Verizon service availability will increase competition

On Wednesday, March 26, Town of Brookhaven supervisor Dan Panico, along with other council members, held a press conference to share the progress on the availability of Verizon’s services with the expansive half a million residents of the Town of Brookhaven.

With current wiring, about 38 percent of Brookhaven residents will be able to employ Verizon for their home internet service.

“This is a monumental day, for those who know the issue, in the Town of Brookhaven. For decades, administrations, elected officials, supervisors have sought to achieve a franchise agreement with Verizon to come into to the Town of Brookhaven,” said Panico.

Verizon had been resistant to coming to the Town of Brookhaven predominantly for the size, the rules and regulations of wiring out a town of this size, and the cost to wire out a town of this size. The circumstances proved to be prohibitive to Verizon gaining a foothold in the town.

The beginning and growth of wireless streaming services created further discouragement for Verizon as the typical “cable” plan was less popular.

“However, we are on the dawn of a new day, a day that each and every one of us in the Town of Brookhaven have supported in a quest to have competition in the marketplace,” said Panico.
“This will be my George H.W. moment to ‘read my lips.’ The Town of Brookhaven, in no way ever, has kept Verizon from coming into this marketplace. This is the biggest falsehood  or urban legend in the Town of Brookhaven. No one has an interest in stymieing competition, no one has ever had an interest in stymieing competition. In fact, one supervisor, two administrations ago, in an over-the-top demonstration of the sentiment I just talked about, brought a “welcome mat” to the former Verizon headquarters down on North Ocean Avenue… put the welcome mat out and pleaded on his knees to wire out and provide competition to Brookhaven,” said Panico.

“When you look to the eastern portion of the town, parts of Rocky Point, remember a large portion is the Pine Barrens where no people live. So when you look at the map it might not be dispositive to the eye from an aerial standpoint,” said Panico.

Following the authorization of the town board for a public hearing on the matter, should the town board vote in the affirmative, the board will then sign an agreement with Verizon that the company will submit to the New York State Public Service commission.

Panico said he expected that the submission will be ratified and “customers, residents, taxpayers” would have the opportunity to take advantage of the competition in the marketplace.

“A common question that I get, ‘Does this mean more money to the town?’ Theoretically, having Altice on one side and Verizon on the other and their agreements are almost identical; they are not identical in term, but in terms of agreement with the town are almost identical. One would expect as one side of the equation drops and the other rises, it would be an equal amount of revenue for the town. But we also believe there will also be more in terms of gain with Verizon. We are continuing without a loss to Altice,” said Panico.

Panico described a possible five-year agreement where Verizon, where with a substantial pool of  subscribers online, Verizon would commit to building out the rest of the infrastructure.

“I will note that the Public Service Commission does not regulate internet providers, but it is not beyond reason to believe that as Verizon makes a foray into the Town of Brookhaven, they will offer what used to be known as a ‘triple play,’ or something like [it], to bring in those people who otherwise have a different service. In very basic terms, it’s no different than the play between Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile offering incentive to get existing customers to switch,” said Panico.

Councilwoman Jane Bonner (R-District 2) said, “I noticed there are white-out sections on the north shore in my district, and I will be ecstatic when we get Verizon. In my house, we’re not expert streamers, so we have the old world triple play you used to get from Cablevision and my pocketbook will appreciate having some competition, so if I’m personally going to benefit from having Verizon for competition, then certainly the 500,000 residents of Brookhaven will benefit. That’s the No. 1 reason we have been advocating for this since the world was black and white, as far as I’m concerned.”

Jonathan Korenreich (D-District 1) said, “The last time we had a  cable franchise agreement come before us, we had a contentious conversation with that cable provider who, because of the lack of competition, felt no strong need to provide any greater accountability or oversight or customer service and I had to vote no… This one I’ll be very happy to vote yes to.”