The Fiber to the Premises Install Process

SkinnyGuy writes "Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) or Fiber-based broadband is still in a very few areas, but PCMag's Lance Ulanoff has it and he seems to really, really like all 15MBPS of it. There's also an extensive slideshow on the whole installation process." From the article: "The power out is connected to the box, and the fiber ends in the box and comes out as Cat 5e, which runs back through the hole all the way to a new D-Link router. That's right: In addition to the box on the outside and the UPS inside, Verizon also gave me a new wireless G router, which includes four wired ports. This is a lot of free equipment (though I might incur some charges if I were to quit FiOS before the year had gone by). All this--not including the through-the-tree cable run--took another 2 hours or so."

Comments

Get that fiber!

[__aaclcg7560]

Doctor told me to get more fiber in my diet but I don't think this is it.

Oh gee, thanks Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

For giving this guy all that free stuff. Now could you do something about your monopoly in my area or at least not use the opportunity to gouge us on DSL prices?

Re:Oh gee, thanks Verizon

[bec1948]

I hate to defend Verizon or any of the carriers, but come on. Competition in this business means giving your competitors all but free access to your very significant investment in cable, right's of way, poles, central and POP equipment, distribution equipment etc, for essentially free.

It's only competition if someone else is willing to go through the process of obtaining rights of way - today the biggest cost - and all the rest and competing directly. It's generally no in a community's interest to allow someone to run new power/phone poles, cables, etc for a new vendor. That's the reason cable and voice companies have monopolies today.

OTOH, that Verizon tends to rip us off... you bet. That they should have competition. Definitely. But their business model has changed significantly over the past decade and a half. They used to charge by the minute for their lines. Now it's all flat rate and fixed fees. They've had to completely rebuild their infrastructure and the deal with competitors such as cable, IP over power lines and soon long distance wireless and in cities, free WiFi

Get over it. In a few years, the whole equation will change again. The business models will once again need to be revised and new competitors will appear. This is a whole new world. The major carriers are still going to have to provide universal service, 911 and all the rest. They're still much more reliable than any alternative for POTS and the fact that you don't need electricity locally to make a POTS call is still a reason to keep a line no matter what you use for broadband.

Re:Oh gee, thanks Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that most of the poles,wires,cables is bought and paid for by building contractors or homeowners. When my house was being built the price of pole and wiring was added into the price of the house.

Re:Oh gee, thanks Verizon

[goodtim]

I am not sure what you concider "gouging" but my DSL from Verizon (3.0mbps downstream) is only $30.00/month. Compare that to cable from Comcast (all that is available in the area) for ~$60/month, and Verizon is not a bad deal. Been working fine for as long as I've had it.

Btw, their website says that DSL is as low as $15/month.

Re:Oh gee, thanks Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, bash Comcast, but I'd like to point out how you conveniently forgot to mention that the $60 is for 2 reasons - the first is that you are obviously not a cable-tv customer, otherwise it's $45. The second is that $60 ($45 for tv customers) gets you 6Mbit download instead of 3Mbit.

At least use a real price gouger in your example, like AO-Hell for instance. $23.95 for DIAL-UP! (oh, is it more now? haven't checked in a couple years...)

Re:Oh gee, thanks Verizon

[industrialvegan]

After what Verizon did to US citizens by acting like some Soviet era government appendage and gave call records to the NSA, I say nuts to them. I'll stand by Qwest, thank you very much. Besides, I have a full meg upstream...and while I'm at it, isn't cable still at about 256k upstream unless you get ass-raped by paying for a business account?

As far as the cable tv vs. cost argument: some people don't need tv to talk at them.

Re:Oh gee, thanks Verizon

[mbrinkm]

You couldn't be more wrong. While you have paid for a few poles and wire, that does NOT represent "Most of the poles, wires, cables". You paid for either the secondary wiring and transmission to your residence, or for the primary run on your property to a transformer and then the secondary run to your house. More than likely, the wire and poles that you bought were secondary wiring and secondary assist poles which would cover your power service only.

Who do you think pays for the pad mounted transformers in underground routed subdivisions? For aerial power runs throught cities? Do you actually think that the owners of the property pay for these poles / transformers when they need replaced?

Re:Oh gee, thanks Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

In this area, Comcast is $60, and Qwest is $70+$20 for not having a phone through them. They are the only options.

Availability

[Yaksha42]

It's too bad that it's not very common, it's cheaper than my 5mbps cable connection.

You can check availability here.

Re:Availability

[Richthofen80]

The availability is very odd with Verizon in Massachusetts. My friend has the FiOS service in Tewksbury, a town of about 28,000, about 40 minutes north of boston. However, in Lowell, which adjoins Tewksbury and is the third or fourth largest city in the state with about 80,000+ residents, my other friend does not have service available.

I thought the way they rolled these out was to cities and densely populated areas first

Re:Availability

[thc69]

I think they're rolling it out first in rural areas where DSL is costing them a lot to run. They've got some sort of repeaters that allow them to run DSL way longer distances than normal. I'd guess that the reduced cost spread between DSL and fiber makes them want to offer fiber to customers who would otherwise buy cheap DSL plans.

My parents just bought a house in Exeter, RI, which is a tiny rural town. It's so small that it only has one police officer; when his shift is over, the state cops have jurisdiction. Approximately 6,000 residents. It's also one of a few towns where Verizon is offering fiber first in the state. I've seen them installing the cables on the poles in nearby areas, too.

My parents have fiber. Fiber is stapled to the side of the house. There's a box into which fiber goes, and the other side of the box is an ethernet jack. Yes, they even supplied a wireless router.

I was there when it was installed. It's really cool...they splice a pre-terminated end onto the fiber using a cool little machine that has an LCD showing the automated welding process in real time. The fiber has multiple layers of insulation, and the actual fiber is even thinner than I thought; it's barely visible.

Meanwhile, in my rural area of Glocester, about 25 miles north of their place, and a few miles closer to Providence, I can't get DSL or Fiber. It's cable or nothing here. Meh.

Re:Availability

[Mantrid42]

Yeah, some of the availability things are odd. We have Verizon's FiOS, and we're in the middle of no where. In fact, one of the places they're covering is a town for senior citizens who live in mobile homes. Not exactly the techno-elite.

Re:Availability

[darkonc]

I thought the way they rolled these out was to cities and densely populated areas first

It makes some sense to do the first rollout in relatively unknown places where initial rollout problems are less likely to give it a bad reputation to an entire major city... Another good place to do an initial rollout would be someplace where there are problems with DSL.. (there are various things that work well for POTS phones that just kill adsl delivery).

Fiber is really good in places that are just too widespread for regular ADSL connections... depending on the kind of cable you have, you can run it 10KM or more (way more), so this would make lots of sense in a rural setting where a regular ADSL DSLAM would only reach the nearest 4 farms.

Oh yeah... and some places just have good demographics... There are some "old folks" communities where all the old folks are former professers/techies who have a pretty decent pension (and have paid off their houses), so the price of FTTP wouldn't make them blink.

Re:Availability

[thc69]

I forgot -- it's not quite plain old ethernet coming out of the box into the wireless router. It's PPPoE.

I ran some speed tests and got results all within a few percent of 5000Kbps / 1500 Kbps. I hope that's what they subscribed for.

Re:Availability

[cdrudge]

The FiOS rollouts have been mostly in suburbs of larger cities. You don't want to tackle NY, DC, or Dallas as your first city implemented, but you also don't want to do do some town with a population of 3. My town and surrounding communities (Fort Wayne/New Haven, Indiana) was one of the first dozen or so locations for FiOS deployment. We I beleive were the smallest metroplex, but we also were one of the paths of least resistance. Originally we were not likely to be deployed early on, but we actively lobbied Verizon to use us early on. We, as a community, went out of our way to make the process easy for them. While other communities were digging in trying to fight back by way of franchise agreements and building permits, we were preapproving those permits and working with Verizon for a smooth rollout. The fact that we are also home to one of 3 call centers and a variety of other services for Verizon probably didn't hurt either.

Re:Availability

[Enigma2175]

I recently signed up for a connection through Utopia that is both faster (15Mbps/15Mbps vs 4.5Mbps/384Kbps) and cheaper ($38 vs $48) than my previous cable connection.

Comcast and Qwest fought tooth and nail to stop Utopia, I'm glad that there are still some people that don't bend over when big corps demand it. It's about time some cities did an end run around the last-mile duopoly of the telco/cable companies. It created a level playing field for smaller companies to compete with the big boys. Currently I am only subscribing to data service but you can also get phone and television services over the network.

Community networks like Utopia prevent abuse by the major companies. Networks like this remove the last-mile leverage that is currently exerted by the existing players. Let the telcos play their "tiered internet" game, if they get too oppressive the people will just remove them from the equation.

Re:Availability

[bill_mcgonigle]

That all makes perfect sense. Therefore it doesn't apply to Verizon.

I live in a place with the required demographics (I even checked a marketing website recently, we're 'empty nester rich people who wanted to move out of the city' and we have various amps on our POTS lines that prevent DSL from getting out this far (6+ miles).

I spoke with a Verizon engineer with a FiOS rollout plan through 2014 and we're not on it.

1.7 gigabytes in 12 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

In darkened coners all over the land, *aa execs are quietly sobbing.

Oh heck, I'm quietly sobbing.

Re:1.7 gigabytes in 12 minutes

[Sawopox]

You ran out of hard disk space?

Competing technologies marching on as well.

[SeaFox]

Fiber-based broadband is still in a very few areas, but PCMag's Lance Ulanoff has it and he seems to really, really like all 15MBPS of it.

Gee, I'm strangely not that impressed. I can get 10Mbps cable modem service right now ($44.95/mo), and I'm in Kansas. I just checked AT&T/SBC's site and it looks like their top of the line service in my area is only 3-6mbps.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Rosonowski]

That's megabits, not megabytes.

15MBps = 120mbps, about 12 times faster than your 10mbps connection, and about 20 times faster than AT&T's 6mbps service. ;-)

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[mattjb0010]

I get 11Mbps/1Mbps ADSL2+ where I live, and there are a lot of people who get close to the theoretical max of 24Mbps ADSL2+. For about US$45/month too. In other words, his fiber connection is slower than good old copper.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Quikah]

Verizon FIOS is only 15 Mbps, not 15 MBps. The /. summary is incorrect (shocking I know).

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a 50% increase in speed for about 35 dollars; cheaper than cable. It's also fiber which means unlike cable, I believe, you don't incur slowdowns during busy periods if too many other people are on the same subnet. Also, this is the absolute lowest tier in speed. I believe Verizon offers up to 45mbps if you want to shell out a wad of cash. Granted it's not OC3 speeds since it's deployed asynchronous down versus up, but the price point isn't too bad. I've heard mixed reviews as far as latency is concerned, but for the most part it seems to be better in latency also. It's not hugely impressive, but I'd still rate it better than cable.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[whoever57]

Try RTFA:

"What did you order?"

"15 megabits,

So whether MBPS or mbps is the correct abbreviation, the article does clearly state 15 megabits. In other words, about 2.5 times what Comcast cable offers in my area.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[SeaFox]

That's megabits, not megabytes.

No, it's not.
Go read the article. The summary here has the label in all caps, but it is Mbps. Bits.

"...When I told her that I was going for the $44.95-a-month 15-Mbps option (Verizon recently announced plans to up this to 20 Mbps), she got even cheerier..."

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[joel8x]

Maybe you don't get it my friend - The capital B stands for Bytes, and the lowercase b in you 10Mbps stands for bits. Therefore 1 megabyte = 8,388,608 bits, where 1 megabit = 1,048,576 bits, so your connection gets 10,485,760 bits per second, while his gets 125,829,120 bits per second. Still not impressed??

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Bios_Hakr]

TFA states that he got 15mbps service.

First, I downloaded the 1.7GB The Natural through Optimum. It took 45 minutes. Next, I unhooked the cable and plugged in FiOS. Downloading the 1.7GB As Good As It Gets movie took . . . wait for it . . . 12 minutes. Twelve minutes!!

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in silicon valley and the best I have been able to get so far is 6Mbps ADSL from SBC. I dropped them when they told me they were no longer offering those speeds (and only offering up to 3Mbps). I switched to Speakeasy who sold me 6Mbps but could only deliver 1.5Mbps. I stayed with them because the price was right and their customer service walks all over ATT/SBC. SBC apparently has changed their policies (my guess is to compete with cable), but still the best I can do is either 6Mbps with ATT/SBC or Comcast.

I'm not too concerned, though. 1.5Mbps isn't that much different than 6Mbps. It just means you start up your really big downloads at night and go to sleep.

I'm more interested in my upstream speed and using my connection to host services. Cable can't do that for me, and no matter who offers me their DSL I can't find faster than 608kbps upstream. Verizon's FiOS in southern California offers 30Mbps down and 5Mbps up. *drool* Wish they'd get up here.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Professor_UNIX]

15MBps = 120mbps, about 12 times faster than your 10mbps connection, and about 20 times faster than AT&T's 6mbps service. ;-)

Did you bother to RTA? The author transferred 1700 MB in 12 minutes which is roughly 2.36 MB/sec or about 18 Mb/s. Still pretty damn good compared to my 6Mbps/768Kbps ADSL service of which I realistically see 4 Mbps down and 600 Kbps up. What I want to see is an ISP with a clue start offering high speed connectivity. If I see another god damn cable provider or telco offer some absurdly high download speed with an upload speed less than 10% of the download speed and then have the nerve to give out dynamic IPs and block inbound ports I'm going to puke. Other than widespread piracy of copyrighted material there is absolutely no purpose to such lopsided connectivity (Yes, I'm sure there are those of you out there downloading Fedora DVDs every day.. riiiiight).

