Verizon Communications settled a three-year-old lawsuit with New York City on Tuesday, agreeing to add 500,000 low-income households to its broadband footprint, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

New York sued Verizon in 2017, claiming the telco reneged on a promise to extend its Fios fiber-optic broadband, TV and voice service to 100% of the city’s residents by 2014, part of the franchise agreement Verizon signed with the city in 2008.  

A 2015 audit conducted by the city showed that Verizon had fallen far short of that goal, and found the telco had failed to install the necessary equipment in several areas where it said the buildout was completed. In addition, the study claimed Verizon had failed to consistently document service requests and said that 40,000 requests for service were pending, some for a year or more. 

Verizon had denied those claims, countering that it had lived up to its commitments and that the dispute centered on semantics, basically the definition of a “passed home.” 

As part of the Nov. 24 settlement, Verizon agreed to extend its fiber broadband service to an additional 500,000 households within the New York City Housing Authority.

“Internet access is an economic right in New York City, no matter your ZIP code. Tech giants will not stand in our way to deliver high-quality broadband to New Yorkers – they must be a part of the solution,” Mayor de Blasio said in a press release. “COVID-19 has further exposed the inequalities in internet access while changing the way New Yorkers work, learn, and live. We will continue to hold any corporation that fails to deliver on its promise to New Yorkers accountable.” 

According to the Mayor’s Office, many of the neighborhoods that will be earmarked for the expansion include Community Districts that are hit hardest by the pandemic.

They include: 

According to the settlement, Verizon will make broadband connections available to a minimum of 125,000 additional households in these Community Districts. That means if a resident requests paid Fios service, Verizon is required to make it available within seven days. 

Verizon also will report quarterly on their progress, and the city will make the list of newly eligible households public. The settlement is subject to approval from the NYC Franchise and Review Commission and the Public Service Commission.

"We're grateful for the opportunity to bring Verizon Fios service to an additional 500,000 New York City consumers,” Verizon spokesman Rich Young said in a statement. “Currently about 2.5 million NYC homes and businesses benefit from all that Fios has to offer. This agreement builds upon Verizon's base, and will make this premier broadband service available to even more consumers." 

Charter Communications chair and CEO Tom Rutledge said the MSO is prepared to go to court with the New York State Public Service Commission over the agency’s recent decision to rescind its approval of the cable company’s 2016 merger with Time Warner Cable, adding that the battle could last a while.

The PSC announced on July 27 that it was rescinding its approval of the TWC deal, and gave Charter 60 days to come up with a plan to divest of its New York cable systems, which have about 2 million customers. The state said Charter has repeatedly failed to comply with approval conditions to extend its broadband network to unserved and underserved homes throughout New York.

Charter has maintained that it is in compliance, and Rutledge held his ground in a conference call with analysts to discuss Q2 results. Investors appeared pleased, driving Charter stock up more than 5% ($15.01) to $308.91 per share in early trading Tuesday.

“We believe we’re in compliance with the plain reading of the build-out requirements that the state imposed on us in merger conditions and we have a very strong legal case and ability to defend ourselves,” Rutledge said on the call. “It could play out over a lengthy period of time. 

"To put it in perspective, we’re operating in 41 states, we have thousands of franchise agreements, and generally we have good relationship with the communities we serve," Rutledge added. "We live up to our commitments and we have in New York State; in fact we’re well ahead of our obligations in terms of speed upgrades and in the build-out itself.

"We do have labor issues in New York City which we believe may have politicized the actions of the PSC and we’re concerned about that," he continued. "We have successfully negotiated other agreements with the same union, IBEW, in other parts of the country during this period. We're hopeful that we can work all this out, if necessary we’ll litigate and we believe we’re in the right.”

Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers went on strike against Charter in March 2017, claiming loss of benefits and shoddy working conditions. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have shown support  for the union in the past, and Cuomo is facing a potentially contentious re-election campaign this November. 

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Rutledge also commented on Liberty Media chair John Malone’s decision to step down from Charter’s board of directors, adding that the cable legend will remain as director emeritus and will still have a significant say in the company.

