Verizon will offer fiber-optic TV in bid to become media provider
WALTHAM -- Now the phone company is getting into the TV business.
Verizon Communications Inc. yesterday showed off its new television service that will compete with cable by using fiber-optic lines, which can carry a dizzying amount of voice, data, and video at speeds impossible over the existing wires running into most homes. Verizon hopes to eventually replace with fiber optics all of the copper wire that currently carries its voice and data products to consumers.
In the process, the company is positioning itself to offer services that, until now, many consumers haven't even dreamed of, such as allowing TV viewers to interactively search for programming using keywords, much like a Google search, or dial up a live view of traffic on local roads. Although some places are already wired with fiber optics, the TV service should be available in some Massachusetts communities beginning next year.
Verizon's focus on fiber optics is the cornerstone of its nascent transformation into a content delivery company. It's betting the investment will help it beat back competition from cable and Internet telephony companies for subscribers, especially as demand for content in the home is expected to increase.
''We had to get into the market with something we can offer today," Verizon spokesman Jack Hoey said on the Waltham campus where the demonstration took place. Beyond TV, he said, Verizon is focused on offering interactive applications. ''What are the things that you can't do today that you will be able to do five years or 10 years from now?"
Verizon is abandoning what it and its predecessors have been for nearly a century: phone companies responsible for building much of the existing telecommunications infrastructure in the Northeast. That legacy is about to become a part of history, a shift signaled by the fiber-optic strategy, which Verizon calls ''FiOS."
''Verizon has been really pushing past what it was as a local carrier," said Bill Garrett, Verizon's director of technology for broadband services. ''We have never seen in our lifetimes this type of change in technological scope."
The company's executives said yesterday that Verizon no longer plans to lay any more copper wire, the backbone of its existing network that enables most of the phone calls and Internet service. Instead, Verizon is plodding ahead, neighborhood by neighborhood, installing fiber in new homes and developments as they are built. Fiber to existing homes is being added as consumers request it, provided they live in aneighborhood where Verizon has already begun installing the service.
Fiber is already installed in homes in parts of 20 Massachusetts towns, mostly in suburban Boston. That has sparked criticism from its competitors in the cable industry, who argue that Verizon should be required to wire entire towns before being granted franchise agreements needed to begin offering television service in those communities.
Right now, FiOS TV is available only in the Dallas suburb of Keller, Texas, though Verizon has said that several other markets outside of Massachusetts will get it by the end of the year and that Woburn would be the first in the state, in early 2006.
The company has laid about 10 million miles of fiber-optic cable around the country and estimates the service will be available to about 3 million US homes by the end of the year. With fiber in place, Verizon can offer new services like Internet access with download speeds as high as 30 megabits per second -- 10 times faster than its fastest DSL service -- and FiOS TV.
In demonstrations yesterday, the service looked and performed much like regular cable TV. Video and data signals are carried into a home over fiber, then delivered to a set-top box.
An interactive program guide lists shows by time and groups channels by genre, such as entertainment, which includes USA Network and Spike TV, and ''people & culture," which includes ethnic-targeted networks like BET and AZN Television.
Nationwide pricing has not been disclosed, but Verizon offers three tiers in Texas:
Basic, with 15 to 35 channels and video-on-demand movies for $12.95 per month.
Expanded basic, with 180 channels of video and digital music and 600 video-on-demand titles for $39.95.
La Conexion, aimed at Spanish-speaking customers, for $32.95 per month.
The company also charges $12.95 for its digital box, which includes a digital video recorder and allows customers to watch high-definition television broadcasts.
Subscription channels like HBO and Showtime cost extra.
Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com. 
