juan said:
Verizon is not a cable company Look up RBOC on the FCC website
Verizon in the eyes of the law now is a phone company and phone service is considered a public utility. The fact is as long as Verizon can offer every resident phone service it doesn't make a rats behind how it is offered. It can be offered via ethernet cables, coax cables, fiber cables, copper cables or any cable you can pull out of a lab. Lets look at things this way for a second.
What if Verizon installed fiber alongside the copper. This means that all copper hardware in the CO, poles and everywhere in between will still stay and fully work. Now lets say if Verizon bought all kinds of fiber hardware and ran fiber alongside existing copper wires on all the poles, underground etc. Now lets say if that fiber would only be used for internet and TV service while phone service would stay on the existing copper plant. Now lets say this was done first in Pinellas County and lets say Verizon only installed fiber in Clearwater and not in Largo, Seminole and such. Well as long as Verizon installed fiber to all Clearwater residents they can stop at Clearwater and not upgrade fiber into Largo and such. This is so because cable TV service isn't a public utility and as such the only requirement is getting a franchise agreement with the city. That city would be Clearwater and the city of Clearwater by law cannot deny Verizon a franchise agreement as long as Verizon promises in writing that all residents of Clearwater will get this TV service. Again the city of Clearwater can't deny Verizon just because they don't have an intention to offer video service to the city of Largo. The city of Clearwater has no say in what Verizon does in the city of Largo and vice versa.
Now again like I said above if Verizon didn't want to wire all of Clearwater than the city of Clearwater could deny Verizon a franchise agreement but again that has nothing todo with it being a public utility as this is a franchise agreement issue.
This whole article and issue is the fact that the statewide franchise agreement from what the article says would allow Verizon to get a franchise agreement in a city which they don't have to wire every available customer for it and as such this goes against what current citywide franchise agreements are in place for. Again this has nothing todo with it being a public utility.
Again Verizon is considered a public utility because they are a phone service. Because Verizon is just now getting into Cable TV service the cable TV service side "will not" be considered a public utility no matter how you want to slice it.
Just keep on talking and make yourself sound like more of a fool because it seems you have no idea what your talking about. Again you are 100% right about Verizon being a public utility (just on their primary business which is hard wired phone service) but you are 100% wrong on thinking this extends to the new Verizon TV service. Verizon has always been considered as a hard wired phone service company as their primary business model.