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Comment by leviathant | Hacker News Reader

I live in Philadelphia, where we have a subway station named after AT&T and the tallest building is the Comcast center (until they build their new Comcast building, which will be even taller), and if Verizon can't get fiber to my house (never mind that free wifi movement that sputtered out six or seven years ago) there's absolutely no hope for Google fiber happening here. Between old infrastructure and big players, decent fiber internet is just something I accept that I'm not going to get in this city. There's plenty of other reasons I like it here, but Comcast domination is not one of them.

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Well Verizon was finally given approval in 2009 for FIOS in Philadelphia. but they suddenly stopped their FIOS rollout, coincidentally at the same exact time the cable companies gave Verizon a big chunk of their spectrum licenses. Of course everyone involved insists the two are completely unrelated, even though Verizon had been trying for years to get into Philadelphia.

Verizon had started selling off it's Fiber installs before 2009 (which I still scratch my head at). While they may not be directly related, I'm sure it didn't hurt the negotiation.

Edit: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPoint_Communications and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Communications

> Verizon had started selling off it's Fiber installs before 2009 (which I still scratch my head at).

Well, it's not like they were trying to get rid of fiber. Verizon sold off all its wireline operations in rural and non-core areas. Fiber simply went along for the ride.

What Verizon was trying to get rid of was the copper. No company would be willing to buy the copper from Verizon and then compete against FiOS. Thus, the only way that Verizon could get any buyers was to bundle the copper together with the fiber.

This would make it more difficult for Verizon to attempt a market entry at a later date, as it would have to start from a position of no infrastructure.

I live in Philly and got FIOS fiber recently. Girard station area.

Which Girard station? :) Are you in an apartment building? My house is at about 12th & Poplar, and a couple of years ago I saw a lot of Verizon activity on the numbered streets, but nothing ever coming down to house level.

buddy of mine in south philly (by the stadiums) has fios at their full speed.

I got FiOS in Germantown.

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