- Verizon (NYSE:VZ) is seeing about 60% savings as it takes initial steps into converting central offices to fiber from its old copper infrastructure, its senior VP of transformation said at a conference today.
- The company has only transitioned seven of more than 2,000 COs, but it's seen enough to plan to switch them all over, making it the only carrier to make that attempt so far.
- The move was spurred after the company had to replace one of its largest New York COs, wrecked by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Now, Verizon's Sowmyanarayan Sampath says, the company doesn't really need 60-80% of the 50M square feet of CO real estate it holds today.
- Why now? Copper revenues slides 8-10% each year while remaining a fixed cost. The old network is a $100B annual-revenue industry that costs $63B just to power.
- Speaking of Verizon and fiber: Cablevision (NYSE:CVC) has stepped up a legal scuffle with Verizon by filing suit, asking a judge to find that a Cablevision commercial claiming that Verizon's FiOS isn't "100% fiber optic" is true. Verizon had previously challenged the ad. Cablevision says that the service uses regular cable in the home.