What I want is what you can get at most dedicated server providers: a 10 Mbps full duplex port in and out with a 1500 GB monthly bandwidth cap, no blocked ports, and a /29 subnet allocation. If they can offer that for $85-$150 a month including a server rental then surely a telco or cable provider can provide that level of bandwidth too. Give the Internet back to the people with affordable bandwidth and symmetric connectivity.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Rosonowski]

The summary says 16MBps, I was mistaken.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you can't read either the article or the previous posts in the thread. Or spot that the article summary is wrong either way you look at it, seconds should always be "s", not "S". Or the fact that in networking, the size prefixes maintain their SI meaniings. So no, I'm not impressed.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

The FIOS connection mentioned in the article is 15Mbps. Small b. Bits. 15,000,000 bits/second. RTFA or see the Verizon FIOS website.

Also, kilo/mega prefixes are ALWAYS decimal, NEVER binary when measuring line speed in bits/second.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[cperciva]

TFA states that he got 15mbps service.

No, 15Mbps. 15,000,000 bits per second is a good. 0.015 bits per second is not good, unless you're measuring the speed of an IP over Avian Carrier network.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[kelnos]

What I want is what you can get at most dedicated server providers: a 10 Mbps full duplex port in and out with a 1500 GB monthly bandwidth cap, no blocked ports, and a /29 subnet allocation. If they can offer that for $85-$150 a month including a server rental then surely a telco or cable provider can provide that level of bandwidth too. Give the Internet back to the people with affordable bandwidth and symmetric connectivity.

I'd love that too (and I'd absolutely pay $150/mo for it), but the dedicated/colo providers don't need to schlep that data from your house to the central office. They just have to push bits around their data center, and then in and out of their fat pipe(s). It's a bit of a different ball game than having thousands/millions of individual lines out from the central offices to each house. At least, it is with the current infrastructure available in the US.

Not to mention that the market for that is pretty small. Most people will be satisifed with a reasonably high downlink and much lower uplink for $30-50/mo, even if it's shared. For good or ill, product offerings are generally shaped by market forces...

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[DarkYang]

Actually, I have 10Mbps cable myself, but the upload is only 384Kbps. My friend which lives in an area where FioS is available has it, and has a upload rate of 2 Mbps with a download rate of 15 Mbps (not MBps). We both pay $44.95/mo.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

As everyone has already pointed out over and over again the /. summary is incorrect and he is getting 15 megabits not mebabytes. You would know that if you read the article instead of just coming into the comments to attack posters that are commenting accurately on the topic.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[apoc.famine]

Damn. That's pretty sweet compared to my connection. I'm so far out in the boonies that I have to rely upon Ye-Old-Tin-Can-Onna-String DSL for service. The squirrels keep jumping on the lines, and that holds me back to about 400kbps down and about half that up. To put that into terms we all can work with, it took me about 6 hrs to download the 800mb update that was Dapper Drake.

The good news is that it beats my mom's 31kbps dialup connection....that must be why it costs 5x as much...humm....doing the math, I think I'm getting a deal here!

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Pollardito]

Other than widespread piracy of copyrighted material there is absolutely no purpose to such lopsided connectivity (Yes, I'm sure there are those of you out there downloading Fedora DVDs every day.. riiiiight).

or just random surfing of the internet, as nearly all web browser traffic is essentially that lopsided. bittorrent is probably one of the largest mainstream sources of traffic that's not 10:1 lopsided, so your piracy argument is probably backwards.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Khyber]

1500GB/month would be very.... small. My video chatroom server alone chews up 2TB of data a month, and needs at least a 10 Mbit full-duplex connection to sustain 30 users near-flawlessly. Let's add in 12KBytes/s for anytime I want to do internet FPS gaming under Enemy Territory, which is a daily occurence that lasts for several hours, and of course, general web-browsing and having to dig thru all these "Media-enriched" sites littered with useless Flash ads and other stuff. Oh, and email from friends and family with photos, videos, audio clips, etc. Add in the fact that I do fiddle around with Linux and download different distros monthly, for both 32 and 64-bit systems, live and install, and their packages, and I'm chewing up tens of gigs alone there. Pandora.com also eats up a fair amount of bandwidth as well, and it's well worth sacrificing the 128 kbit of bandwidth nearly non-stop. I could go on and on, but I won't. Most geeks would probably agree with me, here.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[joel8x]

While you are correct in my being wrong, your point is clouded by the fact that you posted as AC. Why are people on this site so disingenuous and feel that when they have something they perceive to be even slightly negative to say they can't use their actual ID's to say it? I have no problem admitting to a mistake and no problem correcting someone when I think they are wrong, but either way I have the decency to be logged in when I say it.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Megane]

Verizon FIOS is only 15 Mbps, not 15 MBps. The /. summary is incorrect (shocking I know).

That's still better than what SBC&T is going to offer (as near as I can tell) from Project Lightspeed. They're apparently going to cap you at 6Mbits down and 1Mbit or so up, no matter how close you are to the box. (at 500-1000 feet, VDSL2+ gives 50-100 Mbps bi-directional)

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[darkonc]

Gee, I'm strangely not that impressed. I can get 10Mbps cable modem service right now ($44.95/mo), and I'm in Kansas. I just checked AT&T/SBC's site and it looks like their top of the line service in my area is only 3-6mbps .

That's fine, but the 10Megabit service you get from cable is, in all probability shared between your entire neighbourhood. i.e. you MIGHT be able to get a 1Megabyte/second download at 4AM on a weeknight, but if everybody in the neighbourhood is trying to do a download, you might end up as low as voice modem speeds (at least that was the experience of my friends in the early dayS when cable-modem installations were delivering to obscenely large customer groups). It's just the nature of the product -- but it make for really good PR lines

ADSL (and similarly, FTTP) -- allows the backend to be whatever the ISP figures is appropriate to provision -- this means that, if they have a decent backbone, you should be able to get the full bandwidth of your connection modulo the link between your ISP's Central Office and the server(s) you're downloading from.

This was my experience when using ADSL... I could almost always get full speed connections (as long as the server in question had a reasonably low load and a good connection). Cable, on the other hand, would be more variable -- sometimes I could get good speeds (mostly late at night), but during prime time, my links would rarely get near full speed.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[SeaFox]

That's fine, but the 10Megabit service you get from cable is, in all probability shared between your entire neighbourhood. i.e. you MIGHT be able to get a 1Megabyte/second download at 4AM on a weeknight, but if everybody in the neighbourhood is trying to do a download, you might end up as low as voice modem speeds (at least that was the experience of my friends in the early dayS when cable-modem installations were delivering to obscenely large customer groups). It's just the nature of the product -- but it make for really good PR lines

I think this problam s rather overhyped, especially by people on DSL. I don't personally subsribe to the 10Mb/s service, I only use the normal 3Mb/s service, and the last time I checked, I was getting around 2.8Mbps.

And I hear plenty of people on here grouse about their speeds from oversubsrcibed DSLAMs so I don't think either service is immune to the issue.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[phaze3000]

What I want is what you can get at most dedicated server providers: a 10 Mbps full duplex port in and out with a 1500 GB monthly bandwidth cap, no blocked ports, and a /29 subnet allocation. If they can offer that for $85-$150 a month including a server rental then surely a telco or cable provider can provide that level of bandwidth too. Give the Internet back to the people with affordable bandwidth and symmetric connectivity.

Suggestion for a new moderation option: -1: Absolutely no understanding of the technical issues involved

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

someone will be offering domestic 100mbit service by year end.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[rcamera]

What I want is what you can get at most dedicated server providers: a 10 Mbps full duplex port in and out with a 1500 GB monthly bandwidth cap, no blocked ports, and a /29 subnet allocation. If they can offer that for $85-$150 a month including a server rental then surely a telco or cable provider can provide that level of bandwidth too. Give the Internet back to the people with affordable bandwidth and symmetric connectivity

vz is upping their 15/2Mbps service to 20/5Mbps at no additional cost. not quite the 10/10Mbps you want, but still not too bad. when i run a speed test, i consistently show 20/4.8Mbps. their business service provides 5 static ips (but when i ip whois, it shows i have the full /29) and does not block ports. i honestly don't know what their bandwidth cap is. total cost per month for this service: $99.95. i can't wait for fios tv to become available in my area (it is already in the town next to mine). then i say so-long to craplevision.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[sessamoid]

No, 15Mbps. 15,000,000 bits per second is a good. 0.015 bits per second is not good, unless you're measuring the speed of an IP over Avian Carrier network.

Is that an African or an European Avian Carrier?

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not impressed either considering I've had 10Mbps since 2000. Now I'm at 30Mbps.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Stephen Samuel]

I think this problam s rather overhyped, especially by people on DSL. I don't personally subsribe to the 10Mb/s service, I only use the normal 3Mb/s service, and the last time I checked, I was getting around 2.8Mbps.

I can say that I've actually experienced it.. and I've had friends (early in the cable delivery game) who had cable links shared among so many subscribers that the only advantage vs dialup was that their phone line was free. (they were downtown). On the other hand, a friend on a suburban loop with only handfull of shared users got pretty good results most of the time.

The nature of the beast is that the bandwidth suggested by cable PR is the maximum that you can get, but is shared by however many people are on your cable loop -- If you're the only person on your loop using significant bandwidth (e.g. downloading) at the time then you can get good bandwidth.
If, on the other hand, you have a really large number of people on your loop, or a small number who do a lot of downloading, [ or both ], then you'll get much less than the advertised speed. The only way to increase speed is for the cable company to split your local loop into two or more pieces to increase the speed.

As soon as anybody on your loop is doing a download, you're sharing that 10Mbps (or 4, or whatever) with them.

Also: your modem is able to see data being sent by others on your loop (although I think that current modems now filter the data before delivery to your computer/router).

ADSL/Fiber, on the other hand is limited by the supporting connection to your Central Office -- this could be less than the bandwidth to your door, or it could a few gigabits... In most cases it's probably somewhere in between (e.g. 100 megabits).

Since the bandwidth base is almost always more than the bandwidth that is delivered (and advertised) to you, it's far less likely that you'll suffer bandwidth degradation from other people doing downloads.

On the other hand, as I aluded to in my original post, it required a properly provisioned CO... In theory, an ISP could have a 1Megabit backbone feeding 100 ADSL lines advertising (and actually having) a 4megabit connection -- but only as far as the Central Office. In the real world, however, the situation is far more likely to be the like the one that I mentioned above. I know that Telus ADSL as I've experienced it (in 3 different locaions) is well provisioned... I can't really speak for other ISPs.

Re:Competing technologies marching on as well.

[Enigma2175]

I can get 10Mbps cable modem service right now ($44.95/mo)

Is that 10 Mbps both ways or just downstream?

Looks good

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone who has this service let everyone know... is it good or is it whack???

Re:Looks good

[Anonymous Coward]

I have fiber in Monmouth Oregon (small college town). Only $60 a month for 10up10down, works like butter (meaning its great)!

Re:Looks good

[thinbits]

I got the Verizon service last month at home and it absolutely rocks. Of course, the 15Mb download speed exceeds the the bandwidth of many smaller sites, so those don't go any faster. The install took about 2 hours and the installation was top notch. They ran Cat-5e to the other side of my house where I have all of the networking gear in a closet. The installers were quite professional and knew their stuff.
Pricing is something like $32/mo for 5Mb, $39/mo for 15Mb, and $170/mo for 30Mb. The installers mentioned Verizon was bumping the 15Mb service to 20Mb in some areas with no cost change to stay competitive.
My office is on a large fiber ring in downtown Portland, Or and has an uncapped (due to a problem at our ISP) OC-48 connection. I can pull files at a solid 15Mb/s and ping times are exceedingly low (~30ms). Working from home is much more pleasant now. :-)

Re:Looks good

[--sc0rch--]

I've heard from other Verizon FIOS users that the D-Link router provided by verizon runs a special "-V" version of firmware that is not supported directly by D-Link. Can anyone confirm this? Does anyone know what the different are (assuming it is true)? Has anyone tried to replace the D-Link with something else or is there a requirement to use it?

Re:Looks good

[thinbits]

Yes, it does have some sort of special firmware, although I don't know what makes it different. I've heard you can replace the router with most anything, but of course Verizon will only provide tech support for the hardware they supplied. I assume the special firmware allows them to perform remote tech support magic for less sophisticated users.

In some areas, the connection is via PPPOE, and in others (possibly areas where they provide TV service as well) it's straight DHCP.

Re:Looks good

[ytsejam-ppc]

It's awesome. They block common ports (80, 25, others?) for serving to force you to upgrade to their static IP business class service at $99. Even at $99 these speeds would be sweet with a static IP. The service is absolutely never down, never hiccups, never troubled. With Comcast I used to recycle my cable modem once a week. With Qwest I rebooted my dsl adapter nearly every other day. I haven't even power cycled my ClarkConnect linux firewall in the several months I've had FIOS. It's a great service and well worth the price. I have 15/2 service and pay 45/mo I think. And I hear they're upgrading it to 20/2 for the same fee shortly. At these speeds I start to wonder if my highly traffic'd wireless-g network isn't becoming my bottleneck even before the router.

BTW I tossed the DLINK router they sent and use the ClarkConnect box with an Apple Airport Extreme hanging off of it. The dlink isn't special at all and not required for the service.

