In Verizon Copper-Fiber Swap, Some Worry About Customers Left Behind

Verizon in filings this month notified the FCC it's replacing copper distribution and loop facilities with fiber to the premises in parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania (see here, here, here, here and here). Verizon said most customers served by copper are "plain old telephone service" subscribers and with fiber will get the same POTS at the same price with no features or functionality changes. Those followed similar filings in March on copper/fiber swap-outs in parts of Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Virginia (see here, here, here, here and here).

Asked about specifics of its fiber transition, the company wouldn't comment. In a statement, it said that as it has done for multiple years, it "work[s] closely with our customers to make this transition as smooth as possible. Once a customer is on fiber, they can still choose the same voice service they had on copper, with the advantage of fiber's greater physical resilience. We also offer the faster, more reliable broadband services that today's consumers demand. This network transition is an ongoing effort that spans areas throughout our wireline territory."

USTelecom said members are retiring copper lines "first laid a century ago" and replacing them with fiber. That's due to its durability, lower cost, electromagnetic interference resistance and better data propagation characteristics.

The National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates seeks to protect customers here, ensuring they have an adequate substitute for copper, said NASUCA President and Connecticut Consumer Counsel Elin Swanson Katz in an interview. “We recognize that the world is changing and that copper is going away,” but vulnerable communities mustn’t be abandoned, she said. Katz said the FCC should ask: “What’s the technological substitute, is it available to everybody and how much does it cost?”

The Connecticut consumer office is studying Verizon’s retirement notice for Greenwich, she said. The carrier serves few customers in Connecticut, where Frontier Communications dominates. Verizon might want fiber in Greenwich to support its small-cell infrastructure for 5G, said Bill Vallee, Connecticut State Broadband Office broadband policy coordinator. State regulation of copper but not wireless and fiber also gives them “huge incentive” to retire the legacy network, he said.

Verizon seems to be getting better at making New Jersey consumers aware of what to expect when service moves to fiber, said New Jersey Rate Counsel Division Director Stefanie Brand. When the telco began shifting New Jersey customers to fiber, “we were flooded with complaints,” she said. Through work with the Rate Counsel, the company has revised written educational material for customers and done more to help customers with fire alarms and other equipment that relies on copper lines, Brand said. “We’re not getting a lot of complaints anymore.”

“We’re in a new era and customers need to be properly educated so that they understand, for example, that if there’s a power outage, their phone is out so they need to make sure they always have their cellphone charged or they have battery backup,” Brand said. The transition is “scary to a lot of people,” she said. When Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey in 2012, “the one thing that worked was their copper telephone lines.” Moving to fiber is important in New Jersey where some southern parts still don’t have good broadband, said Brand: “I would love the whole state to have fiber.”

Pennsylvania's Office of Consumer Advocate generally tries to ensure customers get proper notice, "and we will work with customers and Verizon on issues that individual customers may raise about their service," emailed Acting Consumer Advocate Tanya McCloskey. She didn't comment specifically on Verizon's latest retirement notice.

If Verizon “provides comparable service at comparable rates over fiber, there are a lot of positives to having fiber built out,” but New York’s Public Utility Law Project is concerned about possible problems from retiring copper, emailed PULP Executive Director Richard Berkley. “There are a number of devices and applications for which faux POTS over fiber does not work,” and “no awareness campaign” telling consumers how to work with Verizon to make sure that pacemakers, alarms or other things that rely on POTS will continue to function, said Berkley, who's also NASUCA Consumer Protection Committee vice chair. Since fiber isn’t self-powered like copper, seniors especially may be concerned about phones that don’t work in a blackout unless they have battery backup. For low-income customers, “batteries are expensive,” he added.

CWA emailed us it "has long encouraged Verizon to upgrade its copper network to high-speed fiber, and our members are proud to bring this critical infrastructure improvement to residential and business customers." The union also said regulators "should ensure that Verizon is providing high-quality service to its customers, and that the company does not replace the copper network with unreliable non-fiber technologies like Voice Link which do not support the same range of services that copper and fiber do."