By putting a name and price-tag on a service most customers won't see for many years, this Verizon press release has the mainstream presses' hearts all a-flutter with the possibilities of "fiber races" and other such broadband revolutions. If you've paid attention however, you know these tease announcements (made every few years for decades now) have one goal in mind: keeping the regulatory dogs at bay.

From Nynex (now Verizon) in their 1993 annual report: "We're prepared to install between 1.5 million and 2 million fiber-optic lines through 1996 to begin building our portion of the information superhighway."

From a Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) press release in 1996: "Later this year, Bell Atlantic will begin installing fiber-optic facilities and electronics to replace the predominantly copper cables between its telephone switching offices and customers - The company plans to add digital video broadcast capabilities to this 'fiber-to-the-curb,' switched broadband network by the third quarter of 1997."

As of 2003 however, only 39,000 US homes were connected to fiber lines, and the bells still couldn't deliver so much as a single episode of Matlock. It's now 2004, and once again a single press release has the press thrilled, excited, and amazed at the possibilities of inexpensive and incredibly fast 15 & 30Mbps fiber connections.

Verizon needs an avenue to provide video services. However if the profit isn't there, the states don't create the perfect regulatory climate, and the FCC doesn't grant Verizon's request for hands-off federal regulation (like cable), you won't be seeing fiber. Particularly if your state lawmakers make Verizon angry.

Ask New Jersey, whose state regulators prevented Verizon from charging rivals more to lease their network. As the Newark Star Ledger illuminates, the state is now being punished by Verizon, who is scaling back their fiber deployments in the state until New Jersey gives them what they want.

While that's Verizon's right and a fantastic example of capitalism and ingenuity, it's not an effective way of bringing broadband to all of the people who want it. Particularly while Verizon lawyers work to ban municipal projects that spring up in communities the bells often don't feel are profitable to serve.

Writer Om Malik is one broadband journalist who stops to think, and smells something fishy in the math. Verizon's principle gear supplier (Advanced Fibre Communications) is looking at some very ugly numbers despite the fiber party. Why? Either "Verizon is not deploying FTTP as quickly as they would like us to believe," or "AFC's gear does not work," Malik thinks out loud.

Malik also points to analysis by Light Reading's Phil Harvey, who notes that Verizon's Keller trial has proven to be a costly test bed. "even if a full one third of the residents in Keller subscribe to Verizon's FTTP network, the carrier's network will have cost it about $1,360 per customer served. Supposing one third of Keller's population does subscribe to FTTP services at the $45 monthly rate, Verizon would take about two-and-a-half years to make its money back," notes Harvey.

While the money has been set aside and Verizon has sped up deployment, this is only the very first step on an incredibly long and difficult road. While the press might be easily impressed, the people of Pennsylvania who have paid out billions in taxpayer dollars for fiber connections never received, and the millions of users still waiting for even the slowest DSL - shouldn't be.