As a bonus, over the same fiber they can delvier IPTV and telephone service -- neither of which I use. People with nice structured wiring in their home will love this service.

YMMV

I think I speak for everyone when I say

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU BASTARD!!

Mod article down

[the eric conspiracy]

What kind of demented thing is this? Verizon is laying fiber so it can do an end run around cable franchising and supply TV, VOIP and broadband to customers. The cablecos are responding by rolling out higher speed broadband (like CableVision's Boost). How is that justification for some sort of Verizon puff-piece???

Re:Mod article down

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon is laying fiber so it can do an end run around cable franchising and supply TV, VOIP and broadband to customers .... How is that justification for some sort of Verizon puff-piece???

End run? They are running cables, just like they always have, just like the cable companies did. The only difference is that they are using Fiber & light instead of Copper and electricity. At the end of the day, it another (better) source of competition for Cable companies (Sat TV is a small threat, but has too many limitations). The basic service rocks. Go away you silly cable apologist, or we shall taunt you a second time!

Re:Mod article down

[timeOday]

I dont understand, why are you complaining? An ISP arms race is the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to residential bandwidth, and it is in fact a BIG deal. It's the perfect way to resolve this little HD-DVD/Blue-Ray dispute - chuck 'em both! And I think it'll be neat to see where video blogging might take us.

Sounds like...

[baudtender]

Pronunciation is the key, you see..

You say 15Mbps

I say TURGID

Only 15MBPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in France, ADSL2+ gets us 20MBps (for almost everyone), and Optic Fiber gives some lucky Parisians (not all Paris, though) 100 Mbps. VoIP and IPTV are bundled with both. It feels like a sweet revenge, given the fees we used to pay 10 years ago, compared to the US. (ADSL2+/TV/VOIP is 15 to 30 euros per month, unlimited and comes with the equipment [tv decoder, adsl modem, wifi spot] freely. Tons of sweet features such as static IP address and personalized reverse DNS and other customizable stuff like some DSLAM configuration directives [interleave & such]).

American ISPs are cheap... well, expensive, but cheap :). Well, let's just say they surrendered to ours ;). just kidding.

Re:Only 15MBPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was of course 20Mbps and 100Mbps. As in bits per seconds. Like ~2.5MBps and ~12.5MBps respectively.

Re:Only 15MBPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch it. We'll invade and steal your fiber.

Re:Only 15MBPS?

[__aaxwdb6741]

No, because, you see - This fellow got 15Mbps BOTH WAYS! As in, he can download AND upload with 15Mbps. I'd take a symmetric 15Mbps over an assymetric 20Mbps any day.

Re:Only 15MBPS?

[shaitand]

Not according to verizons website, that is 2Mbps up not 15.

Re:Only 15MBPS?

[squoozer]

Isn't is sad that we consider a static ip address a "sweet feature". Roll on IPv6. Personally I want reasonable upstream speeds on residential connections.

Re:Only 15MBPS?

[consonant]

*orgasm*

Re:Only 15MBPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most metropolitan areas can get ADSL2+. Be it with iiNet, Agile, Amcom, Adam, Request or some other ISP.
If you live in the woods then no shit, most of Australia lives in metropolitan areas.

Whinging bushdwellers are one of the key reasons broadband technologies are so backwards in this country.

Re:Only 15MBPS?

[milimetric]

does it also give you a MBps to Mbps converter? Here, just in case it doesn't:

20MBps * 8Mbps/MBps = 160Mbps > 100Mbps

I hate it when people ignore that, it's such a huge difference

No turning back

[the_tsi]

Before everyone goes and gets FIOS for their broadband fixation, beware that in the vast majority of markets, Verizon *CUTS THE COPPER TO YOUR HOUSE* when they run the fiber for FIOS. They pull it out of the ground. You are off the grid. You are no longer subject to all the wonderful federal and state utilities requirements placed on telephone companies for purposes of "protecting" residential telephone customers. Your FIOS line isn't even really considered a telephone line in most states.

That means all that recent hubub about "competitive access" and "CLECs" and all that other theoretically Good (albeit practically Frustrating) stuff that opens up the telephone system no longer applies to you.

Yeah, I know we all hate the phone company, and everyone screams "well it's not like we were getting the service we paid for in the first place", but try writing a nastygram to your public utilities commissioner regarding faulty (or bad) service on your fiber, and there's a lot less they can do than if you're sitting on the "real" PSTN.

If you (or a future resident) ever wants to get the copper back, it could potentially be an administrative, technical, financial, bureaucratic, and/or logitistical nightmare.

Caveat emptor... although I sure wish it were available here.

Re:No turning back

[dfinster]

Could you at cite a reference? If that's true, it's really interesting, but I have not heard this before. What is your source?

Re:No turning back

[kelnos]

Do you have any sources to support this? I'm not saying you're lying or spreading FUD, but "random guy posting on Slashdot" does not an authoritative source make.

Re:No turning back

[thinbits]

I'm not aware of them pulling the copper in any of the Oregon insalls. They certainly didn't remove my copper when I got it installed.

Re:No turning back

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Verizon does NOT cut the copper to your house. They will do so if you request... because they offer phone service through their fiber (NOT VOIP) And its all on battery backup as well.

BUT... You the installer will ask you if you want to keep the copper or not. They will ask. If they dont, you can mention it and ask them to not remove it.

Its not a big deal at all.

Re:No turning back

[mduell]

For all of the commenters asking for a source, here it is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/05/07/AR2005050700178.html.

Re:No turning back

[ytseschew]

When I talked to Verizon a couple months ago about getting FIOS in the Pittsburgh, PA area they told me that if I got FIOS they WOULD take out my copper line connection (to the telephone pole) and I had NO choice in the matter unless I had a second line that was copper that I wanted to keep. I said "No thanks." I prefer not having to rely on the 4 hour battery back in case of a power failure plus I don't like the idea of having no way to go back if I don't like the service.

Steve

Re:No turning back

[tgd]

Second hand intarweb posts.

No one I know with it had any copper removed. Not one.

As I said in my reply direct to him, there are a bunch of incorrect things people (who strangely don't have it) seem to keep repeating. To enumerate:

1) they do not remove copper usually. They never will if asked not to.
2) you do not need phone service
3) their phone service is regulated, if you do have it
4) Their network absolutely can handle the bandwidth. I can saturate my 15 mbit connection 24/7. 1.8meg/sec sustained, with no problems. (I know the grandparent didn't mention THAT FIOS rumor, but I thought I'd toss it in there)

Re:No turning back

[shaitand]

How is that? Or do you only mean if you are purchasing verizon phone service? My phone service runs through copper and is with another company, I would have no intention of letting them cut off another service when they install the fiber for my internet connection.

Re:No turning back

[Spazmania]

1) they do not remove copper usually. They never will if asked not to.

Perhaps this depends where you are and whether the lines are in the ground or overhead. In Virginia they wanted to remove my overhead copper lines but didn't because I had a T1 at the time. You are correct that they won't insist on removing them if you ask them not to but you have to know to ask.

2) you do not need phone service

However, ordering it without phone service is *really* hard. You will get a serious runaround if you try. You're better off ordering a phone, having it converted to FiOS and then cancelling the phone.

4) Their network absolutely can handle the bandwidth. I can saturate my 15 mbit connection 24/7.

Ditto. Verizon doesn't deserve to win because of how they behaved in the '90s but as much as I hate to say it, they have the best thing going right now.

Re:No turning back

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

It's normal fo the phone reps to say they will remove the copper. I'm not sure tahts because they are uninformed, or doing what they're told.

Either way, its been widely discussed at dslreports.com aka broadbandreports.com and i havent heard of anyone ever having a problem with keeping the copper hookup.

The installers arent required to remove it, they are instructed to unless you chose to not remove it.

My installer asked me specifically if i wanted it removed. I said no, and i still have the copper line. I use Voip anyways but its been pretty common for people to be concerned about the issue and it has come up quite a bit and i've not heard of one that ever had a problem keeping the copper.

Re:No turning back

[mjmills]

I offer the following personal experience only as evidence that the copper lines don't HAVE to be cut. Obviously, YMMV.

I signed up for FiOS internet access last summer, but originally stayed with MCI for phone service. The FiOS installer not only left the existing copper phone lines, when he saw what a rat's nest the previous phone installer had made he actually tidied up the copper wiring and refurbished the connections.

When I switched to Verizon phone service earlier this year, they promised a technician would be sent out to attach my interior copper phone wiring to the fiber ONT within two weeks. However, no one ever showed up, and my phone service to this day is still completely on copper wires, albeit provided by Verizon. The only problem is that I get two bills instead of one. At least I don't have to worry about an extended power outage killing my phone.

Re:No turning back

[Airplane-Flyer]

I had the choice of keeping the copper. I told them to take it out since there was so much static that the voice line was unusable anyway. The tech told me if I ever wanted to go back to copper all they had to do was come out and run a new line from the pole to the house. That being said, voice calls over the fiber line are now crystal clear. Probably never would want to go back to the crappy copper anyway. Paying $29.95 a month for 5Mbs service, 3 time the speed of the DSL service I dropped for exactly the same price. For me, 5 Mbs is enough bandwidth as I just web surf and do e-mail, not much downloading. I could have gone up to 15 Mbs for only $10 more. I would expect Verizon to offer higher speeds at the same price in the future, this is the strategy they had with their DSL service. The data connection is way more reliable then the DSL (which I had to reboot at least 3 times a week), no drops at all for the 4 months I have had the service. They are going to offer TV over the fiber in the next few months in my town, from what I understand they have enough bandwidth to offer hundreds of HDTV channels. I have Cablevision now and they seem to be stuck at around 15 HDTV channels, when I called to ask why they didn't have more (like Discovery HD) that just said that they are out of capacity. The free Dlink router is OK. Been running 4 months without a reboot. Keeps up with the full speed of the fiber connection with no problems.

Re:No turning back

[MoxFulder]

Well, I've just gotten on fiber, and so far so good. I'm in a rental house and we just got Verizon fiber last week. My computer connects through 802.11b, and the 11 Mbps connection is *definitely* saturated with the fiber connection upstream :-)

The good things about Verizon fiber so far:

• They have a promo where we pay $30/month instead of the $40/month that we were paying for DSL. Lasts a year.
• They gave us a new 802.11g router.
• The guy who installed it forgot to take his box of Cat 5E cable when he left, and didn't come back when we called!!!! So now I have a free 1000 ft box of Cat 5E cable, woohoo that's like $60 worth at least.

All What?

[Nom du Keyboard]

...all 15MBPS of it.

Excuse me, but that seems pretty lame for fiber to the curb. At 15MBS, I doubt the cable companies are shaking in their boots yet.

Re:All What?

[Emetophobe]

I can't believe how many people posting on slashdot don't know the difference between MB/s (megabytes/sec) and Mb/sec (megabits/sec). This is a site for geeks right?

Cable is 10megabit/sec (1.25 megabytes/sec), this guys fiber connection is 15 megabytes/sec (or 120 megabit/sec). There are 8 bits in a byte FYI.

Re:All What?

[Emetophobe]

Oops, I apologize =) I can't believe how many people don't RTFA! *blushes* FYI: The slashdot summary is incorrect, the article correctly states it as 15megabits/sec.

Re:All What?

[azav]

At one point, the technician said...

The tech asked for my phone, made a quick call and then did another test.

"45 megabits . . . I know you didn't order that. It'll adjust."

You can get more bandwidth - you just have to pay for it.

Re:All What?

[Comen]

The article says "When I told her that I was going for the $44.95-a-month 15-Mbps option (Verizon recently announced plans to up this to 20 Mbps"
So RTFA! this guy is not getting 120Mbps to his house!

Also I don't think people get it... PON or GPON
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_netwo rk
depending on what Verizon is currently using , It used to be just older PON, GPON can do alot more than 15Mbps, But they are planning to use what is left over for other services IPTV your Voice is on there, even though that don't take much etc...
But also they can crank up the bandwidth anytime they want.
They are not just going to start giving everyone 50Mbps bandwidth for $50 a month!
IPTV takes up some real bandwidth once you start talking HDTV and VOD and more than a couple TVs in the home watching different stuff.
This is the way it works people like it or not. Most new DSL ADSL2+ can do 20Mbps, but we only give out 10Mbps now, to people that can get that from the DSLAM.
But for people that can get 20Mbps and some people I work with do get that at thier home, they dont offer it yet. because competition doesn't demand that yet, and also bandwidth is still very expensive for the ISP, OC12 links to a major backbones are still expensive.

Also they guy makes it sound like because its Fiber its not shared, all ip networks are shared somewhere but mostly upstream, compared to cable topology. But PON is kinda shared also, its interesting, PON unlike its competitor Active Ethernet, PON is not a Point to Point service, because having to put active electronics so close to the home like with Active-E, Pon lets you send one fiber out to the edge of a neighborhood Passively and from there split it out, not using wavelengths so everyone gets there own frequency, but it just splits it so everyone gets the same signal all the time, then it use time slices to tell the box on the outside of your home when to listen and speak. so in a sense it is shared, less people on a main fiber means more bandwidth for all, but GPON does, I think 30 customers per fiber right now, giving around 60Mbps to each when full, but when there is less people you can get more.
So that guy in the article don't know jack either.
I am no expert, but have been reading on this stuff lately.

Re:All What?

