Patrick Decker says he loves living in a house in his quiet cul-de-sac off 167th Place Southwest, in part because there aren’t any overhead utility wires; they’re underground.
“It’s one of the reasons we love this block,” said Decker, a former Lynnwood Planning Commission member and Lynnwood City Council candidate.
Decker said he got a doorknob hanging announcing that the telephone, broadband Internet and digitial communications company Verizon would soon be digging up yards on his block to upgrade its system.
Still, he said, it was a shock when Verizon contractors showed up Feb. 18 and began spray painting arrows on people’s lawns, marking areas where workers shouldn’t dig because of electrical or water connections.
“I didn’t give them permission to walk on my lawn and spray paint my yard,” he said.
“It’s graffiti, basically, corporate graffiti all over the neighborhood,” he said.
For nearly a year, Verizon contractors have been digging up people’s yards in South Snohomish County cities, including Lynnwood, in an effort to upgrade the company’s fiber optic network. The network gives subscribers the fastest and latest version of high speed Internet access and digital TV.
Verizon’s fiber optic network is called FiOS (Fiber Optic Service).
“It’s really the only network that brings fiber right to the house,” said Kevin Laverty, Verizon spokesman.
Along 167th Place Southwest on Friday, Feb. 22, Verizon contractors were busy uprooting shrubs, digging trenches in yards and otherwise making a mess of things.
“This is nothing,” said Denise Patrick, a resident of nearby Spruce Park Estates. “Last year the cable company did the same thing. At least this time, (Verizon) warned us.”
Patrick said workers for Comcast had to come back and re-dig a hole in the street where that company was upgrading its own high-capacity digital delivery system.
“Literally a few months ago, they re-did the patches on the street and finished it,” she said.
Verizon workers were allowed to dig along Decker’s street because they had the legal authority to do so. Right-of-way easements, granted when neighborhoods were platted, provide public and private utilities with access rights to private property.
“It’s simpler to do this under-grounding on that right-of-way area,” Laverty said. “We’re just going with the existing public utility right of ways that were granted when the property was put in place.”
Verizon has big plans to expand its service so it can compete better with Comcast, which already provides digital TV.
“We have to compete with cable because people want bundles,” Laverty said, referring to the practice of combining telephone, TV and Internet service into a package. That means Verizon has to create its own digital infrastructure, something Comcast already has in place.
“By the end of the year, we passed 140,000 homes in the Snohomish and King County area,” Laverty said. “We’re about ready to announce what we’re going to be doing this year.”
Knowing that what Verizon was doing is legal didn’t satisfy Decker.
“My biggest issue is that even if it’s legal, it seems this is not a recognized public utility, this is just a private company upgrading its system.”
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