Verizon: FiOS Access For Other ISPs in the Works

Ant writes "According to Broadband Reports' story, 'Verizon has confirmed the claim made by a DSLExtreme representative here last week that the company has plans to offer other ISPs access to its new fiber-to-the-premises network.' A Verizon spokeswoman is quoted as saying, 'A couple of deals have already been signed and more are in the works.'"

Comments

FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

FiOS is available in my area, for a cheap $44.95 (15mbps down/2mbps up) with an "approved" calling plan (49.95 otherwise)... I currently have 4mbps down/512kbps up with my cable co (cox). I was wondering if anyone in the Washington DC area has tried out this service. I would much prefer the FiOS if the installation is rather painless. The phone wiring _sucks_ in my house, the current phone wires are shorted out, and I have to connect my phone through a window. Do they do a full internal installation, or do they only go directly to the house, and we have to take care of the internals?

Also, is it possible to retain my email address with my former ISP (cox) for a small fee? I can't seem to find any info on cox's webpages about such a thing (which is to be expected; they don't want us to switch!)

But the promise of 15mbps, which is nearly 4x what I get now; and the major thing, 2mbps up, is really, really enticing. AND it would end up costing _less_ than what I pay for cable right now!

Re:FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an engineer for Verizon designing part of this large fiber network. They are putting it up in places people can afford it and places where population density permits. It costs a whole lot of money to put this stuff up. It also goes very slow as the splicing of fiber optic cables is very time consuming and has to be perfect or the loss in the cable will render the cable useless. You will be able to get HDTV, phone, and a retardedly fast internet connection all on one bill. Fairly cheap I think. You can actually get a faster upload then 2mbps I think, but I am not totally sure. Either way you get a T-1 for way less than the business cost.

Re:FiOS

[jrmann1999]

The install is basically an external box that separates the fiber, they drill a hole to the nearest power outlet for the battery backup, and run Cat5 + Cat3 to a single drop anywhere in the house. Then they give you the crappiest D-Link wired router possible.

This is not competition!

[Anonymous Coward]

This, like DSL shared access, is not competition. For example, we sale DSL in Hell$outh and Verizon territories, and they charge us more for just the raw line than they charge customers for the line plus Internet access. We have to charge our customers twice as much as Verizon does just to break even. If it wasn't for our much better customer support, we would have been out of business a long time ago.

To explain this a different way. For DSL, BellSouth charges end-users $25 for a slow connection. BellSouth charges us $30 for the same speed connection plus we pay about $20,000 per month in overhead for our ATM connection to those customers plus we pay about $15k per month for Internet bandwidth to Sprint. As you can see, BellSouth is abusing their monopoly position. They aren't selling to us just to be nice, and there is no competition.

Re:competition is good

[jjeffries]

Maybe. Not if it's anything like their wholesale DSL plan, where they sell you, a wholesaling ISP, a port for $30--while they are retailing it for $35! This does not include any backhaul from the Verizon CO, and don't forget about Internet bandwidth charges on top of that--and you'll get to pay Verizon again for carring it back out to your upstream carrier...

I'm not sure that too many/any other ISPs will be able to make this a workable business model.

I smell desperation...

[Spoing]

Follow this through with me...tell me what you think. Point by point; refute or agree with individual points as you see fit.

1. People will go for good enough over better for convienience and/or price reasons.
2. Fiber to the premises is an attempt at better...yet...
3. The bells are institutions.
4. Institutions are lothe to change and will fight it tooth and nail; institutions, once established, are primarily interested in perpetuating themselves.
5. Current bell company DSL offerings fit this pattern;
   1. They really aren't trying to canabalize what they offer businesses (excessively expensive T1 lines with QOS while much cheaper lines with poor QOS...running over much of the same hardware).
   2. The bells also fight sharing the line with anyone, and do not offer even 1/2 of the same speed connection when DSL is provisioned by some other group.
6. Network speeds are (roughly);
   1. Wired connections;
   2. 56K modem - (5.33 kB/s)
   3. DS1/T1 - 192.5 kB/s
   4. 10BT - 1.25 MB/s
   5. 100BT - 12.5 MB/s
   6. 1000BT - 125 MB/s (half duplex)
   7. 1000BT - 250 MB/s (full duplex)
   8. Fiber - 100-200 MB/s

      Wireless connections;

   9. Bluetooth 1.1 - 125 kB/s
   10. 802.11b - 1.375 MB/s
   11. Bluetooth 2 - 2 to 12 MB/s
   12. 802.11g/a - 6.75 MB/s
   13. 802.16a - 70 MB/s (30 mile range; licenced and unlicenced)

       CO/WAN connections;

   14. OC48 - 306 MB/s (reasonable multi-site corporate use)
   15. OC192 - 1.250 GB/s
7. Look at #12 above: With WiMax (802.16a) hubs scattered around, why bother with a wired (or fiber) distribution system for anything?
8. Tie that in with cheap VOIP "cell" phones...and there will be panic in both the cell and POTS providers.

T1 was fine for many corporations 10 years ago. Many still use T1 lines...while wireless hubs are sprouting up either formally or informally. Driving around right now, it's trivial to get a wireless connection in many areas.

Say you are a co-operative group like Seattle Wireless, and you get some WiMax (or other equipment), why not just disconnect mostly or entirely from POTS and go peer to peer? Maybe you'll be able to offer the service for $10/month...after all, they are doing it now at lower speeds.

If you were a bell executive, what would you do? What would you do to keep your stock from tanking when WiMax (or any other tech) eats your customer base?