[stric]

The fiber is much faster than that, but is according to the article capped to either 15 or 20 Megabit per second depending on which part of the article you read. For instance, "1.7Gigabyte in 12 minutes" is roughly 19Megabit/s. Please read the article and do your math.

Re:All What?

[cdrudge]

Verizon isn't doing PON or GPON currently. They are doing BPON. They are looking into GPON though. And you are right that they aren't going to give out 50mbit connections for $50. They do however give you 30/5 mbit connections for $55 in select markets.

Re:All What?

[LD gspot]

"Excuse me, but that seems pretty lame for fiber to the curb. At 15MBS, I doubt the cable companies are shaking in their boots yet."

I believe you are neglecting the true speeds of cable and FIOS. Yes, Comcast offers 5-6 MBPS down, and somewhere around 786 KBPS up. However, if you do a speed test while on cable, you are lucky to get 3 and a half down, and less than 300 up. FIOS advertises 15MBPS down and 2 MBPS up, and the speed tests consistently reveal around 14.7 down and 1.8 up. Both of these packages are sold at $44.95. You go ahead and call it lame, I am gonna go enjoy the speeds I pay for.

Verizon's plan for world domination with FiOS

[caryw]

What they DON'T tell you is that they completely cut the existing copper pair to your house, insuring that you can never "downgrade" to a competitors DSL service if you hate them as an ISP or from ever changing your local phone carrier to any other CLEC.

CNET article on it
--
From Northern Virginia? Visit Fairfax Underground! (Just added: Fairfax County wiki, need submissions)

Re:Verizon's plan for world domination with FiOS

[geekoid]

I have me doubts they will be able to continue to do that. Someone is going to want to sell their home at some point.

Re:Verizon's plan for world domination with FiOS

[WidescreenFreak]

...which means that Verizon will be more than happy to charge $xx per hour to run a new cable or splice together the old cable.

Hey, buddy, if youz wanna sell your house, youz gonna have ta ante up to get dat cable run to you house again, capisce?

Re:Verizon's plan for world domination with FiOS

[Professor_UNIX]

Umm, I imagine it'll just be included in your normal activation and installation costs when you sign up for a new line. When the new homeowner moves in they call and activate their line and someone comes out and splices it together. No big deal.

Re:Verizon's plan for world domination with FiOS

[cheebie]

I got FiOS about six months ago, and yes, they did remove the copper.
However, if I decide to go with a different company for phone service,
Verizon will have to give them access to the fiber connection.

I asked about this specifically.

BTW: My uptime has been MUCH better than it was with Comcast.

Re:Verizon's plan for world domination with FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but how many other phone companies will deal with a fiber connection?

Re:Verizon's plan for world domination with FiOS

[mfrank]

Did your phone line run from a pole, or was it buried?

I've had FiOS since November 2004

[cheezus_es_lard]

I was one of the first people in my town to get wired for it; we happen to have the headquarters of the old GTE entity in the city limits, and they piloted the service to the towns their execs lived in. I got lucky in the old broadband roulette game.

All things considered, the biggest annoyance is the fact that the power is no longer line-supplied. That 12v battery in my garage has been replaced twice already. Sooner or later, Verizon quits paying for them; I have no idea when, but soon.

My FiOS is set up similarly to that of the article, except my run comes into the NID outside, has the power source and battery separate, and splits off 3 phone lines, my WAN IP interface, and my FiOS TV connection (which goes to a splitter/grounding block in the attic).

All in all it's definately worth the speed at 45 a month. I'm paying about $230 a month after you roll in my 3 phone lines ($85) Internet@15/2mbps ($45) and FiOS TV ($100)

They offer a 5mbit, 15mbit and 30mbit connection, but the last I checked, they priced the 30/15 connection at $199 a month.

peace

Re:I've had FiOS since November 2004

[twistedcubic]

You pay $100/month for TV? Does that include porn movies?

Re:I've had FiOS since November 2004

[garylian]

Yes, that 30/15 is horrifically expensive.

I just got Verizon's FIOS service earlier this year, after Charter cable was having so much down time it wasn't funny. Of course, Charter's downtime seemed to increase as Verizon started to dig in the area. Mostly DNS problems or so.

Now that I have FIOS, I really like it, and their FIOS TV prices seem to be better than Charter's digital cable offerings. However, I still see some DNS problems, so it feels like the backbone of the internet in this area (North Texas) is having some issues, since many of my neighbors experience the same thing.

But their 15/2 service is worth it. Now, if they would just pull the throttle off the VPN for work, I'd be a happy camper. Thing is as slow as a 56K modem at times.

Re:I've had FiOS since November 2004

[johnnick]

I've had the 15/2 service for a couple of months, and while I haven't had DNS problems, it doesn't play nicely with my alarm system. Now that I've got FiOS, if I let the landline ring more than twice the alarm system seizes the line as if it were trying to call out with an alert.

I got Verizon in to fix the problem, since it didn't happen until they installed FiOS, and the tech generously informed me that (a) this is a common problem, (b) they were supposed to ask if I have an alarm system when I ordered and when they installed, and (c) they can't do anything about it, I have to get the alarm company out to fix it. Ugh.

Aside from that, the service has been great and the support from Verizon has been unusually good - they're putting a lot of effort behind FiOS.

John

Re:I've had FiOS since November 2004

[0x0000]

You pay $100/month for TV? Does that include porn movies?

Dude, pretty much everyone I know has been paying at least $85/mo for "basic" digital cable for a couple years now - add any premium channels (e.g. HBO) and it goes over $100/mo. And no, the pr0n is PPV and costs extra - except for a little nudity here and there - no real porn. As a side note, it's fascinating to me that there are so many people living in govt housing project where they are paying e.g. $15/mo for rent, but they manage to keep a ~$150/mo cable bill paid...

Re:I've had FiOS since November 2004

[garylian]

They did ask me if if I had an alarm system, but since I never activated it, no biggie. However, they WILL try to grab that connection if it is present in your house. I know the guy tried to on my house, but it wouldn't work.

Cat 5e?

[whoever57]

My home-improvement project involved ripping off all the old siding and running Cat 5e wiring to every room.

Why did he not run Cat 6? I know that you don't really need it today, but surely for the little added cost it would be worth some additional future-proofing of his installation -- especially since the install job is not easy.

Re:Cat 5e?

[geekoid]

why didn't he just run fibre?

Re:Cat 5e?

[XaXXon]

Well, at that point, why not wire the house with fiber?

Re:Cat 5e?

[Anonymous Coward]

why didn't he just run fibre?

Because Fiber is an order of magnitude more difficult to install? Because you can run different signals over Cat 6 (phone, Ethernet)? Because fiber would be a lot more expensive? Because fiber is normally used for long runs, not short distances within a building?

Need any more reasons?

Re:Cat 5e?

[chris234]

Every see a computer ship with a fiber ethernet interface? Yeah, I haven't either. And yeah, not a whole lot of fiber gear in the local stores either. So, no point in running fiber around the house.

Re:Cat 5e?

[unitron]

Future-proofing would have been if he'd been smart enough to install conduit if he was going to open up the walls.

Re:Cat 5e?

[Anonymous Coward]

emm.... because even CAT 5 is fine for 100Mbps ethernet.

In fact, I have a full-duplex 100Mbps connection on this very computer I'm typing using only CAT 3. Sometimes I get some hiccups on the connection, but I'm not sure if it's the CAT 3, or because I probably did a half-assed job when clamping the RJ-45s.

Anyway, as far as I know, you need something better than CAT 5 only to handle gigabit ethernet, and since we're unlikely to see anything in that range for a very long time (100Mbps should be fine for many years), there is no reason for an added expense.

Re:Cat 5e?

[Professor_UNIX]

Every see a computer ship with a fiber ethernet interface? Yeah, I haven't either.

Sure I've seen them with fiber ethernet interfaces. Most modern ones will use a GBIC or SPF module these days though so you can use either SX/LX fiber or copper gigabit.

Re:Cat 5e?

[chris234]

Sure, you can get fiber cards. My point was that few if any computers ship with them as a standard item, while just about everything ships with 1000baseTX. So there is little point in pulling fiber any time soon.

Re:Cat 5e?

[kestasjk]

Cat cables get less effective the further you get from the exchange, fiber doesn't.

Re:Cat 5e?

[Fat Cow]

it's odd that he put in a network and then transfers his new movie to his thinkpad by sneakernet (thumbdrive)

Re:Cat 5e?

[mdfst13]

Gigabit ethernet cards are relatively standard these days. Sure, you won't be able to pipe out to the internet at gigabit, but that's also true of 100 mbps. This is the first that I've heard of something that actually uses more than the old 10 mbps.

I predict cheap consumer devices (e.g. TiVo) with gigabit local area networks in the next five years.

Re:Cat 5e?

[anaesthetica]

Hell, let's go crazy. See if they'll put in Cat 7, or Cat 8. Heck, the sky's the limit at this point! They says curiousity killed the Cat, but we all know it was excessive versioning that really did it in.

Verizon FIOS

[Mike Buddha]

A friend of mine lives over in Verizon-land on the other side of town and he just got FIOS at 5Mbps for about half the cost of cable. I got a notice in the mail yesterday saying that Comcast was upgrading the cable broadband to 6Mbps. The latency on the fiber is way lower than on Cable Modem, though. Unfortunately, I live in Qwests area, so I'm screwed for Fiber. Oh well, $20 wireless is coming to town anyways.

Verizon FIOS is amazing

[freefal67]

We have FIOS out in Westchester County, NY and it's incredibly fast. Definitely recommended if you have it in your area and have the $$$.

It's like drinking from the fire hose!

[Anonymous Coward]

My FiOS was installed a few weeks ago, and even though it's *only* 5M bidirectional, it's a big step up from the DSL service I had. Because my town was only recently cabled for fiber, they had to bring it in from a cross street. In my case, even though my house is the 2nd from the corner, they had to bring it from the other street because that's how the utility poles were configured. With running the cable and switching allocated fiber (the fiber company had planned to put my house on the other street's cable), it took them about 4 hours to install the hair-thin bit of glass that's now providing really fast internet service, as well as cable (phone service isn't available yet), to my humble home.

And it's FAST, although most of the internet isn't. But when you find a fast feed, it's like drinking from the fire hose! When I see 100MB+ downloads, I don't even blink. Just click and go, and it'll be finished in a minute or two. Even better, uploads are just as fast. If you have the option to get fiber, don't hesitate. Just do it!

Re:It's like drinking from the fire hose!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me clarify - it's only 5M because that's all I signed up for. I could go faster, but at this point, it's not really needed. The local provider (minetfiber.com) offers speeds up to 30 for residential and 50 for businesses, but I couldn't really justify the cost.

(Well, I could, but I just figured I'd save the $25 a month and spend it on something else, like gas. :-(

Easy there

[Mr. Underbridge]

YOU BASTARD!!

Easy buddy. He just got fiber, it's not like he killed Kenny or something.

Total Download Limits?

[abscissa]

Does anyone have any info on whether there are download caps?

Re:Total Download Limits?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I have FIOS 30/5 service and there are NO CAPS.

I've uploaded gigs and gigs of HD 1080p footage (I'm a special fx artist) we're talking 30+gigs ...

Not a word from Verizon.

Re:Total Download Limits?

[Anonymous Coward]

I called my provider and the help desk told me it didn't matter whether the download were in caps or no caps. The help desk guy swore that CAPS downloads weren't bigger.
''

Re:Total Download Limits?

[wondersparrow]

30+gigs?

I think for many of us when I say "My mom pushes more data than that". With our dsl and cable connections, we regularly break 200gb up each month on each connection. Lordy we love the torrents. :D

Re:Total Download Limits?

[Anonymous Coward]

If people would only read the usage agreements. Verizon has given themselves the right
to terminate your DSL/phone service and switch you to fiber. They also reserve the
right to terminate your account for over bandwidth use, determined by them.

What's the big deal?

[Flimzy]

Aside from pricing or AUP's, etc... what's the big deal?

There are existing technologies already in place that can provide way more "bandwidth" than we actually get to use. In my area Cox offers a 9mbit connection... and is physically capable of much more.

Granted, Verizon (and all the Bells) don't have this sort of physical capability over old copper, so I see why they're trying to catch up with this fiber stuff. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just not anything very new. It's just a new method to achieve the same-old-results. So I still have to ask: What's the big deal?

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

2 Mbps up is the difference... not really touched on in the article, but for file sharing and what not... that beats the hell out of all the residential broadband solutions I've used.

Verizon is not getting it

[suitepotato]

My cable company delivers 15Mbps service on existing cable and some cable operators are experimenting with speeds as high as 50Mbps. The cable operators don't have to rebuild whole areas to do this in most cases whereas fiber pushes need massive investment to do. I wonder where that money comes from?

Oh yeah, the near-monopoly highway robbery pricing structures the Bells enjoy and the monies they expect to reap if net neutrality fails.

Silly me, I forgot they're going to rape the public to do it.

Re:Verizon is not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they do get it.. Fiber to the house will run at a max of well over 100 MB/S. At this point they are offering better then cable.
I had Fios installed this week, and the install guy told me that some time next week they are going to up everyone's downloads. So a person getting 15 will get 30 a person getting 30 will get 50.. ect.

I could imagine you are going to see verizon offer a 'cheap' line at this same speed as the local cable company..

I am completely amazed by the speed of 15...

