Verizon Says Boston FiOS to Come Online 'Within Weeks' Back in April Verizon surprised everyone by announcing it was unpausing its all-but-dead FiOS expansion to spend $300 million to expand FiOS throughout Boston. Boston had long been one of a handful of cities that were skipped by Verizon during upgrades, frustrating locals stuck on aging DSL infrastructure. According to Verizon, the company will be spending $300 million to deploy FiOS and help expand the city's wireless infrastructure in preparation for faster 5G wireless speeds.

Now Verizon says that the first Boston FiOS customers will be online within the next few weeks. "We are planning to begin offering FiOS in parts of our very first service area later this month," says the company. "We estimate that by year’s end Fios services will be available to approximately 25,000 premises in Dorchester, the Dudley Square Innovation District of Roxbury, Roslindale and West Roxbury." That said, just how uniform Verizon's FiOS deployment in the city will be has been a hot topic of conversation, especially considering New York City and Philadelphia's complaints about Verizon not meeting its full city FiOS deployment promises. While news outlets like the Boston Globe originally claimed this deployment would bring FiOS to "100%" of the city, what's actually happening is notably...different. Long-time telco critic Bruce Kushnick recently pointed to comments made by Verizon executives to investors, that strongly suggest only a few parts of the city will actually get FiOS, and the lion's share of the remainder will likely be wireless. "It’s going to be a fixed broadband wireless solution," noted Verizon CFO Fran Shammo. "Then all of the labor and the expense of drilling up your driveway connecting the OT to your house and all the labor involved with that, all that goes away, because now I can deliver a beam into your - into a window with a credit card size receptor on it that delivers it to a wireless router, and there’s really no labor involved and there’s no real hardware other than the router in the credit card." In other words, Verizon's going to largely be focused on wireless. That's not only because it's less expensive to deploy, but because it lightens Verizon's reliance on unions (Verizon's wireless employees are dramatically less unionized). In other words, Verizon's going to largely be focused on wireless. That's not only because it's less expensive to deploy, but because it lightens Verizon's reliance on unions (Verizon's wireless employees are dramatically less unionized).







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Most recommended from 31 comments



Zenit

The system is the solution

Premium Member

join:2012-05-07

Purcellville, VA 14 recommendations Zenit Premium Member 5G Femtocells; an ugly solution Seriously, having wireless access points on nearly every light pole is going to look disgusting.

FTTP the whole way looks clean when done right.



VZ penny pinching on the last 100ft is comical; the cost to actually handle the last stretch had plummeted since FiOS started back in 04/05. VZ mastered the art of horizontal drilling and trenching. ONT's are much cheaper now, as well as the prefab Corning drop cables. They have fiber that is super-bendable and super-thin. All of this was mastered in the tough areas of NYC and D.C. Same techniques can be used in Boston.



There are plenty of semi-aerial areas of Boston, where there are some poles for drops and the cabling goes back underground, or where the cabling is tacked to the backend of a building.



For those people getting actual FTTP, congrats, you finally got it after waiting 10-15 years. boredsysadm

join:2012-01-11 7 recommendations boredsysadm Member VZ can take their fixed wireless and ... wait for it shove it up their behind

dslwanter

Not changing my username of 17 years.

Premium Member

join:2002-12-16

Mineral Ridge, OH 7 recommendations dslwanter Premium Member Fake fiber It's not fttp as fios is supposed to be period. Don't market it as such. Call it wireless fios. shmerl

join:2013-10-21 930.5 953.2

2 recommendations shmerl Member Put it in perspective Verizon still didn't get that wireline is profitable long term. The only reason they spread FiOS is that they need more fiber for their wireless networks, and they use it as a PR tool, since they can serve some wireline customers using the same lines. The key word some. They surely aren't going to do a uniform build.

karpodiem

Hail to The Victors

Premium Member

join:2008-05-20

Troy, MI 2 recommendations karpodiem Premium Member Will be interesting to see how this thing scales/fails Verizon has some proprietary tech powering this, because there is no 5G standard. Curious what the equipment/infrastructure will look like.