Verizon approval irks union

ALBANY ? Union leaders blasted a decision by the federal Department of Justice to give the green light to a marketing deal between Verizon Wireless and several major cable TV companies.

The DOJ approval will likely pave the way for the Federal Communications Commission to also approve the deal, which union leaders and some local mayors have argued would stifle competition for high-speed Internet service and cable TV.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone, the British telecommunications giant. While Verizon Communication's employees are unionized, workers at Verizon Wireless are not.

The bigger issue, union supporters and local mayors believe, is the fear that the deal will discourage Verizon from deploying more of its FiOS fiber optic system that has been competing with TV, Internet and phone offerings from Time Warner Cable and others in major population centers in the state.

Building the FiOS system is extremely expensive for Verizon, and mayors in municipalities such as like Albany and Troy have said the company ignores inner-city neighborhoods for more affluent suburbs. However, in addition to rolling out FiOS in suburban towns like Guilderland and Bethlehem, Verizon has also taken FiOS to Schenectady.

Under the marketing deal, Verizon Wireless and the cable companies will do cross-marketing of each other's products.

The alliance makes business sense because relatively cheap yet sophisticated smart phones are changing how consumers access TV content and the Internet.

In may ways, the future of online media is through wireless connections that are much easier and cheaper to build ? and which are much less regulated in states like New York. The transition is causing issues for even the most savvy Internet companies like Facebook, which has been slow to respond to the shift of its users from their computers at work and home that run off landline connections to their wireless phones and tablets.

The unions believe that this shift and the deal between Verizon Wireless and the cable companies will also cost the economy good-paying jobs.

"Not only have regulators lost their focus on competition, but they again show that jobs get no consideration in telecommunications policy," the CWA said in a statement. "Without incentives or direction for Verizon to continue to build out FiOS, thousands of good-paying jobs will be lost."

The FCC has indicated it is inclined to approve the deal now that DOJ has decided in favor of it.

lrulison@timesunion.com ? 518-454-5504 ? @larryrulison

Source: http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Verizon-approval-irks-union-3794570.php

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