Fiber TV Install and Experience

SkinnyGuy writes "The same guy who brought you the Fiber to the Premises (FTTP), FiOS broadband installation process, now brings you a detailed look at the FiOS TV install. He's thrilled and apparently couldn't be happier to say goodbye forever to Cable TV. There's a lengthy story and interesting slideshow." From the article: "I chuckled a bit to myself. After all these years of the phone company having to lease out and let competitors use its phone lines and utility poles, Verizon was using a competitor's wiring (and the work they did to run it into my house). Sorry, Cablevision."

Comments

Monopoly

[PaisteUser]

Didn't he tell Cablevision in TFA that he wanted to get away from a monopolistic operation? Isn't Verizon just another monopolistic company that wants to lock you in?

FIOS

[RaboKrabekian]

Every time a story mentions FIOS I have to post to say how desperately I want it. I [i]hate[/i] my cable company with a passion (Cablevision), and I can't install a dish. I'm in Brooklyn and am counting the days until FIOS is available.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how many days that will be.

Re:Am I the only one?

[vertinox]

I love my cable company. In fact I am considering switching *away* from Verizon telephone service and getting Charter's phone service.

It appears you haven't had to deal with Comcast.

To make a good Slashdot analogy.

Comparing Comcast with Verizon is akin to comparing Sauron with Saruman.

Sure they are both evil, but I'd rather deal with Saruman if I had to choose one or the other. Considering he is more human and would be satisfied with mortal acquisitions rather than Sauron's desire to destroy the world as we know it.

Hope that made sense.

Re:FIOS is GREAT!!!

[Control Group]

Net Neutrality means the consumer pays more

I have to say, I was honestly shocked when I first saw this ad campaign. Perhaps my naivete is showing, but that's the only time I can recall seeing something I know to be a complete, bald-faced lie in an ad. Normally it's spin, shading, vague terminology, inapt comparisons, rigged tests, the works. But my jaw literally dropped when I heard that claim.

And of course, the problem is best illustrated by my fiancee, who had no idea why I'd be so amazed at such a statement until I explained to her what they were actually talking about.

We seriously need a contravening campaign - of course, good luck getting the cable company to show it.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.

[Kadin2048]

Yeah I was pretty stunned by that, too. I guess I shouldn't have been, because it's probably going to work -- people don't expect commercials to flat-out lie to them, because of truth-in-advertising laws, so they'll probably believe that Net Neutrality is bad, because they saw it on TV.

Unless Google and some other deep-pocketed companies get together and start running some serious counter-advertising (and just running stuff on the Internet is not going to work; people who use the internet "recreationally" are almost all already sold on the idea of Net Neutrality, it's preaching to the choir), I think Congress is going to roll over and we're going to have a tiered Internet before people even know what happened to them.

I know a guy who works as an attorney for the telecom companies, actively working against Net Neutrality every day, and not even he would say something as cut-and-dried as "Net Neutrality means you'll pay more." Everything he says is the usual beating-around-the-bush lines that you'd expect, and that's the line I expected they'd maintain in the commercials. But they really decided to kick directly for the balls.

I suggest a counter-advertising campaign of "Telephone Companies Are Funding Al Qaeda" or perhaps "Comcast's Executives Worship Satan."

It doesn't have to be that way.

[Kadin2048]

Because of the fact that the harder you compress the channels, the more you can push down the wire, the cable companies have every incentive to push the compression to the limit, and then push a bit more.

At least as I understand it, most Video-over-IP systems (which may or may not include FiOS, I don't really know that much about how it works) ought to be a little more resistant to that, because they don't transmit all the channels simultaneously as cable does.

There is an incentive to over-compress on cable TV systems because that's the only way to add more channels. If you want to go from 150 channels to 300 channels, and you're already using all the bandwidth, you need to compress each one at 2:1 in order to squeeze more in.

IP based systems don't work this way, because they only transmit down the wire the channel that you're watching. That's not to say that your entire connection is used to transmit that one channel (because that would prohibit having more than one tuner per household, or doing things like TiVO-style watch+record or PiP, which would put them at a disadvantage compared to cable), but it's not transmitting all the channels, all the time. When you want to change channels a command is sent upstream and you get a different feed hooked up at the head-end. So each channel can take a much larger percentage of the total bandwidth than on a cable system, at least theoretically. I think in practice, both IPTV companies and cable companies will compromise on some sort of de facto standard quality, which they think is just enough to not cause a person on a SDTV to get too pissed off. That's the way they work -- they'll deliver the bare minimum necessary to prevent people from switching, and not an ounce more.

Reading the FiOS article on Wikipedia, it seems as though Verizon's system in addition to the upstream and downstream data channels, also has a separate and distinct channel (1550nm) for RF video overlaid on an optical carrier. So conceivably they could be using data circuits for switching, and then send the video down the RF channel. This seems somewhat unlikely, but who knows.

In theory anyway, a circuit-switched system like that offered by optical fiber could give more quality with an equal or greater number of channels than conventional cable. It also makes the addition of On Demand services or additional channels relatively simple, since an additional channel doesn't require an allocation of 'to the curb' bandwidth when it's not being watched by anyone. In practice though, I expect Fiber-based and coax-based TV services to sink to the same levels of mediocrity.

Re:FIOS is GREAT!!!

[planetmn]

Really? Whom do I have to choose from? Let's look at my options:

1. Cable TV from Comcast
2. Over the Air antenna, except that there are trees and other natural obstacles in the way
3. Satellite TV, except that the trees still present a problem

So in short, for me, and others, there isn't really much in the way of options. Cable TV companies were granted monopolies when they were originally set up. And until recently, that monopoly was legally enforced. They have since, in principle, been required to open up to competition, but because it requires somebody the size of Verizon to compete with them at this stage of the game, for most consumers, there aren't other options.

-dave

Re:FIOS is GREAT!!!

[planetmn]

You have to pay the franchise, pay to lay the infrastructure (or lease it from the current cable company at prices they set), set up all of your business operations, and try to attract customers. In the meantime comcast (or your local provider) can provide promotional adjustments to keep people from switching.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that the current market makes it so hard that for the most part nobody does it. If I understand your post correctly, you are echoing what I am saying.

We came damned close to a second cable carrier not too many years ago.

To me, at least, this implies that you still only have one choice in your area for cable TV. Which is what I have been saying. In practice, there isn't much in the way of competition. Not knowing the specifics, I can't say why, but I would be curious to find out the reason why when the second franchise was so close, the endeavor was cancelled.

-dave

cable lines in the house arent the cable companies

[dloseke]

I find the following quote very interesting.... "I chuckled a bit to myself. After all these years of the phone company having to lease out and let competitors use its phone lines and utility poles, Verizon was using a competitor's wiring (and the work they did to run it into my house). Sorry, Cablevision." I gotta say, he's just wrong. The cable lines in the house are owned by the homeowner, not the cable company. Just like the electrical wires in the home aren't owned by the power company. Cable companies have been using the existing phone wires in the house when they moved users over to digital phone/VOIP. It's simply the easiest and most non-intrusive way to set it all up, but if the author thinks that the verizon is using the cable companies lines, he's dead wrong. That would likely be illegal anyway.