Slashdot Mirror
Verizon To Pump $18B Into FiOS
larytet writes, "LightReading reports that Verizon will invest $18B into FTTH. The company says its fiber-based service will become profitable after four years, and expects by then to have 7 million customers using FiOS for Internet access." For perspective, have a look at Bruce Kushnick's book $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. His site has a page detailing phone company promises of fiber since 1993. We have been paying for these undelivered promises for years. By now we should have 86 million homes wired with FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec.
We have been paying for these undelivered promises for years. By now we should have 86 million homes wired with FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec.
This goes so against my usual feelings on how big companies treat the general populace, but...
With all the companies that make huge promises but never actually delivering, I willing to let it slide when a company delivers something pretty close to the original promise, even if it is just a little late.
- Tony
Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic. But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.
I'm in New York and have FiOS. It's a very nice service. Happily, in New York, the slowest speed tier is 10 down / 2 up, and it's quite affordable compared to cable modem service. I'm looking forward to the FiOS TV service, and the day I'll be completely rid of Time Warner (not that Verizon itself is such a wonderful company).
Well is this unexpected? They were begging for money and consideration at the time, but they were also lobbying. In effect, they say "Oh it'll be fine, you'll see, watch what we'll give you!" Of course, since the promises weren't written into the law as a mandate, with real consequences if they went unfulfilled, what they gave us, predictably, was as little as they could get away with for as much as they could charge.
Now, in addition to tax revenue and right-of-ways, they want us to give up net neutrality. "Oh, but look what we'll give you!" I imagine they'll do just as well as last time.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
between home and work- both with comcast pro connections
pings are pretty sweet,
18ms for the same roads that take me 20 miles to drive.
it's still not enough bandwidth for me to access my files live, I use synchronization software to keep my
'active' documents in place at both ends.. if I could have that increase in speed and keep my ping times, I'd likely loose the synchronizer and work off all my files from my home setup..
The problem then is, I don't have my 'other location' backup when I pull a boner... right now if I overwrite the wrong file, I kill my VPN (which kills my sync software) and grab the original from the other location
Verizon, please- don't bring this to me- I'll lose my backups! I am that lazy!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Subsidies are frequently abused and allocated for all of the wrong reasons. They skew the market, create a new base of lobbyists and generally increase the scope of government intrusion. We wouldn't have people like Ted Stevens be the norm in Congress if the American people could bring themselves to follow what's in the Constitution, and subsidizing business isn't one of the enumerated powers of Congress. If it were a dry, boring job that made them more like "law book janitors" than power brokers, most problems would go away within an election cycle.
But no, we just need to change where and how the government gives away money, not whether or not the government should be involved at all.
Oh wait, South Koreans of all ages HAVE HAD this kind of speed for some time now, at least in some big cities.
It's about time Americans, particularly those in greenfield and other relatively-cheap-to-wire places, had affordable access to those kinds of speeds.
If this isn't the first post blame it on my oh-so-slow sub-100MB/sec connection.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
According to this article in my local paper, Verizon is planning on spending nearly $23b on FiOS and that's for about 1/2 their network. The $18b figure mentioned in the summary comes from discounting the $5b in projected savings from not having to maintain the aging copper physical plant. The linked to article sort of mentions this, but it's not real clear.
As far asw having 86 million people wired by now, have you not heard of the last mile problem. Laying the cable costs money. And takes time. After the dot bomb the telcos had to retrench for a few years until the market improved a bit.
Best Slashdot Co
I'll believe it when I see it. I have Verizon phone service, and I live in a well-populated area, but I cannot get DSL yet. It turns out that some of my local loop is running over copper, and the rest is running over fiber. I cannot get DSL because of the fiber but I also cannot get FIOS because of the copper. So I''ve been waiting, but I might just have to bite the bullet and get Comcast...
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
Well, it looks like at least one of the telcos is making an attempt to deliver on their promise (albeit a little late). When/if a formal investigation is launched into the whole "fiber to the home" scandal, Verizon will have something to hold up in their defense.
This guy's the limit!
I've been hitting the submit button on the "Can I get FiOS?" site in Northern Virginia since I heard about it in 2004. So far, all I've gotten is a web redirect to their DSL offerings.
Speaking of DSL, I talked to Speakeasy (my dsl provider) and asked them if they'd ever be able to offer their open hosting policies over FiOS. Speakeasy said no because FiOS is regulated differently than your POTS lines. So this really put a damper on things because I won't get port 80 etc over blazing optics. Unless they strike a deal (unlikely?) or an act of congress happens (lobbying?). I'd love to know exactly why fiber is treated differently.
What exactly does one do with a 100 Mbps FTTH connection other than downloading a 700 MB DivX movie in 1 sec @ 12500 MB/sec ? p.s :Did I get the no's right?
Wincopy
I'm surprised by Verizon because you don't need a Verizon PC to use FIOS. Imagine that! Those clever engineers figured out a way to make a service profitable without proprietary lock in. Gee they are great!
Okay I do have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to Verizon.
Now imagine if Verizon FIOS was operated like Verizon Wireless.
You would be required to sign a 2 year contract and pay $1000 for a PC that can barely take advantage of the basic features of the service. If you wanted something that could give you the full experience that would be a 2 year contract plus $2000 for equipment.
All the while the PC they sold you would be locked to FIOS and have many features disabled. Some features I can imagine being disabled would be File Transfers via FTP or any standard protocol. You would be required to use their application at a fee for every transfer.
You would be locked out of using other media services like Apple, Yahoo or audiable.
Your information services would be limited to their partners, probably fox news...
