Verizon Targets New York State’s Rural Communities with FTTH

Verizon is breathing new life into its rural New York state markets, launching plans to make Fios fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service available in parts of Coogan, Schenectady and Washington (NY) counties. Upon completion of the network in the next two years, Verizon will offer fiber-to-the-home services to about 15,000 rural NY premises. This deployment of FTTH broadband service was made possible through the company's partnership with NY state and the Federal Communications Commission through the New NY Broadband Program. The program is a public-private partnership designed to provide incentives to service providers to deploy last-mile broadband connectivity in underserved and unserved areas. What’s striking about its work with the FCC is that Verizon had been a lone holdout, turning down $144 million in CAF-I and CAF-II program funding to expand broadband in the rural areas it serves. Last Feb, however, the service provider announced that it would invest $106.6 million leveraging state and federal funds to bring broadband to unserved parts of rural NY.