Union: Verizon uses copper quick-fixes

During the same week that Verizon Communications said it will embrace femtocells, and not long after it committed to an imminent VoIP rollout, Communications Workers of America officials in New York are alleging that the telco giant is neglecting ongoing problems with some of its old copper lines. The union officials say Verizon tells its technicians to use quick-fixes on problematic copper lines rather than replace them, which would of course be more expensive. The band-aid approach, they say, makes the lines more vulnerable to future problems and inevitably leads to outages.

Verizon is denying the charges, and it is not clear the that the New York Public Service Commission is set to pursue the matter, but stay tuned. The future is in fiber for Verizon and many other telcos, and as those deployments progress, maintaining a balance between investing in new networks and old ones is starting to get trickier.

For more:
- The New York Daily News has this report

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