Finally they would happily hand over your personal information to those willing to pay or a government with no probable cause or a warrant.
This all sounds very familiar now that I write this all... Net Neutrality anyone? or a lack there of...
What could possibly go wrong?
Congress is actively dealing with this right now! You won't get fiber to your house, but you will get a larger series of tubes. And your representative will mail you your very own Internet.
[Insert pithy quote here]
That book about the scandal sheds a lot of light of just how screwed over customers have been the past decade+. If anything Verizon has a moral obligation to start something like this from the fact that their customers have been paying extra for it for years and the fact that America is getting its ass kicked in regards to infrastructure compared to some countries in Europe and Japan. China is also planning on sinking billions into its infrastructure as well, so it's about time one of these money whoring telecoms stop the douchebaggery and start fucking doing something instead of syphoning capital out of its customers for service in which the cost doesn't justify the performance. Maybe this will trigger Comcast, ATT, Qwest and others to stop their stupid fucking complacency and start doing something to improve this companies infrastructure instead of holding their monopolies and using the legal system to force out municipally owned service.
Then again, I've never associated telecoms with ever doing anything moral, intelligent or in the best interest of the consumer.
Am I the only one that's wondering if this much bandwidth for the average home user is a good idea? Perhaps it's time to tie things like egress filters and packet shapers to the new bandwidth to prevent threats from spreading that much faster?
Yes, lots of other phone companies have made promises about bringing FTTH utopia, however the difference is that Verizon is already doing it. They've been rolling it out in several places around the northeast for a while now.
Here's a blog with lots of details on how the installation is done: http://www.bricklin.com/fiosinstall.htm.
10 minutes working on a sig. What a waste.
Why is it both of the articles on the 200 billion dollar government investment look like scam sites? The first one is actually selling some cheesy "book" and asking for donations through PayPal. The second one isn't a real news article either, just a collection of quotes. Smells like conspiracy theory to me. Is there no better source for this information?
It's about time! Now I have a reason to buy Intel's 80 core CPU!
Broken promises are one thing. Broken promises that you have been paying for are quite another. The phone companies have had extra charges tacked on to your phone bill for years to pay for the development of FTTH.
In legal circles, I believe that they call this 'fraud'.
My blog
I have spent a lot of time investigating this situation the biggest problem they seem to have with rollouts is that it
A) needs to be deployed in a whole new way meaning that they can only add fios to existing fios to roll out more it has to create like a spidersweb (completely seperate networks)
B) They cannot really deploy it in apartment complexes yet (they havent figured out how to get it to run in big buildings) which is why you have less rollout in big cities than you'd expect
A couple of comments about those who have already posted (south korea has the new networks faster for the same reason europe is way ahead in cellphone tech. america is too big. American companies spend so much and so long getting the last thing to everyone they cant afford to get the new stuff there yet. FIOS is in certain cities but since the country is too big you think its nowhere because its not where you are
ping time does not indicate total transfer speed just the delay of transfer. Unless you are sending thousands of different small files you won't notice the difference between 20ms and 100ms considering a movie missing 2 frames (about 80 ms) isnt apparent to most people.
and for the phone company / government conspiracists : Why would a phone company not roll out a product this remarkable as soon as possible? Companies dont exist to "be evil" they exist to make money, delivering remarkable products is a whole lot easier way to make money than to beg for it off the gov.
What do you guys say on cutting the companies up a little more and letting them grow big by themselves? Certainly, small companies wouldn't be able to pocket that much cash individually or collaborate with so many other small companies to pocket it collectively. And one that happened to take the market by storm would proabably be like an underdog that made it big (say like AMD, ATI) and have a policy of innovation and staying ahead of the pack to win. What would be the disadvantage in having say 20 smaller companies instead of giants like Verizone?
Unfortunately some companies, such as AT&T and BellSouth (which are becoming the same soon) don't get it. They don't seem to realize that the switch to fiber will be inevitable, and they are currently falling behind in this race for speed. In its current carnation, ADSL is not capable of handling Voice, Internet, and TV service, and while I have read that they have plans to implement VDSL, it will have its limits as well. It is good to see a huge company such as Verizon understand that they will need to make a huge investment, even though they have a control over certain markets and aren't really being forced to upgrade. In my area, SureWest has been running fiber in many parts of Sacramento, and they already offer 100Mbps fiber directly to customers houses. The CEO has admitted it will cost them a lot of money, and will be a slow upgade, but they have already been successful in their attempts. If a relatively small company like SureWest can compete in a market that has been controlled by AT&T and Comcast, then I'm sure it is possible in many other big cities around the United States. I have their service, and one thing that I find amazing is they can upgade to 1Gbps to their customers relatively easy by switching out line cards in their 4500 Cisco routers when it becomes necessary to keep up with or get ahead of the competition. The same can be done by switching to 10Gbps uplink from 4500 series to 6500 series routers that are connecting neighborhoods to their backbone. Now that is building for the future.
...a company we want to go to for 'net connectivity? If I wanted to deal with dropped connections and insane overage charges I'd warp back to '96 and dial-in to AOL.
Yep, they're slowly rolling it out, replacing the old copper cable. Plus, they're offering such a sweet deal with Internet and TV over the fiber: $35 for 5mbit up/2mbit down (I sometimes hit 6mbit down, strangely enough). $52 for basic 180 channel digital TV (only 18 channels analog, so you need a set top box or DVR), a STB in one room, a two-tuner DVR in another.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Currently, Verizon is required by law to allow other ISPs to provide service over thier DSL lines. I'm currently paying slightly more for a third party to provide better "service" as in static IP and easy to reach tech support. With fiber, my only choice is Verizon. If I want a static IP, I need to pay the Business DSL priceses.
