Verizon Unhooks 30 Subs
By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 9/16/2007 8:00:00 PM
Verizon Communications is disconnecting 30 of its FiOS video customers in the village of Great Neck, N.Y., that it erroneously connected in advance of negotiating a franchise there.
Heather Wilner, Verizon's New York manager of media relations, blamed the initial connections on a database error. An accurate database would have identified the consumers as Great Neck residents and wouldn't have authorized their service, she said.
“We scrub our databases throughout deployments, but errors can occur, just like the problems experienced when the incumbents first started up,” she said.
Verizon has been in negotiations for a franchise for Great Neck, a village of 9,538 on Long Island, for more than two years. The Great Neck/North Shore Cable Commission is negotiating a franchise agreement on behalf of the village and 14 other communities in the region.
At the same time, the local regulators are working through a refranchise agreement with the video incumbent, Cablevision Systems. The law requires that operating terms for the incumbent and newcomer conform to “level playing field” standards, which have been widely interpreted to mean substantially the same, not identical, terms. In communities across the country, finding a satisfactory interpretation of “substantially the same,” therefore avoiding legal challenges, is time consuming. The creation of community channels and efforts by communities to protecting their funding can also slow talks.
Verizon does have franchises with some of the communities bordering Great Neck, such as the town of North Hempstead. Apparently some of the salespeople soliciting new subscribers strayed across municipal borders into Great Neck.
The disconnected consumers will be refunded any installation or other fees they paid to Verizon about three months ago when they connected to the video service.
“We informed them directly and apologized,” Wilner said. Verizon is going to the homes to pick up its equipment, rather than making consumers return it themselves, she added.
Verizon hopes ultimately to reinstall the customers now that they have experienced the company's video services. The company will offer special promotions to the inconvenienced homeowners once a franchise agreement is reached, she said, but those incentive details have yet to be determined.
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