Today's Top Stories Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is motivated to update all of the copper wiring that was damaged by Hurricane Sandy to FiOS, but that's not enough to convince landlords in six New York City apartment buildings to let them install fiber. These landlords claim that some tenants and residents that reside in these buildings want to keep their copper-based DSL and PSTN services. The telco wrote in a filing with the New York Public Service Commission that a number of building owners, particularly in lower Manhattan, aren't letting Verizon install fiber cable in their buildings, which is preventing Verizon from "restoring telephone service to the tenants of those buildings." "In many cases, the building owners' refusals have prevented Verizon from installing fiber optic facilities to some or all of the other buildings on the same city block," the telco wrote in its filing. "There are existing Verizon telecommunications customers in the affected buildings that are currently out of service due to Hurricane Sandy and the refusal of these building owners to permit Verizon to replace its damaged copper facilities with fiber optic facilities has prevented Verizon from restoring their telephone service." Gaining access to the buildings to install fiber isn't the only problem. Some landlords are asking for what Verizon says is "excessive compensation from Verizon to permit the installation of fiber optic facilities." Verizon could still access these six buildings if they were going to simply repair damaged copper to restore traditional POTS and DSL. Citing responses from its end-user forum, a story in Broadband DSL Reports points out that Verizon is using Sandy as an as an excuse to force people onto FiOS. One user said that Verizon is replacing his grandmother's copper-based lines with fiber without any cost to her. Since copper-based POTS service is line powered at the CO, she could still make calls even though she did not have power for almost two weeks. And while Optical Network Terminal (ONT) devices have become more efficient in terms of size and service capabilities, they still require power and have only an eight-hour battery backup. It's likely that the protest against FiOS installation is coming from elderly persons who don't have a computer or an Internet connection and just want their traditional landline phone service to work again. "I have been working on new FiOS deployment since the storm, and with the exception of 1 day I was on copper repair tickets," one Verizon employee told Broadband DSL Reports. "I have spoken with many customers that are currently refusing FiOS -- most of them prefer the reliability of POTS." This same employee added that other residents are happy to take the higher speed service. Two of the advantages that Verizon will gain in switching customers from copper to FiOS are lower maintenance costs and the opportunity to upsell customers multiple services, including voice, video and data. In December, Jefferies, a global securities and investment banking group, wrote in a competitive analysis report that the New York City fiber replacement initiative may be part of a broader copper-to-fiber conversion effort. Based on the comments made by Lowell McAdam, Verizon's CEO and chairman, at the UBS Financial conference in December, Jefferies wrote that "we believe 2013 could be the year when Verizon begins the copper shutdown in real earnest. According to our analysis the cost savings could be significant, and will likely lead to multi-year earnings lift." The other implication of the ongoing fiber conversion process will also be seen on the regulatory front. Jefferies added that "we expect the reliability of FiOS demonstrated during Sandy to be a major selling point for regulatory relief of legacy TDM rules." For more:
- Broadband DSL Reports has this article
- here's Verizon's complaint (.pdf) Special report: It's a wrap: Counting down the major trends in 2012 Related articles:
Verizon takes advantage of Superstorm Sandy to accelerate copper-to-fiber migration
Verizon's Shammo: We'll continue to migrate problem copper customers to FiOS
Verizon's Q3 wireline earnings get a boost from consumer FiOS services
Verizon brings cloud-based unified communications to SMBs via Broadsoft Read more about: FiOS
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France Telecom is the latest service provider to become engaged in a traffic peering scuffle with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and its Internet backbone provider Cogent Communications (Nasdaq: CCOI). A techdirt article citing a report from broadband reporter Dave Burstein's site, said that consumers are seeing poor performance of both YouTube and other online video services such as TF1. The telco said that it won't accept more traffic from Cogent and have asked them to pay for all of the streams their customers request. Autorite de la concurrence, France's competition regulator, approved France Telecom's charging plan. Peering battles aren't just relegated to France, however. A similar issue emerged between Level 3 (NYSE: LVLT) and cable operator Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) that emerged in 2010. In that dispute, Comcast argued that Level 3 pay for delivering extra traffic for its online video customer Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX). Level 3 claimed that Comcast erected a "toll booth" to block content from Level 3 online video customers like Netflix. It's likely that this argument between Cogent and France Telecom is just one of many battles that will emerge between wholesale operators and incumbent cable operators and telcos as more consumers subscribe to and consume online video applications.