“We think that John will continue to be engaged with the company, that he likes the  business. I like having him engaged with the company,” Rutledge said. “He brings tremendous insight to us. But he wants to reduce his work load, his 'over-boarding' so to speak and he's just reached a point in his life where he feels like he has to. We do board meetings in Denver and we may do them in Florida, so we think he’ll be involved with us for years to come.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is putting David Schwimmer's #That'sHarassment videos on Taxi TV and NYC Media (the city's TV network) for the rest of 2018.

Schwimmer (Friends, American Crime Story) and writer/director Sigal Avin produced the short films last year before the wave of #MeToo revelations, according to the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment commissioner Julie Menin. The filmshave been converted into 30-second spots for screens in about 13,000 taxis.

Related: Starz to Air #ThatsHarassment Videos in Half-Hour Special

“My mother, my sister, countless female colleagues and friends have all experienced some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime,” said Schwimmer of the videos. “Now I’m a father of a young daughter and I’m angry and concerned about the rise in, and our culture’s acceptance of, totally unacceptable behavior by men towards women. Men who demean, deride, discredit, harass and assault women – no matter what their position of power – need to be held accountable.”

Five #ThatsHarassment spots will be airing on the city's television network and in taxis. They are also currently airing -- thanks to the Ad Council, which is making them part of a national campaign -- on ABC, Amazon, CBS, The CW, Fox, FX, Hulu, Starz and Showtime. There were six short films, but someone familiar with the PSA campaign said that the city chose the five videos that would both have the most impact in taxi TV and that wsere suitable for that wide audience.

While a six-month strike by The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers against Charter Communications rages on, CBS said it has reached an early contract renewal agreement with the union, covering about 3,500 technicians across the country.

In a statement, CBS said the extended contract has been ratified by the affected workforce and will be effective Feb. 1, 2018 through April 21, 2021. The current IBEW agreement was set to expire on Jan. 31.

Major provisions of the new, multi-year contract include pay increases, increased benefit contributions and a path forward for new media.

“The skilled professionals of the IBEW are proud of our partnership with CBS, and this agreement reflects our joint commitment to good jobs and broadcasting excellence,” IBEW president Lonnie Stephenson said in a statement.

The IBEW represents CBS workers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami and Atlanta, in addition to supplying a skilled workforce for all events televised on CBS Sports and CBS News.

“We are very pleased to have reached this new agreement ahead of schedule,” said CBS chair and CEO Les Moonves in a statement. “Our new deal is indicative of the terrific working relationship and cooperation between CBS and the IBEW as well as our ongoing commitment to its highly skilled technicians.”

Related: Moonves Snags 22% Raise

About 1,700 Charter Communications workers in New York and New Jersey, members of IBEW Local 3, walked off the job on March 28, claiming they have lost benefits and endured shoddy working conditions ever since the cable company purchased Time Warner Cable in 2016. Charter has denied the accusations, adding that it has offered employees a 22% increase in wages – and up to 55% for some workers – as well as participation in a 401(k) plan with a dollar-for-dollar match up to 6% of eligible pay. On Sept. 18, IBEW workers participated in a rally in Brooklyn and Manhattan that included speeches by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

As a strike by more than 1,700 union-member employees of Charter Communications' Spectrum cable and broadband operations in the New York City area passes the six-month mark, a union-backed demonstration Monday in Brooklyn and Manhattan drew thousands of the sidelined workers and their supporters, news outlets reported. The hashtag #SpectrumStrike was a top trend in New York City Monday afternoon.

The strike, largely over economic issues such as pension and health-care benefits, is with Local 3 of the IBEW, which called for the demonstration. News reports and photos on social media showed attendance by members of several other unions, though, and speakers included New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio along with other elected officials. "You attack one, you attack all of us," the IBEW quoted the Democratic governor as declaring at a rally at City Hall Park in lower Manhattan.

