Verizon flatly denied union accusations that neglect of its landlines is impacting customer service in the Northeast. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Communications Workers of America claims that Verizon is abandoning its legacy network in certain places, resulting in lower quality of service for landline customers.
“There is zero factual evidence for such a bold statement,” said Raymond McConville, media relations manager at Verizon. “This is very typical of them, leading into a contract negotiation. They’re trying to make some claim that we’re ignoring this part of the business, or abandoning this part of the business, and it simply isn’t true.”
The union’s current contract with Verizon expires Aug. 1, and bargaining begins June 22. The CWA reportedly plans to request information from state regulators this week, in an effort to find out what service issues Verizon may have reported to municipalities.
Verizon has been encouraging landline customers to transition to wireless, and the carrier attempted to substitute wireless for the copper landlines that were damaged on Fire Island by Hurricane Sandy. Customer backlash forced Verizon to reverse course and repair the copper lines.
Meanwhile, Verizon has agreed to sell a significant portion of its wireline business. Frontier Communications is buying Verizon’s wireline properties in California, Texas and Florida for $10.5 billion. Last week, a Citigroup analyst speculated that the remainder of Verizon’s wireline business could go to French cable operator Altice.
Verizon and AT&T both have significant legacy copper landline assets, and AT&T has stated that it will write off some of those assets. The company said it analyzed its network assets during the fourth quarter, and decided that specific copper assets will not be necessary to support future network activity due to declining customer demand for legacy voice and data products.
Both AT&T and Verizon continue to invest in the fiber portion of their wireline businesses. Verizon offers video, voice and Internet through its FiOS service, and AT&T offers the same “triple play” through U-Verse.
“We remain committed to investing in our wireline networks – both fiber and copper – as evidenced by the billions of dollars we continue to invest in it year in and year out – $5.8 billion last year alone,” said Verizon’s McConville. He added that most of Verizon’s residential wireline assets are in the northeastern part of the United States.
Image source: Newsworks.org
