Verizon

Verizon Wireless has continued its long-standing commitment to offer its customers a superior network experience, and a series of metro and airport studies, issued by RootMetrics in the first half of 2014, lends further support to that claim.

In independent testing conducted by RootMetrics as part of its bi-annual RootScore Reports for metro markets in the United States, Verizon Wireless ranked first or tied for first in 115 of 125 RootMetrics metro reports in overall network performance, more than any other among the four national carriers.

Verizon Wireless also ranked first or tied for first in 30 of 50 RootMetrics Airport RootScore Reports, which measured data network performance in the first half of 2014: more wins than any other national wireless carrier tested. Verizon Wireless won or tied for data network performance in four of the top five largest airports in the United States -- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International; Chicago O’Hare International; Los Angeles International; and Denver International.

Verizon released our Transparency Report for the first half of 2014. We’ve tried to include more data and more specificity. We hope that this Report will add to the ongoing discourse about government demands for customer data and, more generally, about privacy and public safety. Although we continue to receive large numbers of demands, the overall percent of our customers affected remains very small.

We received more subpoenas than any other type of legal process in the first half of the year in the United States, but those approximately 72,500 subpoenas sought information regarding only approximately one tenth of one percent of our United States customers. Moreover, each subpoena typically seeks information about a small number of customers: ninety percent of the subpoenas sought information about three or fewer customers. In fact, the average number of customers whose information was demanded through a single subpoena was less than two. We also continue to take positions in support of privacy that are not as public.

While it may not make the headlines, Verizon commonly pushes back against legal demands, forcing law enforcement agencies to narrow the scope of their requests, correct errors in their demands, or issue a different form of legal process before we will produce a specific type of data. Through these processes we rejected a number of demands from law enforcement completely and did not produce some of the information sought through other law enforcement demands.

If there’s one fact that communications policy experts can agree on, it’s this: the communications landscape has changed dramatically since Congress last visited the Communications Act in 1996. T

he evolution in technology, computation, software and competition has been accompanied by a seismic shift in consumer preferences. Unlike their more heavily regulated counterparts, most of competitors have not been subject to the same legacy regulatory regime, which often requires permission to introduce new services and features or to move away from others that fail to meet consumer demands.

This is not to suggest that the same type of prescriptive regulation that traditionally was applied to legacy voice providers now should apply to newer competitors and services from the other “silos.” Just the opposite: consumers will benefit most if Congress adopts a new policy framework that more accurately reflects the nature of competition in today’s communications marketplace and provides all companies in the communication and Internet ecosystem with the flexibility necessary to encourage innovation and investment, while simultaneously protecting consumer interests.

In short, a modern definition and approach to communications policy should embrace the dynamic competition in today’s market, while allowing for future innovations and market participants. Dismantling the regulatory “silos” is the first step toward a modern communications policy framework that enables service providers to give their customers more of everything.

The Federal Communications Commission recently released its fourth annual Fixed Broadband Report, as well as some underlying data. The Report confirms that Verizon FiOS delivers a world class experience to customers, with unparalleled speed and reliability.

In fact, the Report found that our FiOS platform consistently delivers well over 100% of the upload and download speeds advertised. When congestion does occur on specific interconnection links, it’s the content sender and transit provider, not the Internet service provider (ISP), that determines the specific links and routes that content (such as Netflix videos) takes.

In making decisions on how to send video traffic to consumers, content senders may have 50 or more routes to choose from to get to a given ISP’s network. When appropriately structured, these routes provide plenty of capacity for all the traffic to reach consumers. But when content senders or Internet transit providers choose to concentrate most of the traffic onto a small number of interconnections (for business reasons), consumers can experience some congestion.

The congestion mentioned in the release was the result of some Internet transit providers like Cogent trying to send large volumes of traffic to ISPs through connections that are too small and were not designed to deal with huge amounts of traffic.

Breaking reports have suggested that Netflix is engaging in a PR stunt in an attempt to shift blame to ISPs for the buffering that some of its customers may be experiencing.

According to one journalist’s tweet, Netflix is displaying a message on the screen for users who experience buffering which says: “The Verizon network is crowded right now.”

This claim is not only inaccurate, it is deliberately misleading.

The source of the problem is almost certainly NOT congestion in Verizon’s network. Instead, the problem is most likely congestion on the connection that Netflix has chosen to use to reach Verizon’s network.

Of course, Netflix is solely responsible for choosing how their traffic is routed into any ISP’s network. Some reporters seem to have bought into Netflix’s claims without question, and some have conflated this dispute with net neutrality.

For those looking for more careful analysis, however, there is plenty of good material out there by technical experts (such as industry analyst Dan Rayburn) that set the record straight.

Verizon filed a response to opposition filed for our copper retirement in Ocean View (VA) and Belle Harbor (NY). As of April 2014, fewer than forty of Verizon’s customers in Ocean View and Belle Harbor remained on copper facilities.

Customers in these two wire centers -- which cover more than 15,000 homes -- have already overwhelmingly made the decision to move to either Verizon’s fiber-based services or to competitors. Completing the migration to Verizon’s more advanced and reliable fiber facilities, and retiring the legacy copper loops and the switches in these wire centers, is not just a logical and efficient step, but it is also an incremental one.