READ MORE: More Outages as Charter, Union Continue Stalemate

During the strike, there have been outages said to be from more 100 cuts to fiber optics, which Charter pointed out was reported again Monday by the local CBS News station in a piece that also criticized Cuomo and de Blasio for backing the strikers. (Spectrum News NY1, the local Charter-owned news outlet, did not appear to have any links to coverage of the demonstration on its home page or its Twitter feed Monday evening.) 

The ralliers first assembled on the Brooklyn side of the East River and marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. Some on Twitter said as many as 10,000 people attended the demonstration and march. 

The photo above was tweeted by Staten Island borough president James Oddo, a Republican, who also tweeted, "Hey 84 SI families impacted by #spectrumstrike you have lots of support here in Brooklyn. #nowitsafight nowitsafight."

READ MORE:New York Mayor Offers Help in Charter Strike Talks

A Spectrum spokesman released the following statement: "By keeping bargaining unit employees out of work, Local 3 is denying them an average wage increase of 22 percent — some employees up to 55 percent — and also denying them excellent health and retirement benefits, including a 401(k) savings plan with a dollar-for-dollar match up to 6 percent of eligible pay. This will have a positive, lasting impact on employees’ standard of living and allows us to grow a well-paid, highly skilled workforce for the benefit of our customers."

As MCN has reported previously, IBEW Local 3 has been without a contract since 2013. According to reports the union has said since Charter took over Time Warner Cable the company has tried to stop contributing to member pension and health plans; Charter has denied the pension claims. The union also claims that Charter wants to eliminate overtime pay on weekends and reduce the number of paid holidays, and give it greater flexibility to subcontract work normally done by bargaining unit employees.

The city of New York filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in New York County on Monday, claiming that telecom behemoth Verizon Communications failed to live up to its promise to make its fiber-based Fios TV service available to all Gotham residents.

News of the suit was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The city has been at odds with Verizon since 2015 regarding the telco’s buildout of its Fios fiber optic pay TV, broadband and telephone service. According to the franchise agreement Verizon signed with the city in 2008, the telecom company pledged to have Fios available to 100% of the City’s 8.5 million residents by 2014.

But the city’s own audit of that promise found the telco fell way short of that goal. In June 2015, Mayor Bill De Blasio, Counsel to the Mayor Maya Wiley and Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Anne Roest announced an audit report that found blocks in the city that Verizon had marked as completed in the fiber buildout had not installed the necessary equipment and service and that Verizon had failed to consistently document service requests. In addition, the audit said about 40,000 requests for service were pending, many for 12 months or longer.

"Verizon must face the consequences for breaking the trust of 8.5 million New Yorkers,” Mayor De Blasio said in a statement. “Verizon promised that every household in the city would have access to its fiber-optic FiOS service by 2014. It's 2017 and we're done waiting. No corporation -- no matter how large or powerful -- can break a promise to New Yorkers and get away with it."

Verizon has disputed the City’s position, and claims it has lived up to its agreement completely. The telecom company said it already provides service to about 2.2 million city residents, has proposed investing another $1 billion in fiber in New York City over the next four years, and has committed to expanding Fios availability to another 1 million homes and thousands of small businesses.

“At a time when communities across the country are seeking and encouraging broadband investments like these, the City is inexplicably turning its back on this investment and its residents by pursuing foolish litigation that will harm jobs, business growth and technology competition throughout all five boroughs,” Verizon said in a statement. "The De Blasio administration is disingenuously attempting to rewrite the terms of an agreement made with its predecessor and is acting in its own political self-interests that are completely at odds with what’s best for New Yorkers. We plan to vigorously fight the city’s allegations.”

According to a letter sent to Mayor de Blasio on March 10, Verizon EVP of public policy and general counsel Craig Silliman argued that the city is playing a game of semantics.

In the letter, Silliman wrote that when the franchise deal was reached with a previous mayoral administration, the parties had agreed to change the definition of a passed home.