Yeah, profit in four years should be easy for them.
More like 70 seconds at 10 MB/s if conditions are optimal. Still beats 56K though. ;)
Here in France most of broadband is DSL oriented. For 29.99 you get on a DSL : 25Mb/s, digital TV (more than 100 chans), unlimited call to european land line (and most majour countries), on-demand video, PVR-like features, ... nothing surprising anymore.
i on/presentation1.htm) or even FTTB (on Paris area, see Erenis http://www.erenis.fr/ )...
;-) Right, ...
...
l
But since year 2000, some small ISP have lanched FTTH in Paris 15th district (Citéfibre http://www.citefibre.com/ 59/month for 30Mb/s symetrical, unlimited call to any france landline , digital TV) or other cities (like Pau see http://eco.agglo-pau.fr/Initiatives/PBC/presentat
Obviously some would says that Japan, Korea or Taiwan are still leading on FTTH
But this september, Free (Iliad Group registered on Euronext as ILD) the #2 on broadband market (#1 is FranceTelecom/Orange) has announed they will migrate their DSL customer to FTTH offer. Same price (29.99) for 100Mb/s symetrical bandwidth on a point to point full fiber infrastructure, services anticipated are : multi-tv-set full HD service (full HD sports show Rolland Garros or Tour de France will be hits next year !) and WiFi based mobile VoIP (your modem will become a public hotspot for any other subscriber roaming)
This means a 1G$ (1 billion euro) of investment on 6 years (mostly using cashmoney they got). The migration of DSL customer will start begin of next year by Paris and some other big surrounding cities and will then follow on any other disctrict where Free got more thant 15% of the DSL market.
For more details, please see :
http://www.journaldunet.com/0609/060911-free.shtm
(In French, so babelfish can be your friend)
Even in the event that we get it, the modern atmosphere is so rife with corporate control that we won't be allowed to *use* it. I have FiOS at my house, I'm paying for 5 static IPs (which they refer to as a "business account"), and even with that set up you're not allowed to run any kind of server at all according to their ToS.
Even if we've got all this bandwidth, what's the fucking point if we're not allowed to use it as we wish?
Dear lazyweb,
What say you to publically owned, but privately serviced network infrastructure? For example, a city, town, or borough pays to have its own network system (cable, dsl, ftth, whatever) installed, and then has an outside company (Adelphia, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) provide the bandwidth and support. The city retains control of the lines, so in the event the denizens of the city are unhappy with the provider company, they could vote to terminate (or simply not renew) the contract with the company and seek other bids for service.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Although I may have been successful in my deciphering, I believe FTTH is not a common acronym that most people (even on /.) have heard about. And no, I shouldn't have to chase a wikipedia link to figure it out. At least the submitter didn't use the much worse acronym FTTP, fiber to the premises (which I would have thought a misspelling of FTP).
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Sorry, the phone companies are only partly to blame.
All these wonderful advances in connectivity get hamstrung more by regulation than anything else.
Going to build high speed internet, well your going to have to install in Councilman Payoff's district too.
or for disadvanataged group #88
or for the children
or for the schools.
In otherwords, anything that keeps politicians in their jobs, their friends and family employed, will be done before the people actually desiring the service, the ones the company really wants to sell it to, get the service.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Blocked Ports, and that little move where they pull out your copper connection to the street ( so that you're NEVER going to get DSL again... ) remind us that VZ is still as evil as they ever were.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Not necessarily. Fraud requires that an individual or an organization makes a false representation about a fact or event, and does so intentionally. I would say that any losses are due to ill-advised initial agreements between the government and the telcos, that let the telcos tack on the extra charges without having to promise (in the legal sense) anything in return.
It's noticeably better than their DSL but if they need to dismantle core Net principles like network neutrality in order to "incentivize" FiOS then they can bite my bum.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I'm in New York and have FiOS. It's a very nice service. Happily, in New York, the slowest speed tier is 10 Mbits/sec down / 2 Mbits/sec up, and it's quite affordable compared to cable modem service. I'm looking forward to the FiOS TV service, and the day I'll be completely rid of Time Warner (not that Verizon itself is such a wonderful company).
Um, you are happy with 2 up when you should have 100 Mbits/sec up and and 10 Mbits/sec down when you should have 100 Mbits/sec down. I'll give my local the benefit of the doubt since I live in a rural state and there is little hope of every getting real highspeed internet. New York though should have real 100 Mbits/sec up/down at a min. Really, I'd want you guys to have 1,000 Mbits/sec up and down. I mean come on you are the one of the most densely populated states in the US if any state should be able to do it is should be NY. I could see some cities in CA, TX, FL having it, but those states the population is spread out over a far larger area. I'd really would hope our top 10-20 cities would all have atleast 100 Mbits/sec up and down. I'm on dial up at home and lucky to stay connected for 2 hours without having to reconnect. The options for broad band in my area would cost $60 per month that's more than I can afford.
My "happily" statement was in reference to the fact that in most non-New York locales, the lowest tier is 5 Mbits/sec down and 2 Mbits/sec up -- at the same price I'm paying for 10/2. So I'm happy to be getting twice the downstream rate for the same price.
