Verizon Fios TV is pulling out of rural areas in 14 states

1inxs · 05-16-2009, 08:02 AM

69,000 Verizon Fios TV subscribers are finding out they will be Frontier customers within the next year.
Verizon -- Engadget HD

I wonder what's behind the changes? Things are charging quickly in the DTV market. What will it look like in just one year?

bicker · 05-17-2009, 03:11 AM

This is not surprising. Verizon has pulled out of Northern New England, as well, selling their business to Fairpoint.

The expectations that government and the public place on businesses to provide a consistent product is actually prompting businesses to limit the scope of where they make their offerings available.

FiOS can talk about how perfect their service is, but the dirty little secret they won't tell you is how they don't serve the less profitable-to-serve homes, homes that the legacy cable company (Comcast, TWC, Cox, Charter, etc.) does serve. It sure is easy to make a good service profitable when you cherry-pick your customers and leave the legacy supplier to serve the unprofitable (low revenue, high cost-to-serve) customers.

TonyT · 05-17-2009, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bicker

This is not surprising. Verizon has pulled out of Northern New England, as well, selling their business to Fairpoint.

The expectations that government and the public place on businesses to provide a consistent product is actually prompting businesses to limit the scope of where they make their offerings available.

FiOS can talk about how perfect their service is, but the dirty little secret they won't tell you is how they don't serve the less profitable-to-serve homes, homes that the legacy cable company (Comcast, TWC, Cox, Charter, etc.) does serve. It sure is easy to make a good service profitable when you cherry-pick your customers and leave the legacy supplier to serve the unprofitable (low revenue, high cost-to-serve) customers.

Question is then: Why does legacy cable serve unprofitable customers? If they have to then why does FiOS get to choose who they serve to?