Verizon Dumps FiOS
It’s been no secret that Verizon has been selling off it’s old-school copper customers fast and furious lately. But I somehow fail to catch the news that Verizon is also selling off it’s FiOS division, to which I happen to be a customer of.
If your not familiar with FiOS, it’s a bundled service (cable, internet and television) offering from Verizon operating over fiber-optic network. Service is delivered over fiber-optic cables using 3 different wavelengths. One for voice, one for internet and one for television. I’m happy to say that my house is legacy free. I don’t have any copper coming from the outside into my house, everything is all fiber-optics.
In my area (Portland Oregon) Frontier Communications based, out of Connecticut, has purchased all of Verizons POTS, copper cable and FiOS service for $5.3 billion dollars. Verizon was doing pretty good with operations here in the Pacific Northwest. Verizon also spent billions of dollars rolling out it’s FiOS service to my area. One of the first in the country to get FiOS. So it’s kind of surprising that Verizon would turn around and sell a promising asset that they spent billons rolling out.
There are also questions about wether or not Frontier can handle such a transaction. Frontier is buying assets 3x the size of it’s current operations. They are also buying a much more advanced network. It remains to be seen if they can handle the exisiting FiOS infrastructure and expand out the network – seriously doubt that.