Anyone working for Verizon able to confirm any of the rollout plans for the Northern VA area? Seems that they are hyping FiOS all over the place (events, mailings, etc) but I still get the "We're sorry, but that service isn't quite yet available in your area -- please leave us your email for a notice when it is". This has been going on for close to a year now. Hook us up! Let us know when we can get the service :)
1. Give me TRUE, dedicated bandwidth at a low level. I'm talking like 768k down, 384k up that is MINE. It can't be squashed, and I don't get nasty letters for using 768k down 24/7/365. You really are not giving everyone 30mb down / 8 mb up, at least not all the time. Own up to it and let us know what is allowed JUST FOR US.
2. Show me my burst level. I might have 768k that is MINE, but I might be able to get 30MB down when everyone else isn't as busy.
3. Offer unlimited access within the switch (neighborhood). If I have a 100MB pipe to my house, and my next door neighboor is on FTTP, then allow me to talk at 100MB. I understand lowering it once you hit a trunked connection, but allowing full speed COSTS THE ISP NOTHING, and has a HUGE gain. My buddy might have 30MB from Comcast, but if I tell him that if he switches to ISP A he we can talk at 100MB, I'm sure he would switch.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic. But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.
Maybe you should read the above book. The number of homes with decent high speed internet in the US is pathetic. Compare, for example, the internet service in Sweden. It is faster, more reliable, lower cost, and each citizen paid much less than each American citizen has in government subsidies. They also have about the same population density. Sorry, but the US is falling behind the world, except in a small number of very urban locations. I'm happy you have good service, but don't mistake the situation in new York for most of the US. I've lived in three of the ten largest cities in the US and in each place I had a choice of a crappy cable service bundled with Cable TV I don't want or an incredibly expensive DSL line bundled with a phone service I don't want.
Get that shit out there. I'd drop Comcrap in a heartbeat if there was the FIOS alternative.
There are plenty of areas currently served by FiOS that aren't "very urban locations." Read.
Too bad Comcast owns the land I live on so that Verizon can never sell us FIOS.....
But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.
I'm in New York and have FiOS. It's a very nice service. Happily, in New York, the slowest speed tier is 10 down / 2 up, and it's quite affordable compared to cable modem service.
Did you have cable modem service when it first started to roll out? 10/10 and it was cheap (~$30/mo). Once they have added subscribers and oversold their bandwidth the speeds dropped to 1.5/128k and prices soared above $60/mo.
Eventually, over the last few years, speeds have started to climb again but prices have held steady.
I have a good feeling that this is exactly what will happen with this service.
Is it thanks to the rising price of copper that the US will finally get FTTH?
;)
Will Verizon rip out any easy-removed copper wires and sell it to make $.
Or is it because you can run more spying equipment via FTTH?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
There are plenty of areas currently served by FiOS that aren't "very urban locations." Read.
Almost every area they offer it is very urban and that offering is pretty sparse. It covers selected cities within less than half of US states. Sorry, but that is just pathetic by the standards of many other countries.
I just looked at Verizons page and found that they charge you $180 for 15Mb!
With a pricing like that, they can stuff FiOS where the the bad smell comes from!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Is that it is _still_ Verizon. They've contacted me a few times for FIOS access, but it will be a tough sell since I know how their support functions. I kicked Verizon out of my home a few years ago (Speakeasy DSL + VOIP) and have been nothing but happy since. Yeah, so I don't have 15Mb down and 2Mb up, but my 6Mb/768kb is doing just fine. Besides, I still love Speakeasy for their support of other Operating systems.
Verizon couldn't offer me anything that I'd want from them.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
One difference between early cable modem service and the early implementation of FiOS service is that FiOS is being offered in speed tiers with prices matching the speed the customer desires. Early cable modem customers paid for "cable modem service" and weren't choosing their level of service based on speed. This made it very easy for cable modem providers to cut bandwidth as they needed. With FiOS customers paying for certain speed levels, it won't be easy for Verizon to reign in the bandwidth and then offer a "premium" service (offering the speeds that customers were originally gettign before the speed decrease) for more money, as Cable providers have.
Good idea. I'm gonna get off my lazy, liberal ass and start laying some damn fiber! I'll start by renting a backhoe so I can dig up my front lawn. Maybe I can save some money on that if my neighbors chip in. Hell, maybe I can get the whole city to pitch in a little bit to buy the fiber in bulk. We'll need some organized way to collect the money. Maybe the city can collect it once per year from every citizen -- that's a good idea. But if I'm gonna do the whole city, I'll need more than 1 backhoe. That means I'll need some qualified backhoe operators. I'll probably need to get some permits to dig up the roads and such too.
Man, this is a lot of work. Maybe instead of giving me the money the city can give it to some large conglomeration of people whose job it is to do this sort of thing. I know there are a few companies out there. Anyway, the government can give them a bunch of money -- probably in the billions -- to build up the infrastructure, and we'll be all set.
I'm so happy you spurred me into action. Things are gonna change! I can feel it!
Seriously though, you must be a conservative. You don't like books and big companies are never wrong.
Time Warner has some killer deals especially 'The Triple Play' package for Cable, Phone and Broadband for $100 a month only. They recently just upgraded all their packages in the huge area of Southern California and the premium for $8 extra gets you 10/1; cable will be able to compete as I think for fiber is only to the curb in most places and still unable to get into most apartments(NY?).
Verizon is paying $9650 per install on its FiOS rollout. If that keeps up, $18B pays for 1.9M customers. To reach 7M customers, they'd have to spend 2571 each, which is about 1/4. Since most of the cost is pulling fiber to homes, labor intensive, followed by operations staff, again featuring high labor costs, I don't believe Verizon will drop costs by 25% every year for 4 years.
