wire telephone you now enjoy.
Verizon has already sold off its copper networks in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, parts of western Mass, California, Florida, several Great Lakes states, and the list is growing. In general, those markets that it has not found profitable are being sold off. In most areas a company by the name of Fairpoint Communications has been purchasing the copper systems and taking over service. Rates have gone up and service found by many to be lackluster. After all, they have inherited an old-fashioned system that had been designed for telegraph clicks and later adapted for voice, and much later DSL Internet.
Could Boston be next after fiber is installed? We should all be concerned and the Mayor needs to get firm written contracts that they will not pull out copper and give people a choice.
Copper systems may be ancient but the existing system has emergency power systems in place at major switching stations, so if the power goes out, those generators will fire up and power the phone system so you can call for help, call the fire department, call the police, or call your uncle Bill.
Under Verizon's installation policies, once a building is converted to fiber, the copper wires to the telephone pole will be removed, and will be removed permanently. If you decide you dislike fiber, or the next occupant doesn't want it, those people will never be able to get copper wire service returned.
Verizon's fiber service needs to be plugged-in since it requires electricity to operate. This means that where the converter box is mounted will have to have a power source. Some homes may need an electrician in to install an outlet. Unlike cable TV converter boxes that can be plugged in near your TV set, fiber converter boxes usually need to be installed in a utility room or basement location. This is because the fiber glass "wire" is cut to length between your home and where it connects to a major trunk line. Once mounted it stays there - forever. From that converter box a cable-tv-like coaxial cable is then run to your TV set, and the internet distribution box for internet.
The converter box also has a battery pack that is constantly charged so if the power should go out you will continue to have service on the fiber line, but batteries only last about 4-6 hours and then they run out of power. Batteries may also have to be replaced every few years as well, and that can be costly. Go back above and re-read where the copper service has an emergency power back up. You won't have that under fiber, so after the battery dies, you'll need to run to the local fire box to ring for help. Oh yes... those fire alarm boxes are powered by the fire department's emergency generators on a copper network that will continue to work.
Verizon has not been the best provider of service. With fiber now on the horizon, and if you have DSL Internet via a copper wire, don't be too quick to give that up. In all cities where fiber has been laid they have ceased offering new DSL service, and press people to get on fiber. If someone drops DSL and tries cable - then doesn't like it - they will find that they cannot get their DSL service back. Sorry Charlie!
In some states Verizon's off-shore service department has also ceased attempting to make reasonable repairs to the copper wire systems. Rather if you have problems with your DSL they reduce your speed to a level that the aging copper wires can handle, and call it a day, rather than send someone out to fix the problem by re-splicing the wires or laying a new cable.
In the hurricane ravaged areas of New York and New Jersey that were devastated by storms a few years ago, deregulation provided Verizon with an "out" and they refused to re-wire those communities. Instead they installed cell towers and sold people a converter box that they plugged their home phone into that connected them to the cell towers. Those boxes are for voice only. If you wanted Internet that was another box and another fee that was separate.
So while fiber will bring faster internet and digital TV into the Boston area, people need to go into this change in the communications infrastructure with their eyes wide open.
The Mayor needs to get concessions on paper to assure that people will have a choice and will not be strong-armed into a fiber-only city. There are plenty of stories available to back this assertion up.
Citations:
http://www.dslreports.com/forums/54
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http://www.dslreports.com/forum/verizon
Readers can reference this forum for details. I recommend reading articles noting many of the items above that are linked in the forum but posted on an associated blog page. It's worth noting that this external forum is pretty much one of the few places where Verizon customer complaints (and horror stories) and concerns are respected as free speech. Verizon's own customer forums are heavily redacted.
Fiber will be a great boon to the city and I will likely sign up myself, but know the risks and what you will face in making that choice.