Verizon FIOS

[no_hypocrisy]

My Verizon repair guy advised me that Verizon is not using its funds to fix copper wire lines and is pushing customers into "upgrading" to FIOS.

I don't want FIOS but I may not have a choice. My lines crackle (phone) and my internet disconnects spontaneously and downloads take forever.

Copper wire was dependable during Superstorm Sandy. My father's FIOS during that storm went dead. No online, no phone. I drove 30 minutes to my home to use the phone for 10 days.

What is your experience with FIOS?

Thanks!

[cantbeserious]

1. Rock Steady For Years - Both Home And Work

eom

[shenmue]

2. Variable

It's cheaper now than it was a while ago. But they dropped some channels, and they have service outages just like anyone else.

[onehandle]

3. FiOS is the best communications infrastructure in America.

During two years of having Verizon FiOS, our service was out for a collective six hours.

We moved and now are forced to have Comcast. In the first six months our service was down over three days.

Our next move will be planned to move back into a FiOS available place.

Oh and if you call Verizon, you speak to an American in America. If you call Comcast, you speak to 'Bob,' routed through overseas system, to overseas system to India. You can barely hear or understand 'Bob' from customer service who is reading from a script and cannot help you unless you happen to fit in the script.

[sharp_stick]

4. I wish

If FIOS ever comes around here I'll be the first one off the Comcast ship.

[one_voice]

5. I switched from Comcast to FIOS a little over two years ago...

I was with Comcast forever--every company before Comcast. I've been the happiest with FIOS. I've found them to be cheaper than Comcast too. I think their customer service is better too.

Of course, they all over charge, but if you're going with one of them I like Verizon.

[Major Nikon]

6. They would be stupid to replace copper cable with anything but fiber

That doesn't mean you have to upgrade to FIOS. FIOS is simply fiber to premise. You can have fiber all the way to the street and have copper into your home. More and more people have exactly that as copper is being replaced.

If you have problems with your copper service, keep calling them out. Eventually when they get enough trouble calls they will decide it's cost effective to replace the lines running through your neighborhood with fiber. The more you call them, the sooner that happens.

I was one of the first to get FIOS. All in all it's been pretty rock solid as I would expect from any new installation all the way back to the central office. I think I've had one outage in about 10 years and have replaced two batteries for the system.

[Major Nikon]

7. Here's a few of the negatives I've experienced

The service itself has been pretty reliable. The set-top boxes, not so much. I've gone through about 10 of them in the last 10 years. Some of them didn't work right as soon as they were plugged in. I'm pretty sure they just refurbish their boxes as they always want the exchange, and I'm also pretty sure that whoever does the refurbishing pretty much sucks. Each time you must go through customer service to get a replacement and they put you through the same set of checks that you've already performed on your own. And yes I have had many conversations with 'Bob' from India although occassionally you do get someone from the US. I've also had them replace the router about 4 times, but finally I gave up on that and use my own. The box on the outside of my home has been replaced twice.

The boxes themselves don't work all that well. At times the software has to be reloaded. They also occassionally push down software updates that inevitably gives you more advertisements and slows everything down. For a while they had this totally obnoxious advertisement that loaded pretty much each time you turned on the set and pressed the guide button. It took several seconds before you could exit out of it. I think they finally realized it was pissing people off and they were dropping service, so they finally removed it.

Technically you don't have to use their boxes and can instead get a cable-card from them for $5 per month (vs $10-20 for their box) which will work in your own box. This actually solves a lot of the problems with the boxes and gives you more features, but the solutions for this just aren't all that good, at least from what I've found and require a bit of hassle to set up.

[NewJeffCT]

8. Not available in my area, but

I know Verizon recently sold off all (or most) of their landline business to Frontier Communications. Frontier also acquired the non-cell phone business from AT&T in Connecticut, and that transition has been a nightmare for us (We had AT&T UVerse before - I could count the number of outages over 4 years on one hand... since Frontier took over, it's been almost a daily outage non stop for over 6 months.)