Of course, "I don't believe Verizon" is a default policy unopposed by any evidence to the contrary. Many of the 7M they're claiming to target with FiOS are people in less profitable areas who Verizon says it will serve, in order to protect the subsidies and monopoly exceptions our government has handed "Verizon" (and its former names) for a century.
I do believe that I will get at least 20:5Mbps in my NYC apartment, maybe 100+ symmetrical, in the next 4 years. A friend in Long Island has his 20Mbps filled with torrents 24x7, so I believe it. But I wish everyone across the country would expect their Congressional reps and president to make an FCC that gives at least universal broadband service, if not quite FiOS yet, to everyone across the country. Just like "universal service" for mere POTS telephone service, the government always has to force telcos to fulfill their promises, so the country can operate in the modern world these telecoms create.
--
make install -not war
Copper lines are classified and regulated as a Telecommunications service, wheras FiOS (even though once you get it, verizon uses it for your regular phone too) is considered a information service, and is not subject to third party resale by people like speakeasy. This is very unlikely to change any time soon, because Congress just passed a major revamp of the Telecommunications act last summer which strengthened this distinction. Basically, under the new rules, anyone can sell you POTS services or anything over them, but other network operators (cable, fios) are free to offer you any services they want (so comcast can offer phone over its coax, for instance, while verizon can offer cable over fios) but they dont have to share their networks. Kindof creates a duopoly, AFAIK, between your local cable provider and Verizon, with both offering all the same services. As for the whole "omg pipe dream!!!!" people, I have had FiOS in my house for almost two years. Its not a pipe dream. Its the most reliable, fastest, best connection I've ever seen in the residential class, and Ive had comcast, Covad DSL, speakeasy DSL, and Verizon DSL. Absolutely no complaints. I originally kept both my Covad DSL line and the FiOS, thinking i would get redundancy that way, but after 3 months without a single FiOS outage, I said to hell with the extra 70 bucks a month.
I currently work for a rurual telephone co-op. Previously we ran an N3 Motorola network that uses fiber to each neighborhood node and copper to the home. We are able to provide 5 mbps up and downstream(VDSL) in ADDITION to a 30mpbs stream for 3 televisions. However, the limitation is that we can only push video 1 mile, and DSL 2 miles from each node. This being a VERY rural area, this leaves about 10% of our customer without TV from us.
Currently we are wiring a completely new network in a neighboring city. This is to a complete FTTH network. This network has the capacity of 1 gbps to each premise. Currently the box on the house is limited to 40mbps up/down for internet service, and the rest used for HD-Video(up to 6 streams) and of course Voice(dialtone). Due to the long range capability of the equipement, we will be able to provide 100% coverage.
We are also in the process of rewiring some of our more rural copper to full FTTH. FTTH has a distinct advantage for 'last mile' issues due to its extremley long range/bandwidth over copper.
One interesting point is that the phone part of our FTTH services is NOT VoIP! It is still considered POTS(i'm in the internet dept, so don't quite understand what makes the destinction) That way it is still under the same regulation and rules (and revenue) as our copper customers.
I'm not sure what the verison system uses, but our FTTH equipment is quite standard and interfaces with our existing network systems (IP video and internet) quite well. There is defintly no need on our customer's end for proprietary equipment(other than the ethernet card in the computer and a VideoIP box for the TV--which we provide). Also our service rates are VERY competitive compared to the other providers in the area. And, cost recovery must be alright due to the fact that all our new service areas will continue to be FTTH at the same service rates as our copper customers.
Yea except in large areas of Southern California Time Warner is not even capable of delivering on their sales hence the magic words in their contract "up to".
The city of Costa Mesa in Orange County has repetedly had to levy the failure to provide service fine against AT&T, Comcast and not Time Warner (the worst offender). Unfortunatly the franchise contract the city signed (stupid city) only alows a $100.00 fine per day of failure to deliver advertised service. That's not nearly enough to bring about change. Fortunatly the exclusive franchise the city signed years ago is expiring and the current city coucil is opening the city up to a multiple service franchise system later this year and Verizon wants to get a Fios franchise so I could be good. There is also the potential of actually having more than one cable provider available as well. This of course may (probably will) provoke a lawsuit and force the city into another draconian franchise contract.
If they offered fiber in my area i'd sign up... get on the ball verizon (supposedly it's been 10 -20 miles away from me for the last year).
"...and expects by then to have 7 million customers using FiOS for Internet access."
"Fios" is portuguese for "wires"... That name wouldn't inspire many people here in Brazil!
So say we all
I'm getting it next Wednesday!
Buyer beware that Verizon encourages customers who get FiOS to get their voice via fiber as well. Many people don't even know that keeping voice over copper is an option. The problem is that Verizon doesn't have to allow access to third-party phone service (like Cavalier, etc) over FiOS (by law) as they do over copper.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
By the time it gets to the most of us not on the coasts and not in immediate Verizon service, FTT* be just as screwy as cable and just as far behind in speed as cable is today in non-Verizon flyover country.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Where do you live in New York???
I live in NYC and no FiOS for me!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I lived with my parents while I went to school last semester and we had FIOS. The speeds ranged from 1.5 to 2.5 megs per second and the sytem still uses dsl for uploading data. Slashdot loaded a little quicker than regular DSl but most sites still only transfer data around 75-180k a second with no noticable difference. Bittorrent was still slow. I read last month that most ISP's mod down bittorrent and other p2p technology so I wonder if this was the case?
If you plan to use torrents avoid FIOS as its modded down heavily and most download speeds are about the same as stand alone DSL,
Last, the house I live at now has the highest speed of DSL offered by SBC at 768k a second. According to cnet's bandwith meter I get around 2 megs a second with plain old DSL. Its $15 cheaper per month than my parents FIOS and torrents download faster. Its just as fast.