I've got it in TX

[NFNNMIDATA]

And let me warn you: the D-link router is a POS. It reboots itself way too much (daily at a minimum, compared to never with my old Linksys). Very painful when you play WoW or work at home. I finally got around to switching back to the Linksys I had, but I had to get rid of the Sveasoft firmware I'd installed in order to get above 4mbps (and get 15mbps). It turns out the Linksys gets almost 1mpbs better throughput than the D-link in my tests as well, so if you get fiber do yourself a favor and ditch the D-link. Oh sure, you could go the customer service route, but I for one am too lazy to sit there pretending to empty my temp internet files while some stooge reads a troubleshooting script.

Re:I've got it in TX

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I used to think this. I once bought the Dlink 624 router and it did exactly as you described. It would reboot constantly... every 5 seconds.

I ripped that thing to shreads by word of mouth... I bought the linksys WRT54gs and returned the dlink-624 router...

That was a couple years ago...

Fast foward to today... I was very concerned about the dlink 624 that FIOS gives you. I had FIOS installed a few months ago and it turned out that the Linksys WRT54GS would SLOW MY SPEED DOWN. It would cut 10mb from the service because it couldnt keep up.

The Dlink 624 that i was given by Verizon with my FIOS install, runs at a full 30/5 mb service consistantly. AND there are no reboots.

The reboot problem that i experienced a year ago, does not happen at all with this Dlink 624.

BTW Verizon has custom firmware for the Dlink 624 that they give you.

The router is performing extremely well and I cant explain why.

Like i said, i bitched about the dlink 624 for a long time and praised my linksys but... that situation is now reversed oddly enough and i cant explain why the Dlink 624 works so well now.

Re:I've got it in TX

[NFNNMIDATA]

Don't know what to tell ya, I got my 624 from verizon in january and it is a POS. Tried updating the firmware etc. There are apparently 2 reboot problems, the every-5-seconds one was solved by D-link a while back whereas mine was not. Some say it has to do with wireless interference causing it to automatically reconfigure to a new channel (and thus reboot) periodically, but I have not had any luck trying to tackle it from that angle.

Re:I've got it in TX

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Thats interesting. I dont at all doubt your situation. I've experienced plenty of hell with a dlink 624 in the past. It was a revision C i beleive.

I cant explain why this one works now, and the old one i had did not. I'm happy it does though.

The problems i had with my first dlink 624 were just unbareable. XP would tell me every 5 seconds that i've lost network connection. The whole router would reboot. It was a nightmare and i quickly hated the dam thing.

Its just odd that this one works. I've had a friend have a similar situation. He was going to buy the dlink 624 and i told him my horror story and gave him many links of people having the reboot problems...

He still went ahead and bought one and had no problems with it. I guess luck has something to do with it.

Have you tried contacting verizon and asking for a replacement?

Re:I've got it in TX

[cdrudge]

Run DD-WRT instead of the Sveasoft crap. I've been running DD-WRT for several weeks on my 15/2 connection without issue and have been getting full speed.

Re:I've got it in TX

[sessamoid]

I've had similar problems with D-Link routers. The upside is that their customer services is very easy to deal with. The guy I talked to listened to my problem, then basically said, "Yup. It's broke. Send it to us, and we'll send you a new one."

Re:Verizon FIOS -- Whoa... wait a minute...

[WidescreenFreak]

A friend of mine lives over in Verizon-land on the other side of town and he just got FIOS at 5Mbps for about half the cost of cable. I got a notice in the mail yesterday saying that Comcast was upgrading the cable broadband to 6Mbps.

Wait a minute ... Comcast is upgrading cable to 6 MB? Please check the postmark on that envelope. Comcast has been touting 6Mbps as their base speed for well over a year even on their internal newsgroups. Their new speed boost, trial runs in New England are now experimenting with 12Mbps for their basic broadband subscriptions and 16Mbps for their premium subscriptions. Are you sure that you're being upgraded to 6Mbps?

Without DSL

[biblesage40]

Where I live optics are a bad thing:

Down the road there are optics not coppers so currently I can not get DSL
But I also can't get optics....for some reason
so I have dial-up

And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[postbigbang]

First, note that this isn't a symmetrical implementation. The Verizon network uses a PON scheme that can't really do symmetrical, and so, please download more than you upload. Secondly, they also have great difficulties with VLANs, and IPV6-- try it to see (not that IPV6 is worth a crap).

Let's see if it's future proof.... can they update their hardware to accommodate multiple concurrent IPTV QoS-based streams at HD raster/frame/color levels? No. Are they going to guarantee your network applications-- no matter who provides them-- won't be port blocked or attenuated by service type/port? No. This is called 'net-neutrality' and Verizon isn't net-neutral (just their services of course).

Can you join an MPLS network, even though Verizon supports their own internally? Nope. Can you join theirs? Nope-- not today anyway and no date in sight.

Can you run Skype and Vonage, or are they blocked? Can you run mulitple QoS- VoIP streams without raising eyebrows? Nope.

Can you get them to do an SLA? Nope.

Can you currently up-and-download stuff amazingly fast? You bet.

And no- I do not work for any carrier or affiliate of any kind. Instead, I've been following FTTX for 20 years.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I have Vonage, and it runs perfectly fine on my FIOS 30/5 service.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[vonsneerderhooten]

While I agree with most of your post, I must ask what does IPv6 have to do with Fiber? Last time I checked medium and protocol had nothing to do with one another.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[Wesley Felter]

Most of your complaints are irrelevant, because FIOS is a form of consumer broadband and whether we like it or not, consumer broadband is totally different from business-class dedicated Internet access.

they also have great difficulties with VLANs, and IPV6

DSL and cable ISPs don't support VLANs or IPv6 either.

can they update their hardware to accommodate multiple concurrent IPTV QoS-based streams at HD raster/frame/color levels?

A HD H.264 stream is only 10Mbps, so FIOS can fit roughly 62 streams per fiber, with a 32:1 split ratio that's about 2 streams per customer worst-case. In real-world situations it will be better.

Can you join an MPLS network

I've never heard of any consumer broadband ISPs that support MPLS, so FIOS is hardly special.

Can you get them to do an SLA?

Yet again, no consumer ISPs offer SLAs. If you want an SLA get a fractional T3 or dedicated Ethernet connection and be happy.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[shaitand]

You ignored this one "Can you run Skype and Vonage, or are they blocked? Can you run mulitple QoS- VoIP streams without raising eyebrows? Nope." that is a pretty serious issue.

In fact, blocked ports and throttled services in general is a serious issue where I am concerned.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[Wesley Felter]

I ignored the network neutrality stuff because it's all up in the air right now. But it appears to be the same as my other points: right now it looks like most of the broadband industry is opposed to neutrality, so such complaints have nothing to do with FIOS per se.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[cdrudge]

can they update their hardware to accommodate multiple concurrent IPTV QoS-based streams at HD raster/frame/color levels? No.

Sure they can. They are already looking at converting over to GPON instead of BPON. That would require changing out the ONT (consumer end) and OLT (Verizon's end). They also obviously would have some backbone changes to utilize the increased bandwidth. Looking into the future adding even more bandwidth required adding an additional lambda to the existing 3 running across the fiber.

Currently, the only thing that is IPTV is VoD. Even with running multiple HD streams there is sufficient bandwidth available for most nodes as not everyone is streaming mutliple HD feeds at the same time nor fully utilizing their internet connection.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[cdrudge]

Verizon FiOS currently doesn't block anything except incoming port 80 and 25 in some areas. Many people happily use a variety of VoIP services with FiOS without issue. Now tomorrow may be a different story, but you can't guarantee it won't be with any service.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[Comen]

I have never herd of a Service Provider letting any customer join to thier MPLS network via MPLS.
Thats just not secure from what I understand, most dont even like do that with other Service Providers.

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[Gkeeper80]

What about static IP addresses so I can run a server? I looked into FIOS the last time I moved, but Verizon told me that I couldn't get a static IP address (unless I signed up as a business customer for much more money). Comcast supposedly says the same thing, but I know lots of people that do it anyway. Has anyone given it a try?

Re:And behind the scenes, the real dangers

[reef127]

Yes you can use Vonage,

No they don't block any ports.

I had the FIOS installed at my house this week, and I am very impressed with what I can do. My old cable modem had some ports blocked (ie 80). Verizon so far has not blocked any of them.

As far as keeping up with QOS and concurrent IPTV QoS-based streams, I have to give Verizon the credit for at least getting fiber to the house. That in itself is a huge step forward.

thoughts on ONT bandwidth, etc.

[CaptainPhoton]

I am wondering what the maximum service offering from Verizon is. I get the sense from the article that the AFC ONT is underutilized. It shows the 4 POTS lines are connected but the author says "we don't need them all". The video port is not connected, and it looks like the connector has a cover installed (also the video LED is not on) so this is not being used.

Does anyone know the speed of the PON interface and whose OLT that Verizon is using? I'd be curious how much bandwidth from the optics the end user is actually getting to use. The typical value for upstream is 155 Mbps, so I'm guessing this guy is getting less than 10% usage of the optical interface (15 Mbps / 155 Mbps = .097).

Re:thoughts on ONT bandwidth, etc.

[cdrudge]

Verizon is using BPON currently. Downstream is 655 and upstream is 155. This bandwidth is passively split between up to 32 customers. Upstream is multiplexed so that each ONT gets an equal share of the pie. Downstream is controled by the OLT. Every ONT will see the entire 655 down, but will filter out traffic not destined for itself. This is by nature of the passive network, similar to when everyone was still using hubs/repeaters in the computer networking side of things. With 655 mbits, even if all 32 customers on a node subscribe to the 15mbit package there is still plenty of bandwidth available. This can be used by VoD streams coming from the head end for video.

POTS and regular cable tv are served off of seperate fiber wavelengths and do not impact the data side of things.

Are we supposed to be impressed with 15Mbit fiber?

[stric]

For instance, turn the clock back 5 years and the bandwidth up by 6.7x and you get the old slashdot article http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/08/215523 8 which was about some people in the town I live in..

Phone is not coupled with FIOS

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

From TFA:

Verizon has, unfortunately, coupled its FiOS service with its telephone service.

As a Verizon FIOS subscriber (have been for the past 4 months or so), I can attest that you don't need to have phone service through Verizon to get FIOS. In fact, I did have phone service through them and the day after my FIOS was connected I shut off my phone service and went with Vonage.

Does this guy do his research?

Also the article states that the speeds are 5, 10 and 15 MBps. That's wrong. It's Mbps.

port blocking and upload.

[vijayiyer]

Knowing Verizon (and looking at their terms of service), they will block ports and tell you that servers of all types are forbidden. Combined with a lack of static IP address, that, IMHO, makes the bandwidth useless - I like to access my files from locations other than home, have a mail server, host a small web page, etc. Who really cares if you get tons of bandwidth if you can't use it for anything except watching a TV show? (maybe the rhetorical question is asked and answered)

I have it, they did it

[RebornData]

I've got FIOS and my traditional phone line now runs over the fiber They completely removed the existing phone box on the house and put the ONT in it's place... it has a similar block for wiring the house phone wiring to it. This is why the FIOS install comes with a UPS- so that your phone line will keep working if the power goes out. They didn't actually tear out the copper wire from the ground, but hooking it back up would be a project.

However, he's gone a bit too far with the regulatory fear-mongering. Yes, the fiber line is excempt from the regulations passed in 96 that forced the phone companies to allow competitive access to the copper that enabled Covad, Northpoint, and others to start building out DSL networks of their own. However, the FIOS phone line is still a tariffed / regulated service, with the same Public Utility Commission oversight as before.

-R

I have FIOS 30/5...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I have FIOS 30/5 service and i love it. I'm lucky enough to be in a Cablevision market and FIOS 30/5 is offered for $50 a month

The install process is a few hours long. I'm proud to be the first person in my area to have it. (I've had a few months now) I cant tell you how happy i am to no longer be a Cablevision Optonline broadband subscriber. I was one of the first Optonline subscribers and saw their service degrade horribly over the years.

FIOS has forced OOL to "BOOST" their speeds but they're still plagued by the same upload usage caps and harrasment.

FIOS is the internet as it should have been 10 years ago. Every house in America should have had Fiber 10 years ago.

If you can at all get Fiber and the service provider is capable of actually delivering on its promises (like Verizon FIOS) then by all means look into it.

I'm hardly a coporate fanboy but Verizon has done right this time. They made a very bold and expensive move by rolling out Fiber services to the house. Other companies should be as bold. Cablevision once was... and they may be again some day.

The great thing about Fios is that it will wake up the broadband world. We demand speed... So the Broadband providers of the world better deliver.

I get solid performance and I really cant be anymore happier with FIOS. Well if they gave me 100/50 ;)

Anyways... Bravo to any company willing to advance our civilization by not holding back technology and delivering it to the people.

Re:I have FIOS 30/5...

[Spazmania]

FIOS is the internet as it should have been 10 years ago. Every house in America should have had Fiber 10 years ago.

Passive Optical Networking Systems (PONS) weren't around 10 years ago. The technology first saw serious discussion about any form of commercial deployment in 2003.

Without PONS it wasn't cost-feasible. You needed two fibers to every location instead of just one, and the fiber had to go all the way back to powered equipment at the CO instead of being merged with other subscribers on to a small number of fibers that go back to the CO.

Re:I have FIOS 30/5...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Its really not cost feasible now as i understand. The installer said the hardware they give is basically $400+ in value per person and they arent charging for it.

He also mentioned that they've changed hardware once already and verizon is paying quite a bit per person and losing quite a bit on each install.

Re:I have FIOS 30/5...

