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"Into the vault: the operation to rescue Manhattan's drowned internet"
Reply to: by tragically_hipster
Exactly. This article reads a bit like VZ PR, but I assume the only source for the article is VZ themselves, so that’s a given.
What’s not touched on here is that this isn’t just about some residential POTS service, NYCMNYBS is a huge Central Office that beyond POTS, DSL and FiOS serves a ton of enterprise customers – between this and the West St. CO, this is what VZ has to cover the whole financial district. Power, as noted, is not fully restored to the rest of the building, and even what has been restored was not brought online until just last week. This may no longer be accurate, but that CO was also home to a “tandem” – a phone switch that is used to interconnect various LATAs and an interconnet where other phone companies can reach VZ customers and vice-versa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_4_telephone_switch#Sector_and_access_tandems). If that’s still the case, this probably mucked up a whole mess of other services.
Regardless, as VZ maintains a near-monopoly on last-mile connectivity, the Broad Street CO has been a popular place for the CLECs to colocate (as they have access to copper and fiber to customer prems in the area – think T1, T3, OC-3 and other traditional leased-line services still in use at larger, conservative operations in the financial district). Even fiber-fed enterprise customers have little use for undamaged fiber that terminates on equipment without power.
Looking at the pictures though, one thing is incredibly obvious – this stuff is dated, and maintenance has been minimal, even in this insanely lucrative district. Verizon wants nothing more to do with tariffed services, and the way they signal that is with their shoddy maintenance of any network element that must be open to competitors (for a fee mind you, no free rides for the CLECs). Their concern at this point is in shedding POTS, DSL, and eventually the old enterprise market and trying to transition to the (much more loosely regulated) wireless side ASAP. The only part of that I find shocking is that they are slowly letting the old enterprise stuff go as well, which is a piece that in the past has made them ass-tons of money.
Reply to: by tragically_hipster
Exactly. This article reads a bit like VZ PR, but I assume the only source for the article is VZ themselves, so that’s a given.
What’s not touched on here is that this isn’t just about some residential POTS service, NYCMNYBS is a huge Central Office that beyond POTS, DSL and FiOS serves a ton of enterprise customers – between this and the West St. CO, this is what VZ has to cover the whole financial district. Power, as noted, is not fully restored to the rest of the building, and even what has been restored was not brought online until just last week. This may no longer be accurate, but that CO was also home to a “tandem” – a phone switch that is used to interconnect various LATAs and an interconnet where other phone companies can reach VZ customers and vice-versa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_4_telephone_switch#Sector_and_access_tandems). If that’s still the case, this probably mucked up a whole mess of other services.
Regardless, as VZ maintains a near-monopoly on last-mile connectivity, the Broad Street CO has been a popular place for the CLECs to colocate (as they have access to copper and fiber to customer prems in the area – think T1, T3, OC-3 and other traditional leased-line services still in use at larger, conservative operations in the financial district). Even fiber-fed enterprise customers have little use for undamaged fiber that terminates on equipment without power.
Looking at the pictures though, one thing is incredibly obvious – this stuff is dated, and maintenance has been minimal, even in this insanely lucrative district. Verizon wants nothing more to do with tariffed services, and the way they signal that is with their shoddy maintenance of any network element that must be open to competitors (for a fee mind you, no free rides for the CLECs). Their concern at this point is in shedding POTS, DSL, and eventually the old enterprise market and trying to transition to the (much more loosely regulated) wireless side ASAP. The only part of that I find shocking is that they are slowly letting the old enterprise stuff go as well, which is a piece that in the past has made them ass-tons of money.