My point is do not think FIOS is 100 megs per second of paradise because its not. The connection is only fiber to the central office where its routed with regular traffic under standard T3's.
http://saveie6.com/
You can get the same package in most EU countries for half that, often with better bandwidth and it's been available for years. In France they are rolling out gigabit (2.5/1) connections: TV + phone + REAL broadband = $80usd
In the US I pay ~$90 for a crappy cable modem connection and basic cable (30 channels, half of them are the home shopping and religious junk channels).
The US is falling behind other developed nations. If it doesn't get turned around soon the US will be at a significant disadvantage economically and socially.
You do realize thats for a commercial connection?
k agesandprices/packagesandprices.htm
I think he is talking about the 30Mb downstream 5Mb upstream connection for residential, which is a big jump in price from the 15/2 price
Compare that to a T1
Yes, their business service is a lot better than a T1, with a 5 Mbps/5 Mbps with static IP for $209.95/month:
http://www22.verizon.com/content/businessfios/pac
So about a 7 times improvement in price and performance, a healthy improvement, but considering that the Fiber Optic should be giving us Gigabit speeds if it is dedicated to Internet for no greater operating costs than copper, well I think it is understandable to be dissappointed that they are holding so much bandwidth back.
Essentially, they are giving us less than a couple percent of the new capacity for Internet communications and keeping the rest so they can sell add on services. Comparing what we are getting to what we had before is not good enough. We should be seeing far greater advances in broadband Internet. I am very much a libertarian, but it seems that people are not getting a good payback for the money we are investing in this and it is time for government intervention.
A libertarian approach would simply be to let whomever wants to provide a better service access to the right of way to run their fiber. The economy is being held back because this important new public infrastructure is being misallocated to make a quick buck putting entertainment before communication The costs of running fiber is coming down, so there is no reason to think that promoting real competition with the 3 companies that can offer the best service for consumers being given access to utility poles and underground rights of way. And if some company comes along that offers a better more economical service, then the 4th company should be allowed to run fiber also and then the least economical service should be required to take up their cable or forfeit it within a certain amount of time.
Either that or we need to have serious regulations about what services are offered on these lines. This is the public right of way that they are using, not merely their own private property, no person or company should be given a monopoly or effective monopoly on the public right of way without the government specifying what service is to be provided.
Verizon is one of the most evil companies in existance. I wouldn't get FIOS from them if it were free. They'll never, ever get more of my money voluntarily.
Did you know they're the same company that disables bluetooth file transfers to cell phones so that you have to pay their exhorberant prices to get files on your phone?
Not to mention they rebrand the OSes of all their phones with the most hideously ugly verizon theme you can imagine. And I don't mean just a little label here and there. The whole fucking thing is redone in their godawful color scheme.
They're also the same company that pads HTTP requests from/to your cell phone with additional junk data so you use more KB faster.
They're not just evil, they're fucking evil.
Join me in boycotting them.
Question everything
verizon only provides land-line service in "less than half of US states". your statement sounds like you blame verizon for not running fiber in states they do not provide service in. it may sound pathetic by the standards of other countries, but other most other countries are smaller and have a higher population density.
do you also complain about the fact that 10,000 acre farms in nebraska don't have cable access and town water?
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
Since they count running BitTorrent as a server... And have a "no servers" policy for residential -- I kindly kicked them out the door.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
it may sound pathetic by the standards of other countries, but other most other countries are smaller and have a higher population density.
We pay more money in government subsidizes to fund our internet access than most other countries and have slower, more expensive service. Take a look at Sweden. They pay less per person to internet access providers both in taxes and in fees. They have about the same population density. Their connections are an order of magnitude faster and more reliable. Like it or not, for the hundreds of billions of tax dollars we handed out to these companies, they've given us crap.
do you also complain about the fact that 10,000 acre farms in nebraska don't have cable access and town water?
Did we grant a monopoly on cable and water to a company then give them billions after they promised to deliver it to everyone?
FTTH will probobly suck (and probobly already sucks for those who have it) for one reason.
ISPs will place restrictions on what you can do with it. (like block running web servers)
Thankfully, there are pretty much no insane, stupid or draconian restrictions on my DSL account here in australia. For example, they dont block ports or restrict any protocols like BitTorret or VoIP. But at the same time, I have a 20GB per month limit, if I exceed that, I get shaped to 64k for the rest of the month.
I believe your definition of 'everyone' is vastly different than either of the phone or cable company's :). They cover the most urban areas while neglecting most rural areas, which I think is sad. I'm of the opinion that even a Nebraska farm (as some previously pointed out) should have access to the internet - that might just help the poor farmers with cheaper product advertising. If anything, it could boost the economy in such rural areas if enough people knew about what was going on there.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
By the time Verizon gets FTTH to my rural home I'll either be too old to care or dead. It's been what, more than six (6) years now; what happened to the $200 billion? Out in my area there is NO xDSL, NO Cable Internet, NO Clearwire only dial up and over priced satellite Internet service. The only way I'm connecting now is with my Verizon wireless account, a whopping 16k/bit sync.
Since my move, I haven't had any broadband service for over two (2) years. I've more or less lost all interest in computers, my Sun boxes sit idle with no Internet connection. All the time I have been mucking around with Linux have been confined to my IBM A31p laptop, and what ever connection I can get at Starbucks, work or open access point.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Verizon has rolled out FTTH in my neighborhood. Because I'm a cheapskate, the main benefit for me is increased bandwidth and lower price on cable (2.5/5 Mbits/s).
