The full D.C. Council is expected to vote next month on a 15-year franchise agreement allowing Verizon to offer fiber optic cable television and Internet service.
A council committee approved the agreement Friday.
Under the agreement, Verizon must cover the city in its network within 10 years, and the initial installation area will include a portion of northeast Washington.
"We didn’t want to permit cherry-picking or redlining or continuing the digital divide in any part of the city,” Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh told the Washington Examiner. “It was a deal breaker for me that we got the whole city.”
Verizon's FiOS service would be the first major competition for Comcast.
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