TL; DR alert....
Verizon, as a part of their retirement of OSP copper, is making a push to expand the reach of FiOS in towns/cities. The town I live in has had FiOS available since 2008.
As I've posted in the past, Verizon opted to bypass sections of Arlington that had buried utilities and/or were low density residential.
The church I attend is one such area. The utilities were originally above ground but went underneath back in the 1940's due to road expansion. Verizon opted to bypass the area and reject every request we made for service.
This past week, Verizon sent a group to the church to investigate the path that the 100 pair direct burial took to get from the street to the basement of not just our building but the empty house next door.
Now one thing that had me rolling my eyes. About 10 years ago, when we decommed the old oil burning locomotive furnaces for a new gas furnace, Verizon was unable to mark the cables for Dig Safe because the company records were contradictory. After a backhoe snagged the Bell System era cable (along with another cable used for the old teletype style fire alarm call boxes), Verizon said that it would update their records (after a technician DPO'ed to make repairs to fix the damage).
Forward to last week. Verizon's technicians brought a drawing that had the telephone cable on the wrong side of the building. When I spotted the techs milling around on the lawn, I introduced myself and proceeded to explain how the cable was run (I was present 10 years ago when the accident occurred).
What gets me is that Verizon didn't make good on its promise to update the records back then.
It took a while, but the technicians were able to piece together the path. Lots of pictures were taken of the yard, the vault and the cable entrance to the church's phone closet (aka my office). When the group was finishing up, the lead said that another group would be out to tone the cable, mark the path and discuss the plan/options to run the fiber into the building. Hopefully it will be an easy upgrade.
One last tidbit. As of this moment, Comcast and Astound have no conduits under the street along our block. The house next door is slated to become mixed usage after the building owner and the town decide to stop playing games and get serious. Whoever decides to service the building with their upgraded facilities will have a captive customer.
As for us.... bye-bye DOCSIS!
