The June 30, 2014 deadline is about to pass without Verizon meeting the requirement. The company is blaming Hurricane Sandy from October 2012—even though Verizon was still claiming to be "ahead of schedule" in April 2013.
The 2014 franchise agreement allows the city to pursue financial damages from Verizon if it doesn't meet its obligations, but not if the company can prove delays were caused by a "force majeure," such as a major storm.
Verizon also blames landlords and other obstacles for its failure to bring fiber Internet and TV service to the whole city. Crain's New York Business yesterday published a thorough article on the soon-to-be-missed deadline:
The telecommunications giant cites 2012's Superstorm Sandy—which forced it to replace much of its downtown copper infrastructure with fiber—and Hurricane Irene in 2011, as well as a work stoppage that year, for missing its June 30 deadline. Officials at the city's Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications, or DoITT, which oversees the franchise agreement, are willing to concede that much. (The company says it will go past the deadline by only a few months.)
"Verizon doesn't deny it has fallen short, but wants to rework the rules to allow a different approach," the article said. Verizon's new proposal would use a "grid" approach, "which would build up demand through an all-out marketing blitz across a set area. Verizon could then wire multiple dwellings at once, and presumably also do a quicker job of obtaining permission from property owners."
Verizon has previously blamed New York City landlords for blocking progress. Since the beginning of 2014, Verizon "filed petitions with state regulators alleging that owners of 219 buildings in the five boroughs housing 26,000 apartments have prevented crews from coming in to wire the premises," The New York World wrote on March 27.
There were two sides to that story, with one landlord saying he blocked Verizon's work because after previous projects, "they never came back to fix the holes that were drilled, fix the boxes they installed, and put molding on their respective wires."
Figuring out exactly how far short Verizon will fall is proving difficult.
"Verizon, based in Manhattan, has declined to provide the city with maps charting the street-by-street progress of its fiber network, citing the intense competition for cable customers," Crain's wrote in yesterday's article.
In April 2013, Verizon said, "Where the franchise agreement calls for 79% of households passed by the end of 2012, we were better than that," Crain's reported at the time.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has accused Verizon of prioritizing rich neighborhoods over low-income ones in its buildout.
Verizon is also trying to get out of an obligation to deploy high-speed wired broadband to all New Jersey residents.
UPDATE: Verizon told Ars today that it "stands firm in its commitment to install advanced fiber-optic cabling throughout the entire city, all five boroughs, as called for in the cable TV franchise that was granted to the company." The "$3-billion fiber-optic infrastructure upgrade for the city will be completed this year, and it will reach every neighborhood in the city, regardless of income level. In fact, we are in the middle of a project to provide FiOS services to apartments in the NYC Housing Authority."
Verizon said in a recent press release that as of the end of 2013, it had "completed network upgrades passing premises in 90 percent of the Bronx, 89 percent of Brooklyn, 94 percent of Manhattan, 90 percent of Queens and virtually the entirety of Staten Island... So long as Verizon can gain access to a home or building in these communities, video service will be offered and available."
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