Readers Write: High Likelihood There Won’t Be No Fios In The Ghetto
After our post about Verizon’s Fios service coming into the Philly market to compete with Comcast, we heard from a reader who also happens to work for Comcast. Now, before y’all crucify him, read what the dude has to say and see if it doesn’t match up with about 800 DSL stories in the Naked City:
Let me tell you why the asshole (Comcast) I work for doesn’t stink as bad as that asshole Verizon.
It’s called red lining:
Laying fiber ain’t cheap, which is only part of the reason Comcast doesn’t lay fiber all the way up to whatever Fishlibs opium den you reside in. The other reason is because it is stupid, compression technology and switching will most likely mean that more fiber means jack shit in the future… and it’s really stupid because for all intents and purposes they are putting the same boxes in customers homes which deliver exactly the same signal to your TV.
So what is red lining? Well, since fiber ain’t cheap and building an infrastructure like Comcast has is down right fucking expensive… Verizon gets out its red pen and draws a line through Fishlibs that says everyone who drinks cheap beer because its’ cool can get Fios, and everyone on the other side of the line who drinks cheap beer because it’s cheap can fuck off. Now you might think all Ron Paul and be like that’s just how capitalism rolls, or you can go Nader and say Comcast just fucks poor people up anyway… both might be a little true, but if this Verizon model works basically it means companies will flat out cut people off from the world because they live in low income neighborhoods.
Let me know if you see one of those cool trucks laying fiber on Diamond Street.
Dayum. Any Verizoners wanna speak to this?
November 14th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
“The other reason is because it is stupid, compression technology and switching will most likely mean that more fiber means jack shit in the future”
I am not so convinced of this argument. Technology has never had so much capacity it couldn’t take advantage of it. Streaming Hi-Def movies over the web and other similar bandwidth hogs are right around the corner and who knows what is behind that. Maybe better compression will render this unnecessary but until it happens FIOS will be in demand until then.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I consider myself pretty liberal – but redlining makes perfect business sense when laying down an infrastructure is so damn expensive. It’s not like we’re talking about gas or electric here.
It’s not exactly fair, but I would guess that only a minority of the people who have been “cut [...] off from the world” would actually use the technology for academically/culturally enriching endeavors any way. Call me a classist/racist if you like; I’m just saying that it’s a pretty safe bet. Rest assured that I will likely live in a neighborhood deemed as “not worth it” by verizon. It sucks for me too.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I, too, am rather liberal. But business is business – and if it’s been determined that it wouldn’t be cost effective to lay down expensive infrastructure in certain areas (I assume because the amount of potential subscribers wouldn’t offset the cost of installation), then I fail to see how this is some kind of classist issue.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I may be mistaken, but I believe the Feds mandated, way back in the yonder, that all households be given access to telephone lines by Ma Bell. So even if you lived in deepest bumble fuck they had to run a line out to you. All those proclaiming their liberalness here need to take into consideration that in the internet is effectively as important today as a copper phone line was 40 years ago. The idea then was that even the poorest or most remote communities in our country deserved access to the rest of world. I don’t see how this is any different.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Well said, expat.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
It’s not that there’s NO internet, it’s that you can’t have FIOS. I fail to see how this is a human rights issue to have fiber-optic internet.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Yes, expat, even with those fed mandates, rural telephony was something very different than what you’d get in the cities and suburbs. In fact, some places in Alaska still survive on “radio phones”. FIOS and Comcast digital are the equivalent of telephony with all the bells and whistles. No communication mandate in the U.S. says anyone’s entitled to the best commercial service possible, and inferring that there’s such precedent in prior communications access law is mistaken.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I know, what if we had some sort of city-wide system where everyone could get the internets, maybe something wireless so there wouldn’t be a high infrastructure cost . . . . . .
November 14th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I would guess that only a minority of the people who have been “cut [...] off from the world” would actually use the technology for academically/culturally enriching endeavors any way. Call me a classist/racist if you like; I’m just saying that it’s a pretty safe bet.
Mama mia, that’s a feculent rainbow!
November 14th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
How many here are accessing Philebrity from dial-up? None.
How many here are/were into throwing wi-fi up throughout the city? Probably a good amount.
@friendlynerd
The point isn’t that you can’t access the internet at all. The point is that the internet is as invaluable today as phone was at one point. And given the way the internet is constructed dial-up doesn’t cut it. Fuck DSL doesn’t cut it. In 5-10 years all the compression you can squeeze down a coaxial won’t cut it either.
@C. The Impaler
You conveniently use an obscure loophole to the “remoteness” part of the Federal mandate to attack the “poverty” angle we are speaking about in regards to poor neighborhoods in Philadelphia…sorry but it doesn’t cut the mustard in this case.
You are correct in asserting that there is no present communications law to mandate good internet access. However, my point was not that the existing laws necessarily mandate it, but that there should be such laws to make it so. And that it’s not very liberal to defer to Verizon’s profit margin when a vital utility is in question.
