FiOS
I finally have the opportunity to get FiOS installed at my house. FiOS is Verizon's fiber optic connection to your house, which historically has been the last piece of the telecommunication company's digital chain. The telco's have almost all converted to pure digital equipment over the last 20 years, but the local loop to your house is still copper which explains why DSL speeds are relatively slow.
The advantage of fiber is that I can order their FiOS Internet service that gives me faster upload and download speeds than my current Adelphia (soon to be Time Warner cable) connection, all at a lower price. Packages for FiOS start at $34.95/month for a 5 Mbps/2 Mbps download/upload connection. Contrast this with my Adelphia connection of 4 Mbps/400 Kbps at $47.99 a month. They have a "sweet spot" rate of 15 Mbps/2 Mbps at $44.95 which I'm still debating on getting.
The reviews are generally good but one negative is that since they replace your local copper loop you can no longer use your analog phone lines in case of a blackout. Instead it relies on a battery backup which is supposed to give you 4 hours of emergency phone use in the event of a power outage. However since your regular phone service is now pure digital the quality of regular voice calls is supposed to be better.
Installation is free if you sign up for a year otherwise it's a still reasonable $69.99. It's been estimated that the actual installation price is $500 but Verizon is eating this cost in order to get into the television/internet/phone combo market.
The advantage of fiber is that I can order their FiOS Internet service that gives me faster upload and download speeds than my current Adelphia (soon to be Time Warner cable) connection, all at a lower price. Packages for FiOS start at $34.95/month for a 5 Mbps/2 Mbps download/upload connection. Contrast this with my Adelphia connection of 4 Mbps/400 Kbps at $47.99 a month. They have a "sweet spot" rate of 15 Mbps/2 Mbps at $44.95 which I'm still debating on getting.
The reviews are generally good but one negative is that since they replace your local copper loop you can no longer use your analog phone lines in case of a blackout. Instead it relies on a battery backup which is supposed to give you 4 hours of emergency phone use in the event of a power outage. However since your regular phone service is now pure digital the quality of regular voice calls is supposed to be better.
Installation is free if you sign up for a year otherwise it's a still reasonable $69.99. It's been estimated that the actual installation price is $500 but Verizon is eating this cost in order to get into the television/internet/phone combo market.
posted by Marcos at October 01, 2006
1 Comments:
Great article, Mark. I never heard of FiOS until now. I checked Verizon's website to see if my city was being offered this service, but no. But they do offer "high speed" DSL though. To be expected I guess.
Interesting to see the list of cities where the service is available considering that Huntington Beach and Long Beach were places where I previously lived at.
The connection of my cable modem is a theoretical 6 Mbps but I just tested it at 4.4 Mbps. "That is about 20% worse than an average user on comcast.net" according to the results. I'm not complaining though, it's still pretty fast. I would like it cheaper though.
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