Verizon and Sept. 11

Six months later, recovering from the World Trade Center disaster remains a huge job for Verizon, which had to cope with damage not only to its central office on West Street, but also to underground phone lines throughout Lower Manhattan. A recent issue of Dow Jones' excellent Rebuilding Wall Street (pdf format) newsletter chronicles the huge challenge facing Verizon, which must shift 100,000 phone lines to a new, rewired system encompassing 25 miles of copper lines. The company has dedicated 400 workers to the task for the remainder of the year. But not all of Verizon's responses to Sept. 11 are as noble.

A story in today's Boston Globe details how Verizon is citing post-Sept. 11 security concerns in seeking to lock down many of their central offices in the state, in the process barring access to companies (read competitors) who have colocated equipment in those COs. That would force CLECS and other network service providers to rely upon Verizon to maintain their equipment. What's more, Verizon wants its colocators to pay for the cost of enhanced security at these COs. Predictably, Verizon's competitors are screaming.

Sounds like a good argument for carrier hotels, eh?