Again, given the nature of internet, those without access to high-speed service will soon have access to very little.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Oh, and last I checked Ma Bell made a fucking killing even when they were forced to wire grandma up in Shitsville.
You all are bitching about the difference between Verizon making a fucking killing or a slightly bigger one.
Very big of you.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
As someone who does just fine with his DSL connection, and am a relatively heavy user of the internet for work and play, I still don’t buy expat’s argument that broadband is essential to modern living, and likely near future living. Having access is important, yes, but are poor parts of Philly really cut off from anything but this one fiber optic network?
Besides, it’d be pretty to think we here in the comment thread in Philebrity could institute legislative change; but leadership on this issue doesn’t come from castigation.
Seriously, expat, if you wanted to be helpful and not just fly off on your interlocutors with a flurry of typed middle fingers, you could point to the considerable amount of organizations in Philly that work on media access issues, some to national acclaim. All I was saying, is your citation of Tenessee Valley Authority era laws doesn’t really help in the situation, particularly if you don’t actively call for change, preferring to shame your audience.
Very big of you, yourself.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Your are arguments are so disingenuous as always and boil down to this apparently:
Arguing for mandated high-speed internet is pointless unless I reference and praise existing organizations that do exactly that. Tautologically brilliant I suppose.
Old laws aren’t worth referencing because they’re old and therefor worthy of derision.
And, I shouldn’t point out what actually is a liberal position because you don’t know my bona fides.
As for “Very big of you, yourself.” Tres original! I expected more really.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
@ all
Verizon may redline, but Comcast caps bandwidth.
@ Expat
I’m relatively sure that intent of this thread was to pose Verizon against Comcast – not do ascertain our constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of fiber-optic cable. But if you want to go that route, I’m with friendlynerd and Impaler. There is no fundamental right to premium services offered by private companies. The Comcast author would have you believe that denied access to FIOS is tantamount to being ‘cut off from the world.’ You would have us believe that that denied access to FIOS is tantamount to a life sentence of dial-up. I call bullshit on both counts.
As FIOS is offered as competition to Comcast cable then Verizon thereby forfeits any potential costumers/profits to Comcast – who is, presumably, not redlining those same neighborhoods [Doubt it; I bet it took Comcast a good long time to provide cable to those same neighborhoods. On a side note, I would prefer to hear a Verizon employee discuss the extent to which Verizon employs redlining]. If neither of these despicable corporations would step up and provide reasonably fast-working internet to poor neighborhoods, I would hope that the government would step in force them to do so in a manner which does not favor one corporation over the other.
I will not argue against universal right to access to the internet. Ideally, internet would, indeed, be deemed a vital utility and would be completely socialized [John Lightstone: hollah!]. I will however argue that a private company is, in no way, obligated to provide premium services to a demographic that they deem to be “not worth it.” To imply Verizon is therefore evil in comparison to Comcast is downright silly.
@ Whimsy:
Yeah, I’m a jerk. I admit it. I would love to be proven wrong – but even a substantial portion of the class that isn’t redlined wouldn’t actually use the technology for academically/culturally enriching endeavors.
Access to media can be just as detrimental as helpful – see fox news channel.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Heh, I actually still use dial up when I am at my beach house. Fios is not yet available nor is DSL. Cable is an option but I simply refuse to pay their rates so I have Dish Network which also has the tennis channel which cable there does not offer.Fios is coming they say but not for another 6 months to a year. ( my house is on a bit of a peninsula on the Indian River Bay)
November 17th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Holy flame wars batman. Man I have a feeling this person does in fact know what they’re talking about but viewed from half the story. Like cell phones they all use the lines (or towers in the cell phone case) in place. Noone comes and lays new wires like it’s freaking Sim City 2000. Maybe in the more remote towns where it’s possible but not philadelphia.
And talking about compression technology. What does that even mean? You sound like the old doorman at my building when describing our business. They do COMPUTER STUFF. lol. Are you talking about taking source video changing it’s format to fit broadcast television. Hate to nub you up with that but everything is compressed unless you’re working straight off of D-beta tapes in a deck which never happens unless you’re a client in my edit suite watching what I’m cutting up. Or your source files are avi’s and some moron is streaming that to you at the cost of insane bandwidth. You’re off your rocker if you think nothing is encoded into another format and compressed in the process then sent out to end users. Comcast does in fact compress the crap outta it’s product (which I hate) but it’s due to the analog signals still on the digital streams to the users and lack of bandwidth because it eats up so much. The hope is that it changes with the switch but if we’ll see a better product that’s up to comcast’s encoding process’s. CMC or comcast media center, is a joke. Their turn around process on any content is laughable 2 weeks to output me a flv? Please I can real time that shit. I cant imagine them changing their encoding profile settings to be upped to multiple passes or output at a higher resolution for many many many months after the switch occurs. Whatever.
I’m tired now