[Spazmania]

I'd be really surprised if that box on the wall only cost Verizon $400. I'd bet the total additive cost per customer is in the neighborhood of $2500. That only includes the fiber back to the first multiplexing point. They have trunking costs beyond that.

They have changed hardware, but they didn't go back out to the existing installs. Those they've left in place. They'll probably change one more time, to gpon. I suspect that's half the reason they're not offering business fios in most of the fios-enabled areas yet. They're just waiting for the right equipment.

On the other hand, they can amortize the cost over a number of years. Figure 90% of the installs will continue spending $500/year on the Internet service. In 5 years they've recovered the additive costs and in 10 they're making money. That's if everybody cancels their phone service and switches to VoIP. Perhaps only 40% of the customers will do that. The rest will continue to use Verizon's now less expensive infrastructure. Did I say less expensive? That's right. They no longer have to power your phone for one thing. If you're more than a certain distance from the CO, they no longer have to maintain powered equipment in their CEV's either. (CEV=Controlled Environment Vault). Those suckers are expensive to maintain. Everybody for which they can continue collecting $500/year for phone service represents narrows that break-even to about 3 years.

Now add in the 25% of folks who opt to subscribe to FiOS TV. That's a windfall; they add exactly no cost to provide that. Some of these installs will have covered the additive costs in 2 years and be profitable in 4. They're amortizing on 10-20 years, so that's pretty good news for Verizon.

Ouch!

[Yehooti]

Asshole. (Kidding, just kidding.)

Envious actually.

Should you really ask that question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Verizon is one of the companies pushing for tiered-internet, would an answer really help you with something?

It won't matter if there are no caps, since when they get their way, they'll probably assign all non revenue generating traffic to the slow lane, so you'll end up with a super-fast access to their over-bloated website, while any torrenting will take forever.

heh... I have this available, plus Optonline Boost

[Anonymous Coward]

where I live.

Guess which I chose?

I'm speed testing at 27000kbps down, and 1793kbps upstream.
I'm paying an extra 15 bucks a month, but I'm getting double
the download speed _they_ _promise_.

optimum throws in a hosted website, and they open up port 80 for you.

my neighbor likes it

[bobalu]

My neighbor likes it, he has the 5Mbps version. (He's cheap.)

I have Comcast and it's about 4Mbps so if you need the extra speed it should be good. The thing that turns me off is:

a) I hate Verizon and
B) he said it took like three days to hook it up. And he's a programmer who works from home. Go figure.

Do they NAT?mowgli

[chuckbag]

My question is if they NAT or do you get an IP?
More specificly, do they allow non-established TCP ports to your home system, or do they lock everything down and call it "security"?

I use a service like http://www.everydns.net/ so that my home compter has a dns entry, and grandma can view pictures of the kids (the IP can change, and your url still works). To do this I need to make sure that they allow TCP ports 80, 443, etc. I had Verizon DSL for a short while until I realised that I was not able to send web traffic to my home system, so I went with cable internet.

I wonder if they block incomming (non-established) traffic. Anyone know?

thanks!

Re:Do they NAT?mowgli

[Srin Tuar]

They give you a rountable IP, but force it to rotate fairly often.

I'd say its the primary downside of FIOS at the moment.

that and they block incoming port 80.

Re:Do they NAT?mowgli

[ytsejam-ppc]

Yes, they block 80 and 25 at a minimum. I used some free online dns thing that redirects your address@port 80 to your address @pickanotherport. Works great.

Obligatory /. comment

[Anonymous Coward]

New Computer = $2999.95
15Mbps fiber connection = $44.95
Server slashdotted so your connection speed equal to a 300 baud modem = priceless

Same Deal Down Under

[thedji]

Even in old-fashioned Australia, we get ADLS2/2+ across most of the country. Albeit not 20 megabit due to the large distances involved but the average is around 12-15.

And why is 15meg a big deal when places like France (see parent) and Utah (see UTOPIA) have 100 megabit active fibre networks?

Re:Same Deal Down Under

[bd_burley]

I'd just like to say that I'm an Aussie who lives outside of the major metropoles. You see, not everyone in Australia lives in Sydney, contrary to what some people may think. 'Most' People (outside of Sydney/Melbourne/Canberra/etc) get really excited about the day when they can finally get off 56k dialup and onto ADSL (not ADSL2+). So 1.5Mbs is about as fast as the general population can go. Unfortunately, a LOT of people don't live close enough to an exchange to even get any form of DSL.

We just hope and pray that one day we will get something a little faster than the FRAUDband we have grown to accept as 'fast'.

Re:Same Deal Down Under

[lachlan76]

Unfortunately, a LOT of people don't live close enough to an exchange to even get any form of DSL

Telstra is partially to blame for this; they refuse to provide any DSL service whatsoever to those who can't get their maximum speed. Agile gives you as much as you can handle though, so when they start getting out into the non-metro areas things may improve. As it is, I'm in a metro area (Adelaide) and live ~2.1km from the exchange, giving me just over 8Mb/s sync speed, and >800KB/s download speed. It's good that we're finally starting to get better service than in the US :)

What's the point?

[Korin43]

I mean, how many sites are really going to give you content at 5, 15 or 30 Mb/s? Bittorrent is the only program I've seen that will ever get download speeds above 800k on my computer, and the max is around 1500k.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

1500KB/s is almost 15Mbps

Different Pricing

[oxidecool]

The pricing for FiOS can actually vary a large amount depending on your area. Especially on long island, due to competition with cablevision, prices are a bit cheaper. For my area the prices are 10Mbps/2Mbps for $35, 20/5 for $45, and 30/5 for $55. They also have the business plan which is like $190 for 30Mbps. I can't find the details on it right now, but you get something like 5 static IPs, all open ports and some web space on their servers and additional email addresses.

Fiber hype

[SekShunAte]

I'm from a small town called Lafayette, LA. We just had our government run utility system approve a bill to provide the funds for fiber to the home. While this sounds great, it doesn't mean it's going to happen. There is nothing in the bill that claims they MUST use the funds for fiber to the home. I'm curious what they mean by FTTP. Is this fiber to the curb or to the home? Is Verizon going to end up pulling the old telco trick of over-subscribing the one fiber drop and once this guy gets 20 neighbors on the same connection he'll be down to 5 Mpbs? One particular group in our town (which i will modestly boast to be lightly involved with) made sure that if this bill got pushed through, the fiber would be run to the home and not the curb. All I'm saying is that 15 Mbps is hype and nothing more. Verizon could easily turn up their speeds to 40 and 50 Mbps without even beginning to hurt their backbone. Then again, so could cable and phone companies too. Why don't they do it? Why does some cheese eating brown-toothed frenchman get extreme rates when we're drooling over 15 Mbps?

Re:Fiber hype

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from a small town called Lafayette, LA.

Est. population in July 2004: 111,966 (+1.6% change), and that's not counting the unincorporated-but-actually-suburban areas that add a good 10-20,000.

That is not a small town. That is a small city. USA Today can call it a rural community all goddamned day, but it's an oil city with the state's only notable tech sector - complete with its own wtfpwned-expensive housing subdivisions.

We just had our government run utility system approve a bill to provide the funds for fiber to the home.

1.) They voted to issue $125 revenue million in bonds to fund plans to run fiber optics to homes in the city.

There is nothing in the bill that claims they MUST use the funds for fiber to the home.

But if they don't, they won't have a service to provide. Without a service to provide, they can't pay off the bonds. If they can't pay off the bonds, they have to raise taxes.

So they're going to use the money on fiber to the home. The real risk and problem is if enough people in Lafayette actually want it. Which leads to...

2.) Multiple courts have ruled that the Lafayette Public Utilities Authority has to hear appeals from residents - residents who don't want to pay for fiber they won't use - and say LUS and the city are exceeding their authority in issuing bonds for it. Nothing's happening. There is no bond money, LUS isn't laying fiber, no services are being provided. And the longer it's stalled, the less of a chance there is that anything will happen - that BellSouth or Cox will offer services that the greater market actually wants and will pay for, carving up the city and leaving LUS without enough subscribers to pay the bills.

And then guess what happens - everybody pays for it anyway.

Remember, the referendum passed by a very narrow margin. There is not a landslide of support for this. Lafayette is a Republican, free-market city - with a libertarian streak, yes, but downtown poetry readings from ULL libart majors aside, it's certainly doesn't have even a pinch of socialism in it. (To put it this way, Lafayette's idea of an alt-weekly newspaper is one that's more focused on reporting how great business is than the Gannett-owned daily. There's a rebellious streak, but it takes a back seat to the profiteering streak that goes all the way back to its petrochem-reliant days.)

LUS is there doing electricity out of necessity - back-in-the-day electricity providers who refused to provide service, driven by the free market. BellSouth and (once what was) Cox haven't said no to fiber, they just don't want to invest in something that they don't think will turn a profit.

The difference is, electricity establishes a basic standard of living, and everyone uses it. Fiber establishes a higher standard of living, but very few people actually need it, and about as few have any real use for it. Establishing a government-funded utility that you don't need will never set will with the free-marketeers, and appeals only to the "fuck the man" economic libertarians who don't mind the government being responsible for Internet access. (And you thought your ISP's restrictions were bad.)

One particular group in our town ... (ego omitted) ... made sure that if this bill got pushed through, the fiber would be run to the home and not the curb.

No, dipshit, you made sure the city would make plans to. What they'll actually do with the money - as you said yourself - is a mystery, and one that, as long as tax-fearing residents keep throwing up roadblocks, isn't going to be solved any time soon.

L

FIOS: I'm a 30 day free trial churner

[aggles]

The FIOS installation went great and yes, they ripped out the copper. No problem with that. My telephone line used to be noisy and now isn't. The Internet throughput speed was as advertised, but with a gotcha. The 15MB transfer rate was only possible when I was transferring megabytes of data within a single socket connection (like FTP). Connection set-up time sucked. There must be some sort of proxy slowing down the set-up of each TCP socket. On web pages with lots of small objects, there is a lot of latency followed by bursts of speed. Page load time on sites like CNN was similar to the Comcast 4MB speed, but it looked way more jerky. I write off the lack of a clean internet pipe to the connection vs connectionless oriented telco switch mentality. I gave FIOS an honest 30 day shakedown, but canceled the service. The tipping point for me was the way Verizon operates its FTP server. Timeouts galore. Very unreliable. I could live with the bandwidth characteristics but not the way they operate the ISP services that come with it. I'm glad that I have a choice of broadband to the home. Comcast cable or Verizon FIOS. For now, Verizon is not ready for my business. It was polite about canceling my service and the bill it sent me, and leaving my voice phone on FIOS for the same basic rate. Who knows, maybe some day... The FIOS box is still in the basement and has a cable TV tap. When Verizon comes calling with a package that includes a lower price for TV service, I'll be ready to talk to them again.

Re:FIOS: I'm a 30 day free trial churner

[Slashcrap]

The tipping point for me was the way Verizon operates its FTP server.

Why do you care how your ISP operates its FTP server? What exactly are you downloading from their server? Did someone crack it and fill it up with warez or something?

Re:FIOS: I'm a 30 day free trial churner

[aggles]

No hack or warez. But, quality of service matters. I'm uploading webcam snapshot pictures, a 35Kb file every 10 minutes - then downloading the pile of pictures when I reach my size capacity. Many uploads from the camera failed - like 20% of them. When downloading several hundred files, I would get timeouts and have to restart the FTP transfer several times. With Comcast FTP server - it doesn't happen. Yes, I could get a different FTP service, but it comes with the ISP service, so why spend the extra money for an extra service?

FiOS availability in Cedar Park/Austin, TX?

[Runesabre]

Anyone know when Verizon FiOS is supposed to be made available in Cedar Park/Austin, TX?

Re:FiOS availability in Cedar Park/Austin, TX?

[Zed2K]

Probably never or at least not anytime soon. SBC has a pretty major hold on this entire area in and around austin.

Re:FiOS availability in Cedar Park/Austin, TX?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know when Verizon FiOS is supposed to be made available in Cedar Park/Austin, TX?

No, but I do know that AT&T is running fiber into my neighborhood, in between Cedar Park and Leander, with plans to roll out 100Mbps dsl and ala carte HDTV service sometime in the next 18-24 months.

Re:FiOS availability in Cedar Park/Austin, TX?

[mr.bri]

I am not sure about Verizon, but my parent-in-laws just moved into a new house in February in Cedar Park and they have FTTP. I think they have SBC as their phone provider, and they have the APC battery backup in their house as well.

My understanding is that the whole neighborhood was built-out this way, and everybody has FTTP. The cable company (Time Warner) still has a presence, and they had to run the line from the cable box in the yard to the house when it was installed (just like everywhere else).

"for almost everyone"

[YesIAmAScript]

http://www.internode.on.net/adsl2/graph/index.htm

If a person lives within 1.7km of wire from their nearest concentrator, then they can get 20MBps.

If you think "almost everyone" lives within 1.7km of wire from their nearest concentrator, I think you're wrong.

Over time, as more remote concentrators are installed, most people in dense areas will be able to get something like this. But right now, I can't imagine that over half of the people in your country live that close.

OH SHOCK! The article is incorrect on many fronts

[Anonymous Coward]

you can get just the internet WITHOUT the phone service and retain your copper line so far half the posts here are either wrong or just FIOS bashing spam with little facts.

Try reading the forums over on http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/vzfiber for more information than this one article.

Not really

[electrosoccertux]

Talk to any cable internet/tv operator and they're happy to lay another one if you sign up for a year (you have to do this anyways). Its only a few bucks on their part, but they get to lock you in for a whole year. They see it as a win.

