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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.'"
But how long will it be until widespread access becomes available?
this will help other ISPs, and it will keep costs down thanks to competition. thank god
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It's always nice to see open networks. They do come at a price, but it's pretty fair to build a business around. I have seen those Verizon Guys in front of my house hooking up the fiber. They told me it will be a couple of months until I can get the net with the fiber, but it's coming. I just hope I can use the upstream to host my web sites. I hate paying for hosts and all that just to have a presence on the web. Unfortunately the residential service my current Cable Modem provider offers doesn't allow any servers being exposed to the public. I mean it's great having an intranet at home, but with all the money I spend they could have at least let me setup a web server and open that up. It's only a personal site so I don't know what the big deal is really. I can see if it was commercial, but man they are rough.
So when they transfer everyone to digital (10 years or so) then maybe their bandwith will free up. For the future the Verizon solution looks like a good deal they already offer 30mbps down and 5mbps up for a reasonable price.
If they don't, then people will just implement other technologies that allow them to make an end run around verizon. That may yet happen, especially if verizon is as helpful to the ISPs who buy into this as SBC is to the other companies selling DSL on SBC copper, or for that matter to the ISPs selling dialup lines using SBC's modems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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!
I could see major ISPs like AOL and Earthlink latching on to this as their dial-up customer numbers dwindle. They have no connectivity to compete with cable and DSL, so something like this could keep them alive.
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Now slashdot will render in a tenth of a second rather than an eighth of a second like it does now! It is indeed a great day.
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.
Verizon would suck as an ISP, as would AOL a network provider.
Are you implying by that statement that AOL does not suck as an ISP?
Parent poster is absolutely correct. I worked at another national ISP that no longer offers broadband services because we got burned in the same way. The carriers charged us more per customer than they did their own broadband division, so there was no practical way to compete. It's just a sham.
Comcast ($65/month for basic TV + Internet)
zzapp.org ($13/month for backup dialup and email)
Comcast broadband is OK - fast downloads, pokey uploads and semi-annual short outages. I would drop it like a rock, though, if I could get broadband from anyone else, especially a cool local ISP like zzapp.
If Verizon fiber has reliability near to my wired phone, I'd consider dumping the land line and going with VOIP.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Look for an open WiFi AP named "linksys."
i forget
Wireless connections;
CO/WAN connections;
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?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
so what.
It's still priced for the wealthy few.
We need to keep the Wifi muni , FTTH municipal movement going !
Guy from verizon came to my house and we had some chitchat, I was bringing up how I cant seem to get broadband, and he brought up fios, and mostly the reason verizon is doing this is because of cost.
Fibre is cheaper to run and maintain in the long run compared to copper. Mostly due to copper's physical limits, it's limited on speed and distance, and eventually has interference.
fibre has insane speeds, you need less repeaters on the grid, and you can run more cable longer without signal loss, and zero interference. That's mostly the reason for the move, that and microsoft's new IPTV "technology" they want to unveil, I think that's part of it as well.
I hope earthlink is jumping on this. Same with speakeasy.
In my area, verizon's TRYING to get it started, but they made a huge mistake and started with Chino Hills, who are charging THEM for putting in the lines, charging them for using the streets, and charging them for licenses to install to every house.. like $100 per house, then other fees.
If they had only started on this side of the Inland Valley, then it might be going somewhere. Cucamonga is growing faster than CH, and is more populated (thus has more potential customers)
oh well, I hope they learn.
If you look at the reply to comment 04-440 on the FCC web site this is Verizon's definition of an ISP [24]:
"With broadband, the role of the ISPs is primarily one of supplying content and applications, not in providing facilities-based Internet access services. This means that the major providers of broadband access services, including local telephone companies, have strong business incentives to provide consumers access to ISPs or other content providers..."
So Verizon has redefined ISPs as content proviers. To Verizon Yahoo, Google, Amazon and Expedia are ISPs. What you and me know are ISPs do not exist in this double speak Verizon world.
If Verizon gets their way nobody but them (and/or the lousy cable provider) will be able to provide broadband in the future.
..They do not mean you get fiber strands running into your house and you have to figure out what to do with all the blinking lights at the end of them.
You have some hardware in-between you and the blinking lights, and I'll wager THAT hardware does not understand quantum cryptography. In fact it's whatever was provided by the lowest bidder, so it probably will not understand much of anything.
Still, the fiber is all that much closer to you so in the distant future when all large backbone switches are optical perhaps you can get that as an option.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Others have commented to the point that their pricing makes it hard to compete, but I know nothing of Verizon pricing.
I do however know that the four big telcoms testified in front of Congress recently and their testimony might be of interest in this discussion. I watched it on C-SPAN and liked what I heard for the most part.
Their testimony basically told us that their mergers aren't going to harm competition. I'm sure a lot is bull, but please listen to the testimony first. It's interesting if you have a fetish for networks, redundancy and interconnectedness like I do. Plus loving gov't in action helps.
There were a lot of good questions and some pressure for honest answers. Listening is better than reading because you can get tone and inflection. Good thing too because the transcript isn't up yet, all you have is Real Audio.
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Verizon and SBC are ready to get into the wireless game.
I already pointed out that SBC, AT&T, Sprint/Verizon and MCI testified in front of Congress.
Well, they mentioned the reason for the bigger mergers is so that the telcoms don't die. They want to have hands in every market, as they should to stay alive. The mergers give companies like MCI the wireless technology and it's implemented network and MCI gives up it's wired network (huge).
They touched on WiMax, but they hinted that once the cell towers are up they will be used for Internet access anyway. We see this already with Cingular's new plan. Remember, you can get "cell" reception almost anywhere now, in most cities and states, and when the technology is at the right price point we will see highspeed Internet offered over those towers.
Sprint's CEO mentioned a few highspeed trials already, along with FiOS so I assume we are talking comprable speeds. Listen to the testimony to get an insight into their plans I'd say. They are really looking at it from a perspective that they should offer what makes the most economic sense on an individual basis. Wireless in sparse areas, mixed networks in high density areas and fiber in the suburbs (for example).
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