IP Democracy: AP Story Stirs Bizarre Controversy on Copper v. Fiber

AP’s Deborah Yao has created quite a stir with this piece about how Verizon removes its old-fashioned twisted-copper pair drop wires when it installs fiber-based FiOS service in a customer’s home.

Yao cites the case of Long Island resident Henry Powderly II, who, she implied, was unhappy that his copper drop was removed without warning. This practice, of course, has broader ramifications: old-fashioned copper plant is subject to line-sharing regulations that don’t affect fiber lines and dial-up ISPs are possibly hindered in serving homes that lack a copper drop.

Therefore, Verizon’s habit of removing copper wires without apparent customer notification can be construed as anticompetitive, or certainly Verizon’s rivals view it that way.

“It’s a horrendous situation…We don’t let General Motors build a highway and decide what size cars to let on the road,” said Joe Plotkin, marketing director for Bway.net, a New York Internet provider. “The small guys have tried to fight this re-monopolization of the network infrastructure.”

Yao’s piece got Slashdotted, Broadband Reports picked it up, and other publications picked up on the article and propounded upon its implications. Of course, Verizon’s rivals were happy to pass on this bit of news too.

But, the apoplectic guys over at Verizon’s Poliblog (see here and here) say that Yao’s piece is a slam job, and they’ve got good reasons to argue that. For one thing, Henry Powderly II claims that Yao twisted his quotes to portray the exact opposite of what he meant.

In a blog item (yup, he’s a blogger) entitled “The Associated Press use me DAMMIT!,” Powderly writes:

What we have here is a blatant foul, where one journalist has completely spun the words of another — a fellow journalist even — to make a point.

Moreover, Powderly doesn’t care whether his copper wire was removed or not.

To me, fiber or cable is the future and I’ve decided to embrace that. I believe the copper wires will go the way of the wood-fired kitchen stove, the ice box, the rotary phone or the rooftop television antenna.

For another thing, the part about not informing customers runs counter to Verizon’s policies and is the opposite of my own FiOS’ install experience. Verizon did in fact go out of its way to tell me about the copper wire thing, although the various representatives mostly dwelled on the fact that my phone would have a battery back-up in the case of a power outage.

And yet another thing that stems from my own experience: copper is a crappy medium and should be ripped out wherever possible. I say this because I once had DSL (Verizon) at home that was frequently bursting in and out. After months of investigation, the cause of the problem seemed to be that my copper wire was, at some point in the network, bundled together with the copper wires of nearby businesses, and those other wires “leaked” into my connection, wreaking interference havoc with my DSL service.

From a broader perspective, however, why in the world would we want to keep old copper lines in place? Policymakers and pundits perpetually promote fiber as a way to pull up the United States’ relatively low ranking in world broadband penetration and speeds. If Verizon or any other telco has to maintain both copper and fiber plant simultaneously, that requirement would no doubt slow down any progress we would make.

Finally, Verizon is only yanking aerial copper drops (from the pole to the house) and isn’t digging up underground drops. If someone wants to come along and restring a copper wire where one once existed, the costs to do so are pretty low.

Having said all that, it certainly doesn’t look good for Verizon to remove copper drops and Yao did a good journalistic job in tackling the idea (Powderly’s complaints notwithstanding.) The telco should probably just let the wires hang there in the offchance that some rival might one day want to use them.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 10, 2007 10:03 AM to IP Democracy