Are we to believe that Verizon has money to burn to buy big-ticket companies, but not enough to fix its old South Jersey copper lines?
Verizon Communications has been on a shopping spree. It's been tossing various companies into its basket like a Pinelands hermit stockpiling tins of peas and potatoes at the ShopRite Can-Can Sale.
Last month, Verizon purchased Yahoo for $4.8 billion. A year ago it swallowed AOL -- the old America On-Line -- for $4.4 billion. Earlier this year it spent $2.4 billion for business tracking software maker Fleetmatics.
It's been quite a haul for New Jersey's main provider of landline telephone and Internet service; the only provider for such service in part of South Jersey.
It's worth keeping in mind Verizon's $11 billion in acquisitions after the company crowed about its maintenance record at a hearing filled with customers who had nothing but complaints about snap-crackle-pop phone calls and non-existent high-speed Internet.
Verizon has been known to suggest that complaining customers are technological dinosaurs because they don't want their copper lines replaced with less-reliable wireless service. Dinosaurs? Verizon bought $9 billion worth of them in AOL (dial-up, anyone?) and Yahoo, the now-Little Search Engine That Couldn't (couldn't compete with Google, that is).
Last week's state Board of Public Utilities hearing was the first chance that many South Jerseyans had to put their service problems on an official record. Verizon's defenders portrayed the meeting as a listening tour, but it occurred only because Cumberland County, as well as 17 municipalities, had filed an official petition with the BPU.
At the Estell Manor hearing, so many people turned out at an afternoon session that it had to be combined with a separate one scheduled for the evening. Almost 80 customers signed up to speak; an estimated 200 attended.
The complaints are familiar by now: Poor sound quality on calls; too little speed from Internet connections to run a small business competitively; worries about compatibility with medical devices requiring a landline interface.
For the record, Verizon says it's maintaining the copper lines properly, and that it has never said that it would offer wireless service to replace copper in the affected area. But Verizon tried to do exactly that in nearby parts of the state where damage from Hurricane Sandy necessitated replacement of the copper wiring.
Cumberland and Salem county customers would have more confidence in Verizon if it didn't try to minimize poor service incidents as isolated. It's NOT all in their heads. Maybe if Verizon had finished its promised build-out of its modern FiOS fiber-optic lines in denser suburban areas, the rural folks would believe that they, too, could get FiOS later.
We don't know what the BPU will do with the gripes it catalogued at Thursday's hearing. The utilities board lost most of its leverage when, in 2015, it agreed to let Verizon operate its landline service as basically deregulated.
To the extent that the BPU can order it, it should tell Verizon to either extend FiOS or put in new copper lines where existing ones have deteriorated. If you have $11 billion to go shopping, you need to put satisfactory service high on the list.
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