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Competition does occasionally bring lower prices, but only to those who threaten to abandon their current provider to take their business elsewhere.

Residents in several suburbs of Syracuse, New York have learned that trick as Verizon nears the launch of FiOS service in their area, and the result is significant savings of more than $240 a year, just for the asking.

“Where we find the competition really paying off is for those consumers who might already be with Time Warner,” Doug Williams, a Cambridge-based analyst with Forrester Research told the Syracuse Post-Standard.  “People whose promotional deals are ending are often able to get a sweet deal with nothing more than a phone call and a mention of the word “FiOS.”

It worked for Doug himself up in Boston, where his mother is served by Comcast:

Doug Williams had a fool-proof plan for his mother-in-law to get at least $20 knocked off her cable bill: Call the cable company and tell them Verizon FiOS television was in her neighborhood.

It worked without a hitch. The operator looked up her address, then gave her a discount without any hesitation. Williams’ family lives in the Boston area, where Verizon’s fiber optic television service is the first real competition to the area’s entrenched cable provider, Comcast.

The Syracuse suburbs of Clay, Cicero, East Syracuse, North Syracuse and Fleming already have, or will soon have access to FiOS.  The towns of DeWitt and Salina last week approved franchise agreements with Verizon to provide the service, and Camillus approved the franchise agreement on August 25.

The addition of the Camillus television franchises brings to 161 the total number of New York municipalities that have authorized Verizon to provide FiOS TV service.

The company is in the process of building and installing the necessary video equipment in local central offices in the central New York region, and anticipates that FiOS TV service will be turned on for new customers in
municipalities there in the fall.

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