Warning: Do not eat Verizon FIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Good God man, after all the hassle of getting it installed, you want to eat it?

Fiber has more headroom

[Wesley Felter]

FTTH runs at 622-2400 Mbps, while cable modems are 30-60 Mbps IIRC. Thus the fiber ISPs have more room to increase their bandwidth caps without having to install new equipment. I expect telcos and cablecos to keep leapfrogging each other in terms of Mbps/$ over the next few years.

We already paid for 45Mbps - cheating bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240_ F.shtml

They all suck and laugh at us as we ask "Please sir can I have a tiny bit more bandwidth and can you unblock port 25/22/80/443/8080 and not QoS VoIP down into uselessness"

We already paid, they lie about that, they lie when they say google/MSN/eBay/Yahoo don't pay (what after you are a certain size company, you get free connectivity at all the NAPs? WTF are they talking about - everybody pays on both ends)

Neither the telco's nor the govt want citizens to have significant upload bandwidth -

Re:We already paid for 45Mbps - cheating bastards

[Spazmania]

what after you are a certain size company, you get free connectivity at all the NAPs?

Yes, more or less. Those dozen or so companies are known as the "Internet Core Exchange." They include folks like MCI/Verizon and Abovenet. The process is known as "Reciprocal Peering" and the ICE move 100% of their traffic that way.

Re:We already paid for 45Mbps - cheating bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies peer traffic for free but they are paying to connect to the backbone fabric and all the costs associated with that - colo/rack space, ports [or whatever you want to call "internal connectivity at the NAP into the backbone"] fiber runs (to/from NAPs) are not free to google or yahoo or MSN. In fact if you want to do "free" peering at any MAE you still pay Verizon AFAIK http://www.mae.net/peer/index.htm and then use their tool to pick who you want to peer with.

http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20060324/1 829206&cid=354

So, again Yahoo and Google and MSN and eBay all pay for bandwidth/ports/access/rack space as do all the customers using FTTP/Cable/DSL/Dial Up - nobody is "not paying" the greedy telco's. I am sure that Equinix and MAE/Verizon are making pleny of money from all that "free" service they are providing to google and yahoo. https://ecc.equinix.com/peering/ExchangeTrafficHom e.jsp

Re:We already paid for 45Mbps - cheating bastards

[Spazmania]

If you are MCI/Verizon then you're not paying MAE/Verizon for a connection. You are paying a mortgage on the building and you are paying for equipment but those costs are more or less the same whether you trade 1 gbps of traffic or 100 gbps of traffic.

In other words, because members of the core move 100% of their traffic via peering they pay no ADDITIVE cost for additional traffic. They still pay a fixed base cost to be in the game but they can increase their traffic without increasing their cost.

Anyway, MAE-East is essentially dead. That peering has all moved to Equinix in Ashburn. But there are other places to peer: Switch & Data PAIX is a good choice. Flat rate access to their switch is reasonable and cross-connects for the folks with which you have enough traffic aren't bad either. At the other end of the spectrum you can peer at a place like NeutralNAP. There are only half a dozen providers there but access to the peering switch is included in the rent.

IPV6....

[postbigbang]

Like it or not (I don't), IPV6 is in the near future. If your organization supports it, you don't really have to support as there are work-arounds. But for some, it's becoming mandatory.

Oh gee, thanks Verizon DSL.

[Anonymous Coward]

"For giving this guy all that free stuff. Now could you do something about your monopoly in my area or at least not use the opportunity to gouge us on DSL prices?"

And yet broadband adoption in the US has grown 40 percent mainly because of the price of DSL versus cable.

Um, no.

[tgd]

I have FiOS. And contrary to the "they remove the copper" bullshit people seem to hype up online, I still have copper lines. And, contrary to that article, I do not have (and never have had) a Verizon phone line.

If you order FiOS and don't want them to remove the copper, tell them you don't want them to. If you don't want phone service, don't order it. I think I pay $5 more a month for the service because I don't have phones, but that may be wrong. Its $44.95/month for 15mbit. Someone who knows what they pay with phone service can chime in if its less than that.

There's no grand conspiracy to force people off copper. Of course they'd rather do that, but they don't force it on anyone.

Oh, and your phone service is quite considered a telephone line if you are getting phone service from Verizon over the fiber -- you still pay all the taxes and have all the "rights" associated with phone lines. Only if you use a 3rd party VOIP over FiOS would you lose those. (Verizons fiber-based phone service is NOT VOIP)

Re:Um, no.

[cdrudge]

I pay $39.95/month for 15/2 service, and that is not with a phone line. It was just the special DSL customers received and bundling was not required.

56K marching on as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I see another god damn cable provider or telco offer some absurdly high download speed with an upload speed less than 10% of the download speed and then have the nerve to give out dynamic IPs and block inbound ports I'm going to puke. Other than widespread piracy of copyrighted material there is absolutely no purpose to such lopsided connectivity"

Google for how DOCSIS works, and you'll understand why.

As if Verzion will actually play ball

[kilodelta]

I keep getting these "Come back..." mailings from Verizon, about once every quarter. In them they quote some obscene price for basic phone services with a few extra calling features. It's always somewhere around $45 a month. And you still pay a per minute for LD and toll.

But once they roll out FIOS I might call and beat them up a bit, tell them that if they can give me unlimited to the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Spain and the U.K. as well as CLID, CW-CLID, Three-Way calling, voice mail, and a ton of other features for $24.99 a month I might consider coming back.

They know they're losing business. So of course they'll use every trick in the book to lure people back to them knowing full well they'll hike the rates two months later and you're stuck in a one year contract. Anyone who can't see that is a fool.

slow to the development

[kyoko21]

Back when I was in college at Virginia Tech, I lived in a town house development (1997-2000) called Pheasant Run Crossing where before the foundation was laid for all the units, two pairs of redundant fiber was laid out to each lot so that each town house had fiber access. At the time, each town house came with its own fiber-to-RJ45 hub, each with 4 ports that ran into each of the four bedroom. The uplink at the time was only a pair of T1s which could have easily been changed over to something fatter. The cool thing was that through IP Masquerading our monthly cost of $27 was able to support 5 users with a single static IP. Ahhhh... those were the days.

The free installation was amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was really surprised when they ran the fiber to the house underneath my irrigation system. Unfortunately, when they trenched right through pipes. I switched on the sprinklers a couple of days later and had two fountains spring up in the yard along the fiber trench.

Thank you for making me irrelevant.

[postbigbang]

DSL and cable ISPs don't support VLANs or IPV6 either

Not so. Do your homework.

.....2 streams per customer worse-case

That's if you don't have several children.... eschew things like QT7.... and want to have any kind of reasonable future running non-carrier-controled QoS streams! As for consumer broadband ISPs that support MPLS, again-- you need to do your homework. The big guys don't, but the little ones are getting smart. SLAs are becoming important, too. What happened to 5-9's? Is it one 9, two, or three or four or what? There are no guarantees at all. And no guarantees that you won't get blocked-- what with Net Neutrality out the window.

Re:Thank you for making me irrelevant.

[Spazmania]

DSL and cable ISPs don't support VLANs or IPV6 either

Not so. Do your homework.

There are enough DSL and cable ISPs that I'm sure some of them support IPv6. Very few, but some.

As for VLANs, they work just fine on FiOS as long as you're using one that is OK with a dynamic IP endpoint.

Can you run Skype and Vonage, or are they blocked?

I'm using Vonage, so the answer is yes. Works just fine.

I also ripped out the D-Link router the provide and hooked up my Linux firewall directly to the ONT. This means I get unmolested TCP/IP (except for port 80) all the way to my Linux box.

Its PPoE so I have about a 1480 byte MTU instead of 1500. This has not caused me a problem.

They installed the fiber, then cut the copper!

[Brett Glass]

One essential part of the fiber install process, at least for Verizon, is to cut the copper. Why? Because thanks to rules drafted by politicians to whom Verizon has contributed megabucks, Verizon is obliged to allow competitors to rent and use the copper, but not the fiber. Let Verizon run fiber to your home and you're stuck with them forever. It's a Faustian bargain.

Re:They installed the fiber, then cut the copper!

[shaitand]

Would you arsehats stop repeating this. First your post is redundant, gobs of people repeated the same rumour ahead of you. Second, each of them has a thread under it debunking the myth. They only cut the copper if they are installing phone service (which is not required) and they won't do it if you ask the installer not to.

FIOS Facts

[nevets429]

I've had FIOS for a little shy of a year now. Was barely able to keep cable up due to bad neightborhood wiring that would go out every time it got above below 40 or above 80 degrees (often in Texas). DSL wasn't possible, too long of a run, was barely able to get 128k on DSL before going to Cable. My old 128k ISDN line was more reliable than either of them. FIOS has gone down absolutely 0 times and I've got 15 down, 2 up with four fixed IP's. They don't block ports, I run my own mail and web servers here. Normally they will switch your copper out and put the telco on fiber also, but I've currently got data only. They didn't touch my existing telco box.

The speed is nice, but the latency is the truely nice part of it, it's virtually non-existant.

I'm not a Verizon fan either, switched away from them for our telephone the moment we had other companies in the area.... but they've proven me a fan now. The one time I did need to call tech support (because I misplaced the IP address of one of their DNS servers), the first person that answered the phone not only knew what a DNS server was (At Comcast you have to go a few levels up for that) but they had it available right away and didn't have to IM fourth level support in another country to find out. It was literally a 30 second phone call.

As for installation, I'd already run Cat6 from my office to the location where they were going to put the ONT. They would run Cat5 if I hadn't though... I'm just a bit particular about the wiring in the attic so wanted to do it myself. The tech rolled up, took him about an hour to mount the ONT on the house, terminate the fiber, etc. Meanwhile he gave me the router and it was all connected and I had my machines configured with the IP addresses. By the time he knocked on the door to tell me it should be up, I was already checking email on it and disconnecting my Comcast modem.

So those are real facts about FIOS, not FUD.

Even the fiber is slow in the US

[_vSyncBomb]

If that's the best they can do, what is the big deal? I also have fiber in my apartment, and it also is about $45 per month. The difference is, my fiber is fast. 100Mbps down and no bullshit upstream cap--that is also 100Mbps. If it took me 15 minutes to download only 1.7GB, I would be gritting my teeth.

Of course, I live in Japan.

Real world speeds: Downloading from Apple (or seemingly any big company using Akamai) I get ten megabytes per second solid. A lot of sites hosted in the US give piddly-ass downloads around 600 kilobytes per second, but that is their problem, not mine. The really cool thing is I get real world transfers (using iGet or SFTP) between here and my buddy's Tokyo's apartment at about 6-7 megabytes per second. (Which means, you can start iGetting a movie, and then start watching it in VLC 30 seconds later, for cheap homebrew video-almost-on-demand.)

I don't understand why it would be a winning strategy to incur the expense of a fiber rollout, and then offer these piddling speeds that barely outpace DSL. My office back in the US has business DSL from sonic.net that is 6/0.6 Mbps. Sure, this is incrementally faster but it is not at all mind-blowing. (And in fact, it is way way slower than even DSL here in Japan.)

I will get rotated back to the US next month and the one thing I have been dreading is the slow-ass Internet back there. I guess I will have to face that even if I can get fiber.

Re:Even the fiber is slow in the US

[patbernier]

Mod parent up!

Japan's clearly leading in terms of bandwidth delivery to home users.

One can find some interesting facts and figures in the following report presented last year:

http://www.asiabroadbandsummit.com/4th/shimizu.pdf

Keeping in mind that some of these figures are outdated by now, combined with NTT's intense marketing campaigns for their "B-Flets" (100Mb/s 2-way) and "Flets Hikari" (shared 1Gb/s? ...you get 100Mb/s I think) FTTH services, we're probably talking about over 3 million customers with 100Mb/s fiber Internet!

The area where I live doesn't have coverage yet, but even my current cable modem connection beats the hell out of anything I used to have at home back in North America in terms of both bandwidth and latency.

Re:Even the fiber is slow in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

If the US was a tiny island nation instead of a vast portion of a continent...it wouldn't be difficult to supply UBER broadband to all customers. Keep in mind that Japan is smaller than the state of California with nearly 4 times the population & GNP. This goes a long way toward paying for such conveniences. Linear distances seem to be the largest hurdle to widespread adoption & lots of features.

Re:Even the fiber is slow in the US

[stygianguest]

Personally I've never understood why people with this kind of connections bother to download movies. I've been playing movies streaming over a network with mplayer since I've had a 400 KB capable connection (no dvd quality though). Mplayer is great for this, you can feed it http addresses directly or, since that's often not possible, start playing a movie that's being downloaded at the same time. It's just that some codecs do not allow seeking when streaming. Like you say, speed is more and more a question of the sender rather than the sender. I sincerely hope there will be fast synchronous connections over here in the near future too. Currently I've got a 20/4 Mbps connection, which barely allows me to run a remote desktop service, but nothing more. I would've preferred 10/10 Mbps. Well, enjoy your connection as long as you can :D

Did you mention the upstream?

[CWoop00]

I have 15 down, 2 up. It's the two up that really make the difference! (Although, I've almost always got it red-lined at 15....

Re:Did you mention the upstream?

