Verizon Communications, which has come under fire for neglecting its non-FiOS customers, today said it is rolling 7 Megabit per second DSL service in 12 Eastern states and the District of Columbia by the end of 2008.

Analysts have raised concerns that with Verizon’s fixation on building fiber-to-the-home, the company was falling behind the industry in offering copper-based solutions to the detriment of customers in neighborhoods that may never be part of FiOS. Sales of DSL lines had slowed considerably.

In January, Verizon announced faster DSL service for 400,000 customers in what was formerly GTE turf, including the West Coast, Great Lakes, South and Southeast. With this announcement, the 7 Mb/s service is now also available in Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and West Virginia.