FIOS Work to Begin This Summer

After a wait of well over four years, Mansfield cable customers outside of the downtown and the major roads will have the opportunity to hook into Verizon's high speed FOIS fiber optic internet and television service.

The company had asked for an extension of its original agreement to 2014, after a long hiatus where work had stopped completely. Fios and the town could not come to an agreement on how much information Verizon had to provide about the location of existing underground infrastructure like water and gas lines.

The original end date was supposed to be 2012, a five year phase-in plan that began in 2007.

Mansfield has 101 miles of roads, and when FIOS was meeting with the town in the fall, 20 percent of the town had not yet been fitted with the fiber-optic cable; older subdivisions built in the boom of the 1990's, were constructed without underground conduit, causing the need for street-opening permits to dig trenches and detailed information about the location of gas lines.

Verizon resisted some of those requirements, causing the work stoppage.

In December, the selectmen agreed to the deadline extension, after eight months of legal wrangling over the permitting issues. The discussions with FIOS were acrimonious, as board members pushed for the requirements they wanted, and the company dug in its heels.

At the time, Verizon representative Rick Cologne promised work would start with three unspecified subdivisions he declined to name. He also said it was likely all the residents who wanted to purchase the service would be connected well before the 2014 deadline.

Wednesday, Mansfield Town Manager Bill Ross said the company has indeed agreed to begin the trenching work.

"We will see construction this summer," he said. "Some of the conduit is already in place."

The streets where the work will begin were not named. Selectmen stressed no resident will be able to get any information about work locations from town hall.