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The complaint, which was filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), says that Cablevision is not selling high-definition (HD) programming from its Madison Square Garden Network to the telecommunications company for broadcast on its FiOS service. Cablevision is currently making such programming available in standard-definition format.
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> Twitter Coming to Verizon FiOS?
New York based Verizon is currently testing a beta product that will allow their FiOS subscribers to see Twitter posts on their TV, according to The Wall Street Journal. The service would show a stream of real time Twitter posts related to the show they are watching.
The Wall Street Journal
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> Verizon To Offer 7 MB Internet Access to NY Customers
> Verizon Adds News HD Channels to FiOS
Verizon is increasing the availability of its 7.1 megabit, high-speed Internet service, the fastest it offers to customers, according to an e-mail which we received from the company. More than three million lines in both the five boroughs of NYC and NY State should have access by July. Their press release touting this offering is available online here.
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> Verizon Cuts Phone Deal With Frontier Communications
> Verizon Adds News HD Channels to FiOS
Today Verizon announced that it has reached a deal with Stamford, Connecticut based Frontier Communications Corp. which will sell its phone service in more rural parts of the country. Frontier will now have 4.8 million phones lines and 1 million broadband connections to sell to residential and small businesses in areas such as Ohio, Michigan, Nevada, Idaho and West Virginia.
This sale does not affect Verizon customers in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut, as Verizon wants to concentrate rolling out its fiber optics and FiOS services to the tri-state area.
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> FiOS Coming to Central New York
> Verizon Considers FairPoint Bid For Landlines in New England
Verzion announced that it will be offering six new HD channels to its FiOS subscribers in the New York area and elsewhere. The channels, Comedy.TV, Recipe.TV, ES.TV, MyDestination.TV, Cars.TV and Pets.TV come from Entertainment Studios, an independent producer and distributor of first-run syndicated television programming.
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> YES Network Now Available to NY, NJ FiOS Customers
> New Verizon Local Cable Channel Coming to NYC
The grant for the PBS program will used used for a multi-platform initiative called Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier. It will explore the impact of the Web and digital media on the lives of U.S. citizens in the 21st century through a series of online video reports and user-submitted stories. This project will culminate in a national PBS television broadcast next winter.
The program will be hosted by NY-based Douglas Rushkoff, a teacher of media theory at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and Rachel Dretzin, its producer/director, is a partner in Brooklyn-based Ark Media, a documetary production company.
In an op-ed this week in the Daily News, columnist Juan Gonzalez addresses an issue that for the most part, has flown under the news radar- New York's cable television contracts. The contracts between New York cable providers (such as Time Warner and Cablevision) and the city, through its Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications, expired back in September 2008 yet both sides are still negotiating over several sticking points. One of the key points that have been on the block are the franchisee fees that must be paid to the city.
As of now, cable operators only pay a 5% franchise fee for video revenues, but it was agreed upon before triple pay packages existed. The Bloomberg administration is looking for a fairer share of fees on video, phone and particular the Internet, a large revenue sources for the cable companies.
As a result of a new, multi-year video-on-demand agreement between Verizon and regional sports network YES Network, FiOS subscribers throughout NY and northern NJ will be able to access game coverage and other YES programming on demand.
In order to compete with local news channels like Time Warner Cable's NY1 and Cablevision's News 12, Verizon's FiOS is rolling out its own local news channel FiOS1 to New York City subscribers this summer. The channel will have traffic reports and weather every ten minutes and reports shot by citizen journalists. A professional news team has yet to be hired.
Local channels offered by Verizon in Maryland and Northern Virginia rank in the top 20% by viewers.
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> NJ Att'y General Sues Verizon for FIOS Marketing
> FiOS Coming to Central New York
The state's attorney general has alleged that Verizon has failed to provide the promotional gifts promised to subscribers to the service and charged higher prices than those quoted in advertisements, including previously unmentioned "activation fees."
Verizon's NJ president Dennis Bone responded in a statement that these allegations are based on actions that occurred during the initial rollout of the service in the state about two years ago and have since been addressed.
Regardless, the NJ Division of Consumer Affairs has set up a FiOS complaint form and survey on its Web site at http://njConsumerAffairs.gov/fios.htm.
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> FiOS Coming to Central New York
> FiOS Brings Web to TV in Upgrade
