Verizon CEO Seidenberg Rips Cable Competition

Telco Reaches 1 Million FiOS Internet Subs; Promises Faster Downloads

By Steve Donohue -- Multichannel News, 6/20/2007 11:40:00 AM

Chicago -- Verizon Communications is nearing the 500,000-subscriber mark for its FiOS TV service, chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg said Wednesday.

The company, which markets both FiOS Internet and FiOS TV services, also recently signed up its 1 millionth customer for FiOS Internet, Seidenberg said during a keynote address here Tuesday morning at the NXTcomm convention.

Seidenberg showed several-hundred convention attendees a video featuring the 1 millionth FiOS customer -- the Bayer family of Massapequa, N.Y. The former Cablevision Systems customers gushed over the quality of FiOS, saying that the Internet and video service is superior to cable.

“We had the [Cablevision] triple play -- we found that the quality wasn’t up to the service we expected,” Rich Bayer said. “We decided to change and have been happy ever since.”

Bayer’s wife, Marjorie, and their kids also raved about FiOS in the video. “I am paying less than I was before and I’m getting a lot more also,” Marjorie Bayer said.

While cable operators are beginning to boast of future Internet services that will offer download speeds of 100 megabits per second, Seidenberg said Verizon expects to quickly blow past 100-mbps speeds. FiOS Internet already offers download speeds of 50 mbps and is capable of delivering speeds of 100 mbps, he said, adding,

“Today, 100 mbps is just the beginning.”

Verizon plans to deploy GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) technology that will allow it to quadruple its Internet downstream speeds, Seidenberg said.

“By the end of the decade, our cable competitors say they’ll be transitioning to DOCSIS [Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification] 3.0. We’ll be transitioning to … speeds that rival what we deliver today to our most advanced business customers,” he added.