Verizon: Upgrading COs to Fiber Reduces Costs by 60% Verizon may be done expanding FiOS service to consumers, but the company's become rather bullish on upgrading its central offices from copper to fiber. Speaking at an investment conference this week, Verizon SVP of transformation Sowmyanarayan Sampath said that Verizon has realized it can save around 60% on CO costs by replacing copper with fiber.

The realization was first made after it needed extensive repairs to New York City CO's after hurricane Sandy, as the photo of the company's Broad Street infrastructure (left) illustrates. Only seven of the company's two thousand COs have been converted so far, but Verizon says the company intends to upgrade most of them. The upgrades result in a more efficient CO, and the telco has found fiber to be around 70 to 80% more reliable than copper. But the upgrades also dramatically reduce the real estate needed to operate a central office, according to Sampath: quote: The numbers, as Sampath broke them down, are pretty compelling. Verizon has 50 million square feet of CO real estate today, he said, 60% to 80% of which it does not need. It can take these locations down from 13 floors to only one or two, bringing about cost savings by paying less property tax and leasing the space for other usage. According to Verizon, copper revenue declines 8% to 10% every year as customers ditch their landlines, but the costs remain fixed. The upgrades allow the telco to get out ahead of those losses, and are notable in the face of rumors Verizon's told some utilities it doesn't even plan to be in the fixed-line business According to Verizon, copper revenue declines 8% to 10% every year as customers ditch their landlines, but the costs remain fixed. The upgrades allow the telco to get out ahead of those losses, and are notable in the face of rumors Verizon's told some utilities it doesn't even plan to be in the fixed-line business a decade from now . Of course many Verizon consumers in non-FiOS markets certainly wish that Verizon's renewed bullishness on fiber extended all the way to the other end of the central office. Markets like Alexandria, Buffalo, Binghamton, Baltimore and Boston have been waiting to be upgraded from DSL for years -- with no indication Verizon intends to upgrade them anytime soon.







News Jump Charter Relaunches Free 60-day Internet And Wi-Fi Offer; NCTA: FCC Should Stick With 25/3 Speed Threshold; + more news Comcast Shuts Off Internet for Subs Who Were Sold Service Illegally; AT&T, Verizon Team To Stop T-Mobile 5G; + more news California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news 5G Doesn't Live Up To Hype, AT&T's 5G Slower Than Its 4G; Cord-Cutting Now In 37% of Broadband Households; + more news ---------------------- this week last week most discussed

Most recommended from 51 comments



Zenit

The system is the solution

Premium Member

join:2012-05-07

Purcellville, VA 9 recommendations Zenit Premium Member What, again, what. Did I wake up in an alternate reality this morning? I just spat my tea across the desk in shock.

So it took them THIS long to realize that "wow, the savings from a 100% FTTP WC are fantastic!"??? Yes, getting rid of 30+ year old infrastructure actually will save and earn you money, VZ!



Can we lay to rest the "FIOS does not make money" myth?



(What Verizon is talking about is how their 7 central offices that have had all of the copper replaced with fiber are saving money and driving revenue - there is 1 such CO in VA near VA Beach - too lazy to look up the CLLI. They ripped out all of the copper loops. CLEC's can still obtain a 128k voice grade channel on the glass.)



It is almost as if McAdam and co woke up and had a religious experience, and were commanded to upgrade the networks...only took them 7 years to wake up and realize what the people in the field have been saying.



Replacing the obsolete copper ALSO brings much higher revenue shortly after customers are connected - even if its HSI/Phone only you will end up with quite a few defectors from Comcast or the other local MSO of doom of your choice. Businesses wont mind, they generally do not need TV. Cord Cutting is all the rage.



Not only that, 1 GPON CO can cover much more area with less technical problems when compared to a traditional copper CO. GPON signals can go a max of 37mi from the CO without any need for amplifiers or actives in the field if you manage your power budget carefully, compared to copper that needs a mess of load coils to get base POTS out a few miles beyond the CO (killing digital signals) or the dozens of lawn fridges sucking up power to deliver DSL or just POTS to the really far loops.

(As a note said long copper loops that extend for several miles are an absolute hellish nightmare to maintain, while Glass is more trouble free)



37km max is sufficiently far enough to eliminate rural or overlay central offices. Lines too far to be reached can be served by a remote with an OLT such as what AT&T sometimes uses to deploy U-Verse FTTH.



VZ actually will sell off some central offices as real estate in urban areas once this transition is complete. Overlay CO's housing nothing but a POTS switch and a DSLAM are obsolete boat anchors.



---



I think it would be a fair prediction to say that any CO with GPON OLT's installed with enough capacity to handle the whole WC will eventually see FTTP filled in to eliminate copper. Some FIOS builds are so microscopic they only cover a handful of greenfield subdivisions, so the equipment is sitting there waiting for more load.



This news makes me happy as my CO is one that COULD be converted to 100% FTTP no Copper with minimal effort. They are halfway done with the FIOS build already, they just need to fill in the town and the rest of the countryside (they actually wired up the more mountainous hilly countryside earlier to meet a franchise requirement).



Perhaps this is why new DSL ordering disappeared from my WC - we are slated for this conversion project.



My assumption going forward now has changed from the bleak, gloom and doom to one of uncertainty. VZ's intentions are like a roller coaster. They never stop changing. It's best not to think anything is happening otherwise your setting yourself up for disappointment.



I will not get my hopes up, bu this news is something to think about. tmc8080

join:2004-04-24

Brooklyn, NY 5 recommendations tmc8080 Member its stll a crappy business model FYI, Verizon and it's former Bell (RBOC) companies should have linked about 100% of the central offices in the northeast by now with fiber optic cable.. the subsidy and taxpayer monies for Universal Service going back into the early 90s ended up paying for many suburban fiber upgrades. However, what the telcos DID with that fiber primarily was to serve ONLY big business METRO ethernet lines instead of wanting to serve residental custoemrs all the way until the early 2000s when it became apparent they would lose these customers forever to cable companies. I know this because I was one such person to tell the telco flat out, the voice and broadband would go to the cable co and never come back--- boom, then Fiber got deployed. What's been done since has been wasteful and duopolistic in nature.

The northeastern states ALONE have more fiber than 75% of the GLOBE!!!!

Getting residential customers a fiber connection is a whole other story, and for that the neglectful telcos should lose their franchise exclusivity across their footprint. ATT was the first to realize that the copper networks in the south US are starting to eat into profits They will do some piecemeal upgrades to save money--- don't don't count that as deploying gigabit fiber tier service.



Telcos have a long way to go to offering good services at low prices. if anything, prices are spoiling to go higher or bring back caps & fees. grabacon9

join:2013-08-21

Spencer, IN 1 edit 3 recommendations grabacon9 Member Wow Who would of thunk that they'd make more money on Fios? They spend billions on spectrum and can't spend billions on fiber? Sure. Whatever. Also, more reliable the service is, the less they have to spend on techs.

davidc502

join:2002-03-06

Mount Juliet, TN 2 recommendations davidc502 Member They are realizing this now? Verizon is now just realizing the benefits of fiber?



Wow, talk about being a little behind the times..... Verizon