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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.
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.
My cable representative told me that FiOS causes cancer ... is this true?
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.
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
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."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.