Surfing the big wave....
 

It took almost six hours and five holes cut into my drywall but I'm finally up and surfing the web fiber optic style with Verizon Fios. The installers were great. They installed the NID on the outside wall and it's power supply in the basement. Of course my home Network Operations Center (NOC) is located on the main floor opposite where the NID was installed. Their first option was to run the LAN cable across the front of the house. Ahh No. I don't think so. Next they wanted to go through the attic, out the other side and around the front of the house. Ahh No. So their next "idea" was to run it through the house. Yes! That works. So that's the way we went. They were trying to fish the cable with only cutting finger sized holes in the drywall, I was getting impatient and kept grabbing my own drywall saw and cutting larger holes. Overall they were very professional and accommodating as long as I was willing to push them a bit.

I opted for the relatively tame 5MB down / 2MB up package with a static IP.

Next week they come back to install the Fios TV. I'll post a review if anyone is interested....

Is this different/faster than cable modem? I haven't heard of Fios.

Yes, it's faster. It's fiber optic.

Depending on what level of service you pay for, cable modem speeds range from around 1.5Mbps to 10Mbps download and from around 384Kbps to 1Mbps upload. For FIOS, the range is on the order of 5Mbps to 30Mbps download, and 2Mbps to 5Mbps upload.

Yes. It's a serivce from Verizon that is based on Fiber Optics rather than copper cable (although the fiber part does not go into your house)

You can get speed ranging from 5MB to 30MB downstream and unlike cable you do not share bandwidth with the neighbours. Reviews have been very positive so far.

It's available in fairly limited areas right now.


Ps. In my OP i ment to say my service is at 15MB down / 2MB up.

My friend has VZ FiOS. I totally love it. But more importantly, he totally loves it. The only negative with the cable/dvr package is that it isn't nearly user friendly as TiVO. But I've found that with Cox DVR too.

I think it's only in HB right now though - the test market in OC.

I'm giving the "Home media" dvr a try. They say it will allow me to watch recorded content on any TV in the house with up to three diffrent shows playing at any one time. Since I watch about zippo "live" TV anymore it should be fun. Apparently it lacks the 30 second skip feature. In it's place there is a 4x fast forward however the Googleverse seems to say there are ways to get the 30 second skip back....

I seem to recall that being a big deal when he got it. But that was about 2 months ago and I have a very short term memory. I know he has a box for each TV. I'll have to ask about that tonight.

I also recall him needing to keep upgrading stuff. It seemed the package that he bought didn't have "what he needed". The HD recording sucks up space on the hard drive - so make sure you get a big one.

Despite my rather high tech veneer I am for the moment at least depressingly HD free. So in theory I should get about 120 hours of record time.

Hehe. FIOS caused a chain reaction resulting in a new TV. :evil:

I actually just switched from FiOS to just regular cable. I couldn't justify the expense. We were on a package with VZ that had everything but the TV. By switching it over to cable, we were able to go from a $150/month bill for cell phones, regular phone and FiOS without cable/satellite/cool-stuff-on-TV to ~$100 for all of that, plus cable-TV. So far, there's only been a small sacrifice in download times (it appears) for when I'm downloading something huge or for when I'm downloading multiple items of medium size.

I'm glad I switched.

Damn! Am I that transparent? Thank God my wife has not picked up on that one yet.

I think it's a guy thing. Or a geek thing. It all started with a movie day at my place and our ginormous HDTV. The end result was FIOS, a new ginormous HDTV and remodeled living room (to better fit the new HDTV). Next up is flooring and new furniture. And a new DVD player to play DVDs on the TV.

For what it's worth we also notice a huge improvement in internet connectivity and speeds. There are times when there are 5 laptops on the network and we're all zipping along.

What ever *thing* it is, it's sure fun.

Interesting. The only way I was able to push this change through my finance department (see my previous post) was that we are actually saving money on the switch.

With Verizon we will be paying ~ $118/month for TV and phone service. With Comcast+MCI I was over $140/month and that was just basic cable. No premiums or boxes. Now with Verizon I get twice the channels plus the cheap movie stations (flix, showtime, etc... ) and the DVR functions all for less.

I got my eye on one of these baby's and some of these...

Yeah, the price difference difference is strange. What we had before was our land line, two cells and FiOS with Verizon before. The bill was regularly ~$150, which made no sense. It seems somewhere in the various transactions, my grandma's cell phone package had been changed to something WAY higher, and the FiOS bumped up in price by about $15, which we didn't realize was going to happen. Since g-ma doesn't use the cell phone, we decided it was time for a switch, and maybe time for something good to watch on TV.

With Comcast (which I had a helluva time with their customer service department), we get basic cable and internet for I wanna say either $55 or $60 combined. We went with Vonage for the phone for another $25. They're finishing their cell contract which ends in mid-July, which after that's all said and done, she can move to another contract with a better price. I think she should go with a lower-minute pre-paid. For that matter, she could buy a phone with a months worth of minutes when she travels, throw it away, then get a new one the next time she needs it, and she'd be beyond fine.

The ~$105 is an estimate guessing what it'll be once they're off the crappy cell contract - but for now, with the remainder only costing $80, we're feeling pretty good about things.

If you buy that you win.

And then you'll need something new to put the TV on... a custom wall unit perhaps? (I know a guy who knows a guy you know... no- really! We make custom wall units, have really big tv's, an enormous furniture store that's not just shopped so much as it is explored. Send me a pm and I'll get you a good deal!)

\shameless-plug.

My list of requirements cannot be fulfilled:

• Fast internet access from anywhere, any time.
• A television that is large and has a good picture but folds up into a little box when I am not using it.
• All cordless equipment.

Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I need a wall unit for my TV.

Hint: Click on the "one of these baby's" link ;)

Weeee!

Just had my first chance to play with my new Internet connection.

I burried the needle on the speakeasy speed test

Downloaded HD movie trailers in nothing flat.

Most websites (cnn, etc...) have a new level of snap to them.

Color me happy.