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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."
I had FIOS installed a month ago. Right now only internet is available, I'm just waiting for Verizon to get permission from the state to start offering TV. I can't wait. Comcast thinks that they can do things with impunity, such as dropping channels, moving channels around, adding new service (and charging more), etc. The day after Verizon announces FIOS TV, I'm ordering it.
anyone know? On my Time Warner HD channels most shows are pretty good but a lot of times you can see pixels
I love my cable company. In fact I am considering switching *away* from Verizon telephone service and getting Charter's phone service. I have digital cable through them (including about 10 HD channels and on demand), plus 6M/1M internet service. Everything works great, and when I call to make adjustments to my service they are always very helpful.
I feel sorry for this guy moving everything to Verizon. My experience with them has been less than stellar.
Honestly the problems with the cable provider have little to do with the technology and more to do with the cable provider having a de-facto monopoly on the distribution grid. Competition does wonderful things for forcing companies to provide what consumers want and to keep them in line, as consumers have the option of still getting similar services from someone else.
If too many people change to another provider as you have done then that provider might eventually take on the attitude that your old provider had. When that happens, assuming that there is another option then people will switch to that provider instead.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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?
The fact that his cable provider now has competition in the TV area (and possibly phone, I don't recall from his previous article) automatically removes monopoly status from them. They now have incentive to improve service, rates, offer new technology, etc, where they had none of this incentive before. This can be very good for his town.
If CableVision doesn't improve, they will quickly see their customer base dwindle and it will be their own fault.
bork bork bork!
I just made the switch to FiOS... I'm pretty happy with it.
So far, it's been like dealing with a totally different company when dealing with anything related to FiOS. They show none of their old nickel-and-diming that they did on the normal phone service, and they have been very responsive.
Not only that, when they got to my house, we didn't have a fiber drop to the house (it was at the end of the block), so the tech called his boss, who sent a truck full of people to dig the trench and run the line the rest of the way to the house (across several neighbors' yards). When they were done they cleaned it all up so well you wouldn't even know they had been there.
The combined install time for Cable and Fiber was about 6 hours I think, but I wasn't there for the whole thing.
This is a little off-topic, but I guess it'd be helpful for those thinking about switching such as myself. There is a little disclaimer at the bottom of the FiOS ordering page, saying that once switched, we can't go back to DSL again because the wiring has been changed. Does this mean that we can't ever have DSL again even with another phone company, say AT&T? What about the phone service? Thanks.
I have been living in upstate Jersey for about a year now. I have seen Cablevision frantically try and upgrade their systems to compete with the invading FIOS. My speeds on Cablevision tests at about 13Mb/1.8Mb which is close to their advertized 15Mb/2Mb. So not bad.
But, they have throttled me 3 times and have told me next time they will either not release the throttle or terminate my account. They have told me the throttle is a function of the processor load on the managed switch over time (wtf?). So I have to be very careful now. I have been referred to a section in the contract I was forced to agree to that states something very vague along the lines of "Cablevision reserves the right to do anything we want".
Verizon save me!
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" - Doctor Who
Right as this article was posted I was starting to draft the fiber distribution plans for an area in the Journal Square C.O. in Hoboken, NJ.
There is a war going on for your mind.
The article is all about receiving one-way broadcast video content. That's fine for the couch-potato crowd, but what do you get in Internet bandwidth?
To me, this guy seems to be mis-attributing his excitement to Fiber, when he's ready just excited to be getting HDTV for the first time.
That said, getting an HD feed is always great (especially the first time you see your new HDTV the way it was meant to be displayed).
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.
My understanding is that it's not switched per say. Each fiber coming out of the CO is passively split into X number of fibers (32?) in the neighborhood that then go to the individual houses. Downstream is sent to everybody (encrypted - your terminal ignores packets not addressed to it) and upstream is shared with a TDMA scheme. With that setup I would assume that all the channels are being pushed down that fiber all the time -- regardless of what the end users are watching.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Any way to hook-up a MythTV box to one of these?
I'd like FIOS. A friend has it and loves it. But until they either open it up to other ISPs or provide a competitive price for static IPs, I'll have to stick to what I have. Too bad, as I'm also interested in FIOS TV as a replacement for our elderly DirecTV setup, but until they budge on the network issue, I won't be budging on the TV issue.
Ron
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
When I saw that my new router had a coax connection, I completely choked. My brain immediately said, "What The FU*K!!! They're supporting 10Base2 again?" So, I asked the tech when he was installing my FiOS this weekend what's with the coax.
The reason why they're using coax, even for FiOS Internet, is because just about every house has coax in it because of their cable company! I was fortunate in that my house is a ranch-style with a four-inch gap in the walls, so one of the first things I did was wire my house up. It now has 21 network jacks installed throughout. I'm in the minority of people who can even do that -- but almost everyone has coax throughout their house. By going "back" to coax, Verizon is completely eliminating the need to lay out new cable or to use a comparatively slow wireless connection. They're using existing resources. Each TV will get a box that connects to the coax, just like a standard cable box. When FiOS TV becomes available, they run a coax cable from my FiOS box on the outside of my house to the cable box a few feet away and each TV gets a FiOS converter box.
As soon as he explained that, the coax connection on my FiOS router made total sense.
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