There has been no valid objection to the copper retirement filed by customers living or working in these areas or by providers serving them, and no request for an extension of time made. The claims raised by the very few commenters (none of which is specific to these two wire centers) have no merit under the circumstances here. Most of the customers remaining on copper-based services in these two wire centers today are purchasing plain old telephone service, or POTS.

Following copper retirement, they will continue to receive the same traditional POTS service over fiber on the same terms and conditions and at the same or better price as they received over copper. There is no change in the underlying features and functionalities in their service: voice mail, collect calling, and other features will continue to work just as they did over copper; customers will continue to be able to use fax machines, medical monitoring devices, and home alarms; and accessibility services -- such as relay services used by customers who are deaf or hard of hearing -- also will continue to work as before. There will be no change to customers’ ability to call 911: public safety answering points will receive the same E911 information as before.

Verizon Wireless announced XLTE -- the next step in ensuring the very best high-speed data experience available on any wireless network in the United States.

XLTE is Verizon’s new way to show consumers that they will now have the benefits of even more capacity on the nation’s largest and most reliable 4G LTE network, all made possible by taking advantage of AWS spectrum. XLTE adds capacity in neighborhoods or areas where demand is high, especially during busy periods like rush hour, lunch times in crowded areas or during events when mobile data use is the highest.

XLTE delivers faster peak data speeds and a minimum of double the bandwidth to 4G LTE customers in high traffic areas in markets nationwide where AWS spectrum has been activated. While XLTE network enhancements are invisible to the customer, the mobile experience is not.

XLTE Ready devices automatically access both 700 MHz spectrum and the AWS spectrum in XLTE cities. Customers with 4G LTE devices operating solely on the 700 MHz spectrum in XLTE markets also benefit from the extra capacity created by XLTE Ready device traffic moving to the AWS spectrum.

A magistrate judge in New York recently ruled that the United States government could use a search warrant to obtain an individual customer’s emails that Microsoft stored in Dublin, Ireland. The decision is contrary to well-accepted law that US courts are not empowered to issue warrants for foreign searches.

As important, the decision failed to take into account substantial international commerce and policy implications of an “extra-territorial” warrant.

It is worth noting that the consumer Internet-based email services at issue in the case before this magistrate judge are quite different from cloud computing and hosting services offered to business customers. We do not believe the magistrate judge’s decision would apply to Verizon’s non-US cloud services, where these overseas business customers process and/or store their data directly on servers outside the US.

[Commentary] The Minority Media & Telecommunications Council recently released a white paper, “Digital Déjà Vu: A Road Map for Promoting Minority Ownership in the Wireless Industry,” that calls on the Federal Communications Commission to reform its “designated entity” rules.

“Designated entities” (DE) are the collective term used for women- and minority-owned businesses, and the paper calls for the Federal Communications Commission to increase opportunities for women and minority-owned enterprises to participate in spectrum auctions by reforming its “designated entity” rules.

We agree that this issue deserves FCC review. As a company that is committed to diversity and inclusion, Verizon supports efforts to create opportunities for greater inclusion and participation.

While we do not agree with every recommendation in the MMTC white paper, we support MMTC’s overall goal to increase participation of diverse communities in the communications space.

We also agree with MMTC that the FCC should examine appropriate ways to reform the current “designated entity” rules to maximize opportunities for small, women and minority-owned businesses to participate in spectrum auctions.

[Commentary] Recently, the New York Times had a story about the benefits of fiber, entitled “For the Tech-Savvy with a Need for Speed, a Limited Choice of Towns With Fiber.”

The article correctly identifies the superiority of all-fiber networks over older copper-based technologies, as demonstrated by an accompanying graphic from Ookla showing that, nationwide, Verizon FiOS is providing the fastest connections and that 8 of the top 10 states are states where FiOS has been deployed. Fortunately, for thousands of towns -- and major metropolitan areas, such as New York and Washington, DC -- throughout Verizon’s footprint, and for millions of our landline customers, the transition to fiber is already well underway. Fiber-based services from Verizon are available to more than 16 million homes, and soon, about 70 percent of our footprint will be fiberized.

In contrast, fewer than 1 million (about 6%) of the homes in those areas are still getting service over copper lines. While that small percentage (and shrinking every day) is on the copper network, keeping that network up and running still generates 100 percent of its costs. There are also hidden costs, such as environmental impacts, given that it takes much more power to run the copper network than a fiber network. Unfortunately, there are some who for a variety of reasons are trying to put the brakes on fiber upgrades, and by extension, fiber deployment. They think that the old copper networks should be kept indefinitely.

Needless to say, no existing telephone company will be able to make the investment necessary to build a new fiber network if it is forced to keep the old, redundant, and costly copper network running, too. Policymakers at all levels of government must recognize that the upgrade from copper to fiber provides significant benefits for consumers and for the communities where this takes place. The social benefits of a transition to fiber must outweigh the preference that a few holdouts might have for a more familiar technology.

Policy makers must be courageous and enable the upgrade to fiber to proceed. Getting the fiber networks that are critical for the future of their communities will not happen as long as a small minority of residents are clinging to the copper networks of the past.