Those who are bit curious. You can find photos of a Fios installation on Flickr Also, They are upgrading select areas in my city to Verizon Fios. Mostly the newer neighborhoods that are on the beach.
\
Bayside. It's currently available in Bayside and Fresh Meadows in Queens, most of Staten Island, and one building on Roosevelt Island.
Fiber To The Home You Don't Live In.
I've given up asking the webpage if I can get FiOS. I live less than a mile from a Central Orifice in suburban MD. I used to work in the telecom industry before the bubble forced me to find new employment. A discussion with a fiber deployment tech indicated that Verizon was deploying FiOS into high-density-zoned areas only. Apparently some MBA did overly simplistic math and decided the best deployment locations were places filled with townhomes and apartments. Single family homes are zoned much lower density, and thus much lower potential customer base, right?
There's another barrier to deployment as well - the SLC hut/pedestal. There area a number of deployments to communities where Verizon has a T1 line (with SLC 96 Framing{tm}) run out to a pedestal near a community. They run analog POTS service from there, and back-haul a single T1 to the CO. Wiring ingress at the CO is a major problem most everywhere, so this is a good move, right? Yes, as long as you only want POTS service. As soon as you want ISDN (shudder) or DSL or *anything* that doesn't fit in in 64kbps, you're screwed. So if you've got one of the hybrid fiber/copper deployments, it's likely you'll never see DSL regadless of your distance from the CO. Pretty short-sighted of the telcos to do this - they claim to sell telecom services; you'd think they'd want to make it easier to upgrade to more bandwidth. Nobody wants *less* bandwidth.
Recently moved from Queens to LI, and switched from Time Warner everything to Verizon everything.
I like the Verizon stuff for the most part, but the remote with for the TV box pisses me off. Time Warner has them beat hands down in that category, but that about it. The TV and Broadband are above all else consistent in terms of quality. That was probably my biggest peeve about Time Warner.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Downloading, surfing and playing online games has been a dream. We typically run two computers playing WoW, and I may be surfing or downloading something at the same time.
We'd been Verizon wireless customers (removed our land line) since January 2005. The excellent customer service we've received on both of these services encouraged me that Verizon knows what they're doing and they value their customers.
In March 2006 we added the TV service. Again it was better and cheaper than satellite or cable with similar offerings (HD content, HD DVR, VOD). That has been absolutely fantastic. Not only do I get to watch sports in HD, but our girls can record or view the movies they want whenever they want.
Finally, we decided it was time to get a phone in the house again. Our girls are getting old enough that we may leave them at home, but we don't feel the need to buy another mobile phone. That, too, was installed quickly and cleanly and works perfectly.
I am extremely satisfied with everything Verizon offers. My only complaint is the lack of a discount for buying all of these services and the occasional spam snail mail offer to buy one of their services. We have them all; stop mailing me. :-)
I gave the 30 day free FIOS Internet service a shot and then stuck with Comcast. It was faster on large files, but slower for web pages with lots of objects. They must have some sort of sluggish proxy that eats up time on socket setup. Also, uploading to their FTP server from my webcam sucked, giving me more timeouts than successful transfers. Maybe I'll give them another shot one of these days. I have a Slingbox now and that 2MB uplink speed would be useful. The good news, my land line is now fiber from the house, and it cleaned up a hum that I had lived with for years. I'm waiting for Verizon to offer cable, so I can hopefully reduce my Comcast TV bill, but last I heard, NH is not getting this soon. A more detailed writeup on my experience is at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=187828&cid=154 91591
I suggested to a comcast tech that they monitor DNS MX requests and if a single host does more than 500 per minute they assume a mail-borne worm or a spammer and automatically move the user to a special segment where they can't do anything except download antiviruses. He looked at me like I'd grown three heads, probably because he didn't understand what an MX RR was... Comcast's regional monopoly allows them to be totally incompetent and still make money. Verizon only has to be half-competent and they will eat Comcast's lunch.
I live on the very northeastern edge of the city, if I walk across the street or a half mile up the road, I'm into the next city, so verizon doesnt pay attention to me, I also do not use their dialup (I use earthlink's, though they get a share of that from sprint by leasing their lines to them) and as a result they refuse to give me DSL, and they waited long enough until there wasnt any service left in my city beccause of 80k subscribers and their unwillingness to upgrade the CO to handle more lines. (or build a second..)
Now they're pulling the same bullshit with fios, I've called them, they tell me "it isnt ready" (one of my neighbors just got it recently..) or tell me I'm too far from the CO (HA, BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. I was within range of DSL as well)
They're fucking with me and I dont know why, but I bet 10 bucks that if I switched to time warner cable, they'd be pounding down my door to sign me up.
In my area. they dont care about dialup users, especially those who dont use THEIR dialup services. Someone who lived across my alley suffered from the same exact problem as well, she was using another dialup service, and she was an SBC employee to boot, it took her AGES to get DSL, and even then they messed with her.
Verizon only cares about the customers that make their stats look good, beyond that, let the rest slip through the cracks unless they jump to cable. at least in my area.
Your best bet is to jump to cable, and let verizon know if you ever call them for anything and they ask you about signing up for FIOS, mention you have cable with comcast, they will suddenly take interest in you and will bend over backwards to get you away from their main competition.
