Verizon's $1 Billion Promise Comes Too Late, NYC Says After Filing Suit

residents, a city spokeswoman said Tuesday. Verizon promised the spending after the city sued Monday in the New York Supreme Court. After a notice of default in September (see 1609140058), the city filed a lawsuit claiming Verizon breached its cable franchise agreement. But the telco said it had met the commitment, by its definition of "homes passed." The city asked the court to confirm that Verizon breached the agreement and to compel the company to comply. Verizon plans to “vigorously fight this frivolous lawsuit,” a spokesman emailed. The company will invest another $1 billion in fiber in New York City over the next four years and expand Fios to 1 million more city households, he said. But the city spokeswoman replied that Verizon has failed by three years and counting to meet a commitment made about a decade ago. “Trumpeting a big dollar figure doesn’t change that,” she said. Before the suit, Verizon disputed the city’s complaints in a March 10 letter to Commissioner Anne Roest of the NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. “It is disappointing that you are demanding commitments that have no basis in our Agreement, that are beyond anything ever contemplated when we entered into that Agreement, and that are infeasible and counterproductive,” wrote Executive Vice President-Public Policy Craig Silliman. The suit is bad public relations for the company and may hurt the Big Apple’s smart city efforts, 556 Ventures analyst Bill Ho emailed Tuesday. “The surface impact to Verizon is continued negative public relations as the lawsuit continues.” The downside for the city is that it could hold back its smart-city plans, since that requires public-private cooperation, the analyst said. “The current animus from NYC’s mayoral office could make it difficult to realize fully, especially when NYC is in Verizon’s backyard.”