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Comment by psbp | Hacker News Reader

You live in Philadelphia, don't you?

I live in Philadelphia, where we have a subway station named after AT&T and the tallest building is the Comcast center (until they build their new Comcast building, which will be even taller), and if Verizon can't get fiber to my house (never mind that free wifi movement that sputtered out six or seven years ago) there's absolutely no hope for Google fiber happening here. Between old infrastructure and big players, decent fiber internet is just something I accept that I'm not going to get in this city. There's plenty of other reasons I like it here, but Comcast domination is not one of them.

Well Verizon was finally given approval in 2009 for FIOS in Philadelphia. but they suddenly stopped their FIOS rollout, coincidentally at the same exact time the cable companies gave Verizon a big chunk of their spectrum licenses. Of course everyone involved insists the two are completely unrelated, even though Verizon had been trying for years to get into Philadelphia.

Verizon had started selling off it's Fiber installs before 2009 (which I still scratch my head at). While they may not be directly related, I'm sure it didn't hurt the negotiation.

Edit: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPoint_Communications and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Communications

> Verizon had started selling off it's Fiber installs before 2009 (which I still scratch my head at).

Well, it's not like they were trying to get rid of fiber. Verizon sold off all its wireline operations in rural and non-core areas. Fiber simply went along for the ride.

What Verizon was trying to get rid of was the copper. No company would be willing to buy the copper from Verizon and then compete against FiOS. Thus, the only way that Verizon could get any buyers was to bundle the copper together with the fiber.

This would make it more difficult for Verizon to attempt a market entry at a later date, as it would have to start from a position of no infrastructure.

buddy of mine in south philly (by the stadiums) has fios at their full speed.

I live in Philly and got FIOS fiber recently. Girard station area.

Which Girard station? :) Are you in an apartment building? My house is at about 12th & Poplar, and a couple of years ago I saw a lot of Verizon activity on the numbered streets, but nothing ever coming down to house level.

I got FiOS in Germantown.

Yes, but I'm one of the fortunate ones with really fast FIOS and an actual choice between Verizon and Comcast. I wasn't necessarily making this point from the perspective of someone who wants Google Fiber. I was more saying that if Google's aim is to get incumbents to change their behavior, there is value in doing that in your primary competitor's front lawn.

I remember a Comcast exec a few years ago made the point that it was hard to do deals with Hollywood execs because the execs all lived in places in California that didn't have Comcast service, and couldn't really see the innovations Comcast was talking about.

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