The reason Verizon and other Telecom companies have been hesitant to build FTTx (where x=Node at AT&T, and x=Premise for Verizon, etc) in the past 10 years is due to the Telecom Act of 1996, which dictates that Verizon and others must provide equal access to their network for CLECs, with pricing plans below their own costs. Fiber to the Curb (referenced in the article) was deployed to bring "fiber to the node", but unfortunately, the technology provider (Raynet, I think) went out of business. The ILECs found that fiber to the curb had bottlenecks, and couldn't even provide special circuits as needed. Thus, it was abandoned.
As FTTH is deployed, Verizon & AT&T are encountering the real modern day monopolies- Cable Companies, which are protected by the rules governing how Franchises are handed out. One could argue that cable franchises are the only means for income for many local governments (which is correct), but Cable Companies are able to price without oversight, provide service as they please, etcetera, without fear of real competition (Satellite companies notwithstanding, as they have only begun to recently provide local programming). So the Phone Companies, as big and bad as they are, are the only way we are going to get any decent pricing on TV or high speed (not shared like CATV does) internet.
I, actually, rather like it, that the residents of the national capital can not vote on national issues. You have too much influence already. One only needs to recall, how governments were overthrown in most of the revolts in history (from the Ancient World to the current Mexico City scandal) to appreciate the Founding Fathers' desire to keep the capital small and underprivileged. Even the (failry recent) decision to allow you to pick your own mayor was, probably, a mistake...
If voting is so important to you, move out. But, I guess, it is not...
There are even more people in, say, Sao Paolo, Brazil. They don't get to vote in America's elections and neither should you. I don't mean to offend you — just being blunt. Unlike the above-mentioned Brazilians, you have the option of moving into any of the three neighboring States... Do so, then "Vote or Die".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Almost every area they offer it is very urban and that offering is pretty sparse. It covers selected cities within less than half of US states.
I live in eastern Massachusetts and have FIOS. The area I live in isn't "very urban" by any stretch of the imagination. The town I live in has two stop lights. The town next to mine also has FIOS and they only have one stop light. I'd consider both of those towns sparsely populated suburban areas. Most of urban Boston (possibly all of it) isn't serviced by FIOS.
In addition, the parts of New York that were first serviced by FIOS aren't in New York City; They're suburban and rural areas on Long Island and in Westchester.
You probably see "New York" or "Massachusetts" and think that those states are one huge city. You couldn't be more wrong.
We are giving these companies money, as if they were state-enteprises and we were a Socialist regime.
But we don't get to control them, because we are a Capitalist system.
Stick the to the good old Capitalism and let these companies eat each other out competing. And if it means, they all have to lay competing fiber to our houses, then so be it.
You gave AT&T a monopoly once, how did that work out?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Having worked in an infrastructure where virii were causing corruption of files dealing with viruses, I was thankful to have a concise way of distinguishing between a biological virus and a computer virus.
But I guess it's more important that a bunch of puffed-up wannabe etymologists should get a self-righteous feeling about their latin roots. People who actually do REAL WORK with BOTH KINDS of virus don't matter, after all, who cares if their data mines are polluted? Fuck them, it's more important that we demonstrate our mastery of language! Let's make the web less useful to feed our egos!
If you are wondering about the tone of this post, well, if I'm going to get modded flamebait I figure I should deserve it.
It is Fraud.
t m
And it was greasing state legislators that got them out of their promises with quite a bit of $$ in their pockets...at least in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania...
This wasn't like some great unkown like "geee I hope we can someday do this theoretically possible wonder..." they made a promise to deliver existing technology and DIDN'T...Lay cables, install switching equipment, connect customers. And literally millions of $$ in tax incentives and PUC (public utility commision) allowed markups on consumers bills just went into Telcos pockets....poof!! The state let them out of it.
http://www.newnetworks.com/PennUpdatedComplaint.h
Great, a very few very dense cherry-picked communities have gotten (and quite recently) FIOS, but this has nothing to do with what happened before and isn't even close to delivering the state/commonwealth-wide service promised.
Evil? More like trying to make a profit. I hate how profit = evil on Slashdot. Since when is it your right to get DSL? If Verizon doesn't want to offer you DSL (because you got a fiber connection at one point), they're allowed to do that. By removing the copper connection, they remove a huge cost on their network. These old copper networks aren't free to run and every copper line Verizon removes is a couple more dollars every year in operational costs.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
I kicked them out the door because they were double charging me after a move and then when I got that sorted out they deleted my email aliases I had setup. Then claimed they couldn't undo the deletion. So when I called a few weeks later to cancel ( once I had cable installed ) they were suddenly very helpful in trying to get my aliases fixed. I dumped them anyway. I got twice the speed at half the price and haven't had aliases deleted.
Got it and love it. 9MB/sec download. Yum!
If more people were like you, we would ALL have better service.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Then I want my money back.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
"By removing the copper connection, they remove a huge cost on their network."
They also remove your CHOICE.
Perhaps the INFRASTRUCTURE should be publicly owned?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
So now, not only do I have to wait to see who wins the HD format wars, but I also have to future-proof everything for mythical day I get fiber. I've never seen anyone with a fiber-enabled device. What would a fiber media center look like? How can I build one?
I have the FiOS service from Verizon & I love it. The NSA can read my e-mail five times faster than before, and secret messages from the middle east never get held up in transmission!
Seriously though, it is a great service and only $39.95 / month. I am not as happy that they took away my POTS copper wire phone line and now route my phone service over the fiber. if the power is off more than a day, I suspect that the UPS that Verizon installed will be depleted and I will have no phone service.
Yes, I could use my (Verizon) cell, but remember what happened to cellular service in NYC on 9/11.
I am sad to see the traditional phone networks replaced with new technology - sometimes (most times?) newer is NOT better.
Ask Me About... The 80's!