[flipsoft]

I am in Sacramento area and we have Surewest here with FTTP. I get 18Mb/s down and 34Mb/s up (This is not a typo). This is their business package@89.99 a month and it is $49.99 for the first year with a 1 year contract. I used to have their home package and it was 9Mb/s down and 18Mb/s up for 49.99 a month with no contract. When shopping for homes or appartments the areas with Surewest FTTP get more buyers then those areas without. Most locals are very informed about the benifits of their services. -flipsoft

Re:Did you mention the upstream?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Surewest as well (midtown Sac). I ordered the 20Mbps package for year contract, but only (heh) get 22Mbps upload. How are you able to get such a high upload speed when your package is only supposed to have 10Mbps and 20Mbps, respectively. Has this happened at different locations or is it just at one place that you have been fortunate enough to have the higher upload speed? Also is their business package really only $89, or do you just use their "normal" service for business purposes? I know they have a very nice infrastructure and one would think they could get a lot more than $89/month for 10 or 20Mbps business packages.

Re:Did you mention the upstream?

[flipsoft]

When I called about their promo they said it was the business package so I assumed it was their package. But after looking at their business offerings I think it is what they have for home offices. As far as the up/down speeds I did not do anything special it was always lopsided since they upgraded me. I figured I wouldn't say anything to them about it.

From the new datacenter at work I can pull a full 38Mb/s from my house to the datacenter. The funny thing is that at the datacenter we have a 40Mb/s connection there and we pay $10k US a month for it. :)

Also another thing is that I know I have hit their 8GB (8GB up/8GB down which ever comes first) limit per month but they have not said anything about it. Pretty cool company if you ask me.
-flipsoft

It IS good.

[Svartalf]

But it's even better if you can afford the business line relationship. 5 fixed IP's- they do NOTHING to impair your use thereof so long it's not illegal. With the consumer service plans, you agree not to host servers (this includes things like hosting Quake4, etc.) and they get to dictate a few other things to you. This translates into $99/month because they make you go with the 15/2Mbps or higher service offering at that point- but if you can spend it, it's worth it unless you can afford plunking the cash down on a fractional T3.

ugh...

[pawnroot]

I was paying $177.00 a month for voip, 360kbps DSL, and digital cable (80 channels) that from what I've been told is brought in digital then compressed down to analog and then re-encoded to digital right before it hits the set-top box. So by the time all that has happened it looks like crap + I was broke.... my life sucks.

15Mbps Only???

[Anonymous Coward]

This stuff better be dirt cheap or have some other redeaming qualities.

Here in Oz I've got 24Mbps ADSL2+ (and actually get about 20-21 synched on my line), which is quite common and relatively cheap.

So umm, what's the point?

Re:15Mbps Only???

[sazy]

The point is "the last mile" is optical. Infinite bandwidth scale, electrically immune, proven reliability.,. Verizon is currently serving FTTP FiOS customer communities with OC12 & OC3 facilities however, Verizon is also developing new packages. 100MB/s(ETH) will be offered soon as will video(IPTV) services - some areas have this service now, all on the single optical strand., not to mention the 4 voice(VoIP) ckts. OC12 muxes become OC48's and 3's become 12's, hash Juniper.cfg and., voila! The point is, the ultimate network connection., I'm w/glass.

FTTP is a new "lighted" network, a totally glass passive optical network(PON), with backbones and hubs and splitters and terminals and drops and, of course, ONT's. This is new technology, plant and hardware are changing hourly. What your neighbor has today may not be what is installed at your house tomorrow. So, services are going to evolve.

Cablevision's Optimum Online is faster

[Chonine]

I have had OO for a while originally some 3Mbps service, its now 10Mbs down, 1 up. This is for $40 a month. Pay a $15 kicker and you get 20down, 2 up. I like the idea of fiber, but not until its in the 100Mbps range.

RCN is fiber to within 800 feet of it's customers

[EricTheO]

RCN is rolling out, from the Eastcoast to the Westcoast, their MACH 20 service (20Mbps Down / 2Mbps Up). If they feel the need to go fiber to your door, it will be much less then the proverbial "Last Mile". They would need to only replace the current Nodes with all fiber ones and run fiber the last 800 feet or so to each customer. They planned ahead and have an Overbuilt network with a fair amount of unused bandwidth. Of course they will milk all the capacity out of the existing cable first.

Fastweb in Italy

[baffo]

Notice that fiber to the premises has been an option in many urban areas of Italy for the past five years - http://www.fastweb.it/ is the provider. They are famous for the good quality of the connectivity, and notorious for the unpredictability of the setup times. Once you are in, it is good, but it can take ages to get in. A flat rate connection will cost about 40 Euro per month, including 100 Minutes of VoIP and a three-port hub.

Re:Fastweb in Italy

[blueiron]

It's about 6 years I have a fiber connection with fastweb. I spend 50 euros a month and I have 6 hours of national phone calls for free. The only bad thing is that with fastweb you are behind a NAT so you have a private IP, but yhey give you 20 hours monthly of free public ip and when you pass the limit you can pay: 50 cents for 1 hour or 4 euros for an entire day. Actually I have never passed the 20 hours limit.
With 600'000 customers there is a very big internal p2p community.

Much more common in other parts of the world

[Terje Mathisen]

We sold our old mountain cabin above Rjukan, Telemark (in Norway) this winter to buy a new one a few kms away:

The local power company, Rauland Kraft, by default installs a PVC tube alongside the 400 V electrical cables to each new hoouse or cabin, and they pull fiber to the local junction box. The only thing needed for a "Triple Play" (IP + IPTV + Phone) connection was a 15-minute visit to blow a fiber through that PVC tube.

Terje

Never understimate the bandwidth of ...

[ananamouse]

I put 4 250 gig usb dirves in the car and drove them to my Mom's house about one hundred miles away. It took about a hundred minutes of driving, and workes out to 12 gigabit per second! Of course, latency if a killer.

We Have It

[greenlead]

We have it here, from Verizon. The basic home deal is 5/2 Mbps for $35, which is what DSL cost a year ago. My only beef with it is that it uses PPPoE, instead of DHCP. They also block port 80, and you are not supposed to host any servers on it. Our install took about five hours, which included us convincing them to put some extra wires in. Granted, we are a family of computer geeks, so we all had a good time.

We recently changed over our church from a microwave link to the fiber business deal. For $100 a month, we get 15/2 Mbps, five static public IP addresses, and no blocked ports or other interference. What impressed me is that connection is truly static and doesn't have any sort of PPPoE nonsense. Sure beats paying the same price for a 256/256 connection, with one static IP.

Both packages include the D-Link DI-624 Wireless Router. For both setups, I have the router acting as a switch/access point instead of routing, due to the fact that IPCop does the job perfectly well for us.

Looking at the traffic graphs on our IPCop firewalls, we have yet to actually fully utilize the bandwidth available to us.

Re:We Have It

[greenlead]

In contrast to the original article, you can obtain the fiber Internet connection separate from your telephone service. This may only be true for the business package. We are only purchasing our Internet connection from Verizon, our phone lines are coming from another provider.

Somebody should ask him..

[Frightening]

..how much porn he's pulled through those hoses.

Likely answer: Too much for my own good.

Re:Verizon FIOS -- Whoa... wait a minute...

[cdrudge]

I think he means 16mbit. At least Comcast recently raise the rate to 16mbits to compete with FiOS in my neck fo the woods.

And you bastards think you have it bad.....

[feld]

http://www.reedsburgutility.com/internet%20page.ht m

Look at what I have to deal with. Yeah I have fiber, but look at those rediculous prices and speeds!!!!!!

I complained (I just moved here) and I was told that we're getting "new plans" next month with the possibility of 1x1 being the lowest and 5x5 being midrange. I hope to god they weren't lying.

The worst part: I dont even have a WAN IP. That's right, the whole city is one big god damn LAN!!! (Unless you get a business class connection, I guess). That's right folks. No bit torrent for me. No services on my boxes at home. No SSH. Nothing.

I cry myself to sleep some nights....

Yawn...

[fullback]

I've had 100Mbps (down AND up, with no caps) fiber for years for about the same cost of dinner and a few drinks after work. I had 8Mbps ADSL 6 years ago. I've never had an outage and never get spam since the ISP filtering is superb.

Of course, I don't live in either North America or Europe.

Pics of the ONT

[Lurker187]

For me, the bottom line is that I am getting the same download speed, 5x faster upload speed, and I got to dump Comcast, all for $15 LESS per month. Now I get to dump Verizon for local phone service, now that I have VoIP up and distributed through the house wiring. (Yes, I disconnected from the POTS line.)

At /. I probably don't even need to say this, but when I signed up, Verizon was saying you HAD to use their router with FIOS. I call bullshit. I never even powered up the crappy Dlink they gave me. All you have to do is set up PPoE on your current router. Theirs supposedly does some remote diagnostics, so you might need to switch back if you ever have issues, but given their initial stance on the router, I wouldn't give that statement too much weight either, although it did come from the tech who told me to set up PPoE on my current router.

If you want to see pictures of the ONT, I posted them here, mostly because people had questions about FIOS TV, so I got a closeup of the coax connector in the second one:

http://www.poopli.com/forum/attachment.php?s=&post id=23558
http://www.poopli.com/forum/attachment.php?s=&post id=23559

FTTN in Toronto and Montreal

[bakayoko]

I just spoke with a Bell Canada rep, who said that the company is rolling out a similar service called Sympatico Optimax, which is FTTN (Fiber to the neighborhood), on June 14. They are offering 7, 12 and 16 Mbps. I think this is the first time it's been offered in Canada. My plan is to share the connection with the other apartments in this house, making it fast and cheap at the same time. Three cheers for fiber!

Vonage on Verizon FiOS

[lemon_dieter]

I use FiOS. Signed up at 45$ -15Mbps/2Mbps. Was paying for verizon phone service (land line with features) ~50$.
Switched to Vonage cheap plan (500 minute ceiling with all the same features + e-mailed voicemails) at 15$.

Verizon added 5$ to my FiOS, so now it's 65$ total for telecom. Saving 30$ per month gives me warm fuzzies.

I'm not too concerned about having the latest greatest high definition consumer media in my house, to me it's not worth it. Music is more important to me than television. I don't invite people to my house to show off my awesome HDTV and all of my cool stuff.

However I do like to trade records / cd's. You know, kind of like the 1970's.

I'm gonna get it right now

[Sigg3.net]

Fiber, cat5e, sounds great. Anyone have a torrent?

It is obvious...

[Avatar8]

after reading most of the posts here that there is still a huge inconsistency across the country and around the world when it comes to network/telco connectivity.

High speed internet accessible to anyone in the country will never exist because we refuse to let the government control and regulate these networks. Therefore they will always be restricted by local government policies and the marketing initiatives of the service provider.

I live in Dallas, TX, a fairly advanced area as far as network service providers, but I've also seen some stupid cases just in this area.

Areas are divided up by the phone companies and cable companies. You may be able to get DSL in one neighborhood and not cable internet, then in a neighborhood two miles away it's the exact opposite. The latest stupidity I've heard is Plano allowing FIOS internet, but not allowing FIOS TV. That tells me that a Comcast executive is on the city council and refuses to relent Comcast's stranglehold on Plano.

I first acquired cable internet in 1997 with @home. It then changed to attbi and finally to Comcast. Being a cable company, Comcast continually raised their rates without notice every six months (we left cable for satellite TV in 1996, partly for the money; mostly for the lack of service.) Speed started at 10Mb, was reduced to 5Mb, then finally 3Mb. I considered DSL, but the speed/dollar just wasn't there. In early 2005 I saw fiber optic being buried in our area, so I knew I wouldn't have to deal with Comcast much longer.

My installation was quick and easy. I was flying along in no time. There was no copper to cut because Comcast had already done that when we used their VoIP service. Due to their frequent outages, we finally converted to mobile phones (Verizon) in January 2005 and removed all traces of POTS.

In March we added FIOS TV. Hands-down the best purchase we've ever made. I cancelled a 10 year DirecTV account, added DVR, added HD, added VOD and saved ~$10 a month. Finally, my HD TV can show its true colors, the signal is consistent and clear and video on demand and DVR functions are marvelous. We may add a land line phone through Verizon, but the only need is for 911 auto-location and when our girls get old enough to stay home alone (like we won't buy them mobiles).

I think it is also obvious how disparate service is. I see many people here complaining that they hate Verizon. I can only wonder why. When researching which mobile service provider to choose a Consumer Reports article I read noted Verizon as the only company with better than average customer service. Otherwise all of the companies were the same. We've always had good service with Verizon, on the mobile phone, with the internet and now with the TV. They're always courteous, helpful and intent on taking care of me and keeping my business. The only issues I've had are due to their rapid growth: long hold times, re-scheduled installation, etc.

My point is take anyone's experience with a grain of salt. Until you talk to your neighbors you won't know what to expect. My experience was great, I'm still enjoying it and I intend to enjoy it for a long, long time.

I got 30 Mbit/s optofiber a couple of weeks ago

[elvstone]

..and it's really great. My landlord, which is a publicly owned company here in town, ordered the installation as a pilot project for some of the buildings on my street. The connection is 30 Mbit/s synchronous with a fixed IP, and I've found that most of the time this speed is really is what I get. The first thing I tried was to download a Slackware ISO from the Swedish University network just for fun, because I remembered doing that back in the days when 56K modems were impressive beasts. It took 3-4 minutes :)

I live in a shitty little town in central Sweden, but when it comes to Internet I really can't complain.

I'm paying about 54 USD a month for this service. I got no special equipment except for the converter in my apartment (from which I have Cat5). There are a few other operators on the fiber, for IPTV and VoIP, but I haven't looked into that yet.