New York City charged on Sept. 13 that Verizon had defaulted on its agreement to upgrade its networks so that all users get a FiOS, Fiber to the Premises, “FTTP” service.

Verizon is charging billions of dollars to build out the wireless networks while abandoning or not upgrading most of New York State’s wired infrastructure for retail services, says a report by Bruce Kushnick, executive director, New Networks Institute, in the Sept. 15 Huffpost.

Health advocates said the move to wireless by Verizon and other telecom companies is a threat to the health of users. AT&T has announced plans to abandon copper wiring throughout the U.S. and replace it with wireless systems.

A report by Kushnick charges that New York State gave Verizon multiple rate increases, starting in 2006, to pay for the “massive deployment of fiber optics.”

All phone customers were charged for the deployment including homes and businesses.

Verizon is billing itself as a “wireless-first” company, says Kushnick. It continues to control state-based wired utilities and business networks from Massachusetts to Virginia with few exceptions.

“Verizon has no serious plans to upgrade or even maintain the existing copper wires,” he charges.

A “more troubling issue,” he says, is that the company “has diverted billions per state to build out its wireless networks by having the wireline state utility take over the capital expenditures budget.”

“Verizon has left the majority of municipalities with a deteriorating copper network, which, depending on the state, should have been replaced with fiber optics,” he writes. “This has left most areas without direct, very fast broadband.