Watching the Red Sox game tonight (Beckett is back!) I saw an ad for Verizon FIOS (bring it to Cotuit you slackers!). The ad shows a poor cable guy leaving and apartment and running into the FIOS installer in the hallway. They say hey, compare notes. Cable guy asks the Verizon guy what’s happening. Verizon guy consults an Amazon Kindle, sans leather cover, hits the touchscreen (wait, my Kindle doesn’t have a touch screen) rattles off some addresses. Cable guy, who is a schlub, consults a lo-tech clipboard.
Okay, so Kindle is wide area wireless, but no way Verizon is using them any place other than TV ads. Right?
Verizon will never bring FIOS to the cape. We aren’t considered a high population area (high in terms of people that would actually pay for fast internet). One of the towns was negotiating cable (Bourne?) rates a year or so ago and asked if Verizon wanted to put in a competitive bid against Comcast. Verizon declined saying that the cape wasn’t on any build out plan. Not the 5 year plan. Not even the 10 year plan. We’re all trapped down here. If it’s not the gas prices, it’s the lack of internet choice.