EVERETT — Verizon’s push to deliver fast Internet and digital television into homes instead of just traditional phone service will take a big leap forward this summer.
That’s when a new video control room for the region is set to be switched on inside the company’s operations center near Evergreen Way and E. Casino Road in Everett.
Verizon’s local managers gave Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson and the media a peek at the hub, which is in the midst of construction, last week.
“This is where the magic will happen,” Israel Atkins, who will manage the hub, told Stephanson as workers installed carpet in what will become the main control room for Verizon’s FiOS TV service. “It’s going to look like the big NASA space shuttle control room.”
The service is scheduled to kick off in late August. It will be available to subscribers of Verizon’s FiOS all-fiber-optic network, which is accessible now to 100,000 homes in Snohomish County, including about 30,000 in Everett alone.
It’s part of Verizon’s investment of $23 billion nationally to make the FiOS network available to 18 million homes by 2010.
“This is bringing the type of competition to this area that customers are craving,” said David Valdez, Verizon’s senior vice president for the Northwest. “That’s the win here: consumers will really have a choice now.”
FiOS TV already is available in other parts of the nation, where it competes with cable television systems. The new service is helping Verizon counter rivals such as Comcast, which now delivers telephone services to complement its cable Internet and television businesses.
Before Verizon can offer television, however, it needs to negotiate franchise agreements with cities and counties in the state. Milt Doumit, Verizon’s vice president of public affairs, policy and communications in Washington, said the company is talking now with 18 different jurisdictions to get such agreements.
In Everett, Stephanson said, the city and Verizon are still finalizing a proposed franchise agreement.
“We’re close. We’ve been working on it for several months,” he said.
Once Verizon is authorized to offer FiOS TV locally, the new Everett-area video hub will receive national programming via fiber-optic connections from Verizon’s two “super-head-end” facilities. Inside the local hub, a team of 10 engineers under Atkins will monitor the video and audio quality of the national channels received from the super head ends. The hub also will insert local programming, such as local TV, public-education and government channels and advertising, and then send these signals to the FiOS network.
Next to the control room, a roomful of servers will handle the video content going over the FiOS network.
The video hub office is Verizon’s first such facility in the state, and its location in Everett is not an accident, Valdez said. He said Verizon looked at both Seattle and Everett as possible locations.
“We think our partnership with the city and Snohomish County is exceptionally strong, so we pushed for it to be here,” Valdez said.
Valdez said Verizon soon will begin marketing FiOS TV to local consumers. Since last fall, while awaiting franchise agreements and the completion of its video infrastructure, Verizon has offered TV from satellite provider DIRECTV for FiOS customers wanting to order a package of services.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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