Actually only half true

Art Brodsky at the website ‘Public Knowledge’ is passing on the myth that , that once FIOS always FIOS. Linky. Not so fast:

• There are customers that have both copper and FIOS. Many because their security companies they contract with can only work on copper. Write the right service order and you can keep both.
• There is the pesky situation in most States that copper is a tariffed service on the books. Regardless of the desires of Verizon if the customer insists on going back or its a new entrant in the service area they can get the copper service.

Now Verizon has a vested interest in driving/retaining people to FIOS:

• Their current take rate passed each household is about 20-25%. They need to drive that number up in order to reach break even in a given service area.
• Retention drives down their costs of course as they just change the bill out in the order system and don’t have to roll a truck and tech.
• Being fiber, environmental factors are less of a concern reducing their costs.
• The biggie of course for Verizon is labor. FIOS conceptually will reduce their labor costs to something like 3-4 FTE per 10000 lines vs the 7-10 it costs for copper.

Now, I won’t fault Verizon for wishing to keep a customer on FIOS. Its to their advantage. But the fact is if a customer pushes it both AT&T and Verizon must comply. I have seen the service that Verizon FIOS represents. Talk to anyone that is a FIOS customer for more than a month and most quote the ‘dead gun’ analogy — they won’t give it up.

Where it will get tricky is in new developments where the only thing going past the house is fiber. In that situation the customer may have no choice unless the HOA has contracted with a third party. Highly unlikely that a Verizon will run an FX line to a single house for copper in that instance. The costs would just be thru the roof.

Disclaimer: I am a former VZ employee.

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