Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is facing another call for FiOS in New York City, this time from a group of elected officials and residents in the Bronx borough's Co-Op City development, where 72 percent of the residents are interested in getting the FTTH-based service.
According to a recent poll, 26 percent of Co-Op City's residents said they would "definitely sign up for FiOS" if it were available and 46 percent said they would "consider signing up."
New York state Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson said that Verizon should live up to the promise of its franchise agreement with the city to bring FiOS to all of its residents.
"Verizon's franchise agreement with the City mandates that the company make FiOS available to every resident," Hassell-Thompson said in a release. "That's what they promised, and that's what residents want."
An audit conducted by New York City's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications found that Verizon failed to deliver on its promise to provide fiber-optic service for television and broadband by 2014 to anyone who wants it.
Verizon disputed the audit, saying that it was based upon erroneous information and incorrect interpretations of the company's franchise deal that was signed with the city in 2008, which allowed it to deploy FiOS throughout the city.
Besides Co-Op City, a group of 14 mayors on the East Coast want Verizon to expand its FiOS network into more areas that have limited access to high speed services.
Verizon has maintained that it has no plans to extend FiOS into any new areas outside of those communities where it has established a franchise agreement to deliver service.
More recently, the service provider told the New York Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions in a recent hearing that it invested over $1.8 billion in the state's wireline and wireless networks in 2014.
Within its entire wireline footprint, Verizon has passed a total 20 million homes with FiOS, surpassing its goal of 18 million homes.
In November, Fran Shammo, CFO of Verizon, said as it completes its FiOS buildout the provider can turn on customers with minimal costs by leveraging the existing fiber it has installed and the optical network terminals (ONTs) on the sides of those homes to connect fiber to the users.
As of the end of 2015, Verizon had 7 million FiOS Internet and 5.8 million FiOS video customers, representing year-over-year increases of 6.3 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.
For more:
- see the release
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