Comments on: Yet another Verizon FIOS story

By: mike

mike — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:13:00 +0000

i just bought a house with verizon fios and called to get it removed so i could go back to dsl. they told me that they would not remove the fios and dsl was unavailable (house 2 doors down has DSL),how can i get back to a copper wire

By: Jamie Ciocco

Jamie Ciocco — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 13:27:42 +0000

I think what they meant was “we don’t have the technology to keep neighbors from splitting a single connection in in multiple-dwelling homes yet.”

By: Thomas Hirsch

Thomas Hirsch — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 15:12:14 +0000

Verizon moving aggressively into cable, says Washington Post today !! Convergence of wireline and cable coming soon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/18/AR2005071801622.html?referrer=email

By: Patrick Bennett

Patrick Bennett — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 16:07:32 +0000

Have you all checked out Verizon's experimental FiOS "mascot" Max Harbinger at BringTheFast.com?

By: David Oliver

David Oliver — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 16:04:43 +0000

Matt, in my specific case, the copper wire connecting me to the “telephone pole” was removed during installation, but this was a safety-related action as the wire was old and hanging low. Verizon would be required to reinstall that at no cost to me if I ever chose to remove FiOS. Nothing was removed from my house – the equipment box added outside my house was “patched” to the original phone wiring. (PS: I am not a Verizon employee or in any way associated with Verizon personally. My expression of satisfaction here and in other comments is solely based on my experience as a customer).

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 14:36:46 +0000

I’ve read (somewheres) that FIOS installation involves taking out the copper wire to your phone socket– and consequently making Verizon the only possible supplier of telco-based broadband to your residence. Is this true?

By: Thomas Hirsch

Thomas Hirsch — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:47:43 +0000

Note that AT&T saw the telephone/cable convergence when it bought Telecommunications Inc. a few years ago. Then, in one of the stupidest moves ever, AT&T sold its cable properties to Comcast at a bargain price a couple years ago.

By: Thomas Hirsch

Thomas Hirsch — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:02:50 +0000

Cable systems in NYC are fiber-based. Which leads me to a question for you, om: Is it inevitable that RBOCs and cable companies merge? Is it really necessary to have two virtually the same communications systems (in a few years)? I mean, there is only one electricity-supply system just about everywhere.

By: David Oliver

David Oliver — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:49:23 +0000

I’m in Westchester County NY (“red-lined in” I guess) and got FIOS about 6 weeks ago. Hookup was painless, installers professional, friendly, helpful, knowledgable. Interestingly, they used the Argonne National Lab gigabit testbed site to “prove” the throughput of my machine was working as specificied (2Mb up/5Mb down). I had only one problem (service went down hard after about 48 hours). Upon calling Verizon, they fixed it immediately – my guess being that they flubbed the DSL-to-FiOS billing handoff internally (I was a Verizon DSL customer).

That said, I don’t grok Verizon’s comment that they don’t have multi-unit dwelling equipment yet. Fiber as a “core” network technology has existed for years – you’d think they be *better* at multi-dwelling that at suburban single-drop rollout!