“In negotiating the agreement, both parties understood and agreed that Verizon would generally place its fiber-optic network along the same routes as has been used for its copper network, and would use similar strategies for accessing individual buildings,” Silliman wrote. “The obligation to ‘pass’ all buildings in the city was based on and consistent with that approach. This is confirmed by the fact that the parties advertently and intentionally omitted language found in the City’s agreements with cable providers that specified that a household is passed when functioning system facilities have been installed in the street fronting the building in which the household is located. The very argument you are now making is this contradicted by both parties understanding of passed households at the time the agreement was executed.”

In New York, Verizon must obtain permission from building owners to bring its fiber network into the building, which the company claims is the reason its penetration is higher in single-family suburban homes in the outer boroughs.   

Silliman continued that Verizon has spent about $3.7 billion to install thousands of miles of fiber in the city, passes all households in the area and can provide service within seven to 14 days of receiving a request.  

The battle for the hearts and minds of 264 Cablevision Systems field technicians and dispatchers in Brooklyn continued Thursday, after the cable company said a non-binding vote proves workers at the site no longer want union representation, while union officials claim the company is using strong-arm tactics to intimidate employees.

Cablevision workers in Brooklyn have been represented by Local 1109 of the Communications Workers of America since 2012,  but the relationship has been a rocky one. Months after its Brooklyn workers decided to unionize, Cablevision sued the CWA in state Supreme Court in New York, claiming the union defamed it by making false statements regarding the cable operator’s service. In 2013, Cablevision said several employees had petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to decertify the union, a move the CWA said was made to cover up the illegal firing of 22 workers at the location for airing grievances. Cablevision, which said the employees refused to work, reinstated them about a month later.

Cablevision said that on Sept. 10, Brooklyn workers in an anonymous poll conducted by independent third party The Honest Ballot Association, voted 129-115 against union representation, the first time a clear vote on the matter has been conducted since 2012. Cablevision claimed about 93% of total workers at the facility turned out for the vote.

While the Sept. 10 vote will have no effect on union certification – only an NLRB sanctioned vote could do that – it throws another spotlight on what has been a hot button issue in the borough for years. Workers at the Cablevision facility have been without a contract since certifying the union nearly three years ago and the ongoing fight has drawn in politicians from around the area – current New York Mayor Bill de Blasio supported the unionization efforts when he was Public Advocate for the city. The CWA supported de Blasio in his successful run for Mayor in 2013.

“For the first time in nearly three years, our Brooklyn employees have expressed their feelings about the CWA in a vote,” Cablevision said in a statement. “Yesterday, they rejected continued CWA representation.  It is time for the CWA to respect our employees’ wishes and withdraw.  In addition, Mayor de Blasio is repaying a political debt to the CWA and the Working Families Party, and is advocating the union’s agenda against the wishes of our employees.  Mayor de Blasio should tell the CWA and his political friends to stop blocking our employees’ rights.  We call upon the Mayor, the Working Families Party and the CWA to act promptly and allow our Brooklyn employees’ voices to prevail.”

Brooklyn is the only Cablevision unit represented by a union – the CWA unsuccessfully tried to unionize workers in the Bronx in June 2012. Cablevision has about 14,000 total employees.

While Cablevision claims a majority of workers want the union out, The CWA points to a June 2103 advertisement in the New York Daily News where 174 workers reaffirmed their support of the union and petitions individually signed by 189 workers sent to Cablevision CEO James Dolan two months ago stating their desire to stick with the union.

“The only election that matters happened almost three years ago when Cablevision workers voted 180-86 to join CWA in an election supervised by the Federal government,” said CWA District One vise president Chris Shelton in a statement. “Today’s [Sept. 10] vote was illegal because it was conducted under the cloud of multiple Unfair Labor Practices that are being adjudicated by the National Labor Relations Board and make it impossible to conduct a fair and free election.  Under no circumstances would the NLRB permit this type of election to take place.  No union observers were involved.  There was no security in the vote count.  This bogus sham was a waste of time and money. What’s really needed is for James Dolan to sit down and bargain a fair contract that includes equal pay with other Cablevision employees.”