How to Stop Verizon from Screwing New York City

[Commentary] Late during the week of June 22, New York City’s internal tech auditors released a stunning seventeen-page report about Verizon and its performance in keeping its promise to the city and its inhabitants. In 2008 Verizon promised to make FiOS available to everyone in the city by June 30, 2014, and signed an agreement to that effect. It is a year past that date, and Verizon is simultaneously telling the city that its work is done while refusing or failing actually to connect residences.

Here’s a plan for New York City, one that has the potential to be a win for everyone concerned: Cut a different deal with Verizon. Make Verizon into the operator of a passive, neutral fiber network that (as in Seoul and Stockholm) is connected to every single home and business. (This would require an expanded network, which is necessary in any case.) Release Verizon from the shackles of serving customers and acquiring programming. Let other Internet service providers emerge that will actually have the relationships with customers. Set a reasonable price for provision of wholesale fiber access that Verizon must charge to any ISP. Result: a thriving, competitive retail marketplace for high-speed Internet access that reaches every single New Yorker (including, particularly, the 36 percent of the city’s residents who now don’t have a connection at home). Cheap prices for world-class data connections. Economic growth for the city, as it retakes its position as a global metropolis. Cheaper healthcare costs, as residents replace expensive in-person visits with equally in-person, but remote, contacts. And on and on.

[Susan Crawford is co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University]