For more:
- techdirt has this article Related articles:
Level 3, tw telecom establish peering arrangement
Level 3 to provide fiber backbone services to Time Warner Cable
Comcast says Level 3 'chose to leave' meeting aimed at resolving differences Read more about: Google
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Procera Networks, a policy enforcement vendor, on Monday announced it is going to acquire Vineyard Networks, a move that will enable it to extend its Intelligent Policy Enforcement business deeper into the Enterprise Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) market. Under the terms of the agreement, Procera is purchasing Vineyard for CAD 28.0 million (USD 28.3 million), a figure that includes CAD 15.4 million (USD 15.6 million) Procera common stock and CAD 12.6 million (USD 12.7 million) in cash. In addition, Procera will assume approximately CAD 500,000 (USD 507,033) of Vineyard's outstanding debt. When Procera completes the acquisition it expects to add about $4 to $5 million to Procera's 2013 revenue, with gross margin in excess of 90 percent. A key element of the acquisition is that Procera will immediately be able to use Vineyard to become a bigger supplier to enterprise equipment vendors. "Vineyard enables Procera to expand our total addressable market through their OEM business to include enterprise network equipment vendors, adding the entire enterprise space along with additional opportunities in the service provider OEM market," said James Brear, Procera's president and CEO, in a release announcing the acquisition. "The addition of Vineyard, which has 34 employees mostly in engineering and product development, establishes Procera as the clear leader in the high-growth DPI market." One of the many trends driving the need for increased enterprise DPI is the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, in which employees are using their own tablets and smartphones to access company data. This means enterprises and their service providers need greater visibility into what's traveling over their networks to ensure non-critical applications won't interfere with premium priority traffic. Procera's timing for the Vineyard deal could not be any better as the total addressable market (TAM) for the Enterprise OEM DPI market is expected to be over $300 million in 2013. For more:
- see the release Special report: Streaming the Olympics: A game-changer for online video Related article:
Olympics drain viewers from Netflix; CBS ready to up content Read more about: deep packet inspection
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Colba.Net Telecom, a Canada-based competitive service provider, on Monday said it will offer its IPTV service in three new markets: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The IPTV drive follows the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission's (CRTC) decision to approve Colba.Net Telecom's application for a broadcasting regional license. Similar to other telcos like Bell Canada (NYSE: BCE) and SaskTel, Colba.Net will offer various HD channels, including a number of popular American and Canadian channels. "By offering IPTV service, Colba.Net is now a player in the big league of telecom providers and cable distributors," said Joseph Bassili, president and CEO of Colba.Net, in a release announcing the IPTV expansion. With an expanded IPTV offering in hand, Colba.Net will be able to effectively compete with area telcos such as SaskTel, which has been offering IPTV for a number of years over its Fiber to the Node (FTTN) network, for example. Last August, SaskTel upped the ante of its video service offerings by launching its infiNET Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) program that was set to pass 40,000 homes by the end of 2012. However, the main leader in Canada's IPTV market in terms of subscribers is Bell Canada. In Q3 2012, Bell Canada added 42,973 new Fibe TV customers, surpassing the 200,000 subscriber mark. Overall, more Canadian consumers are tuning into IPTV. According to a new report by IHS Screen Digest Television Intelligence, 9.6 percent of Canadian pay TV subscriptions were with IPTV providers in Q3 2012. For more:
- see the release
Related articles:
SaskTel lights up its FTTP network service
SaskTel names Alcatel-Lucent as key vendor in its FTTP initiative
BCE Q3 wireline revenue declines 4% despite focus on FTTx, IPTV service sets Read more about: IPTV
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CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) on Thursday announced that it has realigned its management structure by combining its network services business sales and operations teams under one common organization reporting to COO Karen Puckett.  | | Puckett: Will lead CenturyLink's combined sales & operations teams. | Effective immediately, the company will combine the business sales and operations functions that were part of the telco's Enterprise Markets Group – Network Services and Regional Markets Group organizations. However, the reorganization does not include CenturyLink's Wholesale Markets Group (WMG) and Enterprise Markets Group – Data Hosting segments. Meanwhile, Savvis, CenturyLink's cloud, colocation and managed hosting services subsidiary, will continue to operate as an independent organization in the Data Hosting segment. Jim Ousley and Jeff Von Deylen will also retain their roles as CEO and president of the subsidiary.
Starting in Q1 2013, the service provider will report the following four segments in its financial statements: Consumer, Business, Wholesale and Data Hosting services. "Our business segment continues to grow, and this organizational shift streamlines our end-to-end service delivery, support and sales to our network services enterprise customers by creating one cohesive organization focused on them," said Glen Post, CenturyLink's CEO and president, in a release. Puckett has the experience to oversee these diverse divisions. She took a lead role in two of the telco's key acquisitions: Embarq, which spurred the company's evolution from CenturyTel to CenturyLink in 2009; and Qwest, in 2011. Before that, Puckett took part in the team that integrated 1.5 million access lines from GTE, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and Madison River. Despite its roots as a small-town telephone company as CenturyTel,with a small handful of business customers, CenturyLink has established itself as a major business services provider. In Q3 2012, CenturyLink reported that its Enterprise Markets division's strategic revenues increased 7.2 percent to $341 million over Q3 2011 due to strong MPLS and Ethernet sales. Likewise, the Enterprise Markets--Data Hosting segment's operating revenues were $280 million, up 8.1 percent from pro forma Q3 2011. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
CenturyLink legacy declines offset by consumer IP, business gains; revenue down 1.3%
CenturyLink brings voice, IP services into 5 more CoreSite data centers
UPDATED: CenturyLink sues Portland, Ore. over new wireline phone tax
CenturyLink, Frontier protest Portland, Ore. wireline tax hike Read more about: CenturyLink
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New York City needs to support Verizon's fiber switchover
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