Verizon DSL?

Am considering switching from Earthlink to Verizon for the lower price and an upgrade to FIOS when they get around to adding it for us less well heeled customers in PG county. But I see nothing but horror stores about it and was wondering if it really is all that bad or whether people just like to complain..

judging from my neighbors its pretty bad…..we use RCN

Mine is great. It did take a long time to get it set up, but snce then it has been flawless.

I've got Fios….it was sort of a nightmare at setup…typical administrative foul-up type stuff with Verizon which resulted in some downtime. Actually though the problem was possibly due to confusion caused by my wife and I both calling them during the order process.

Since then though it's been totally solid and I don't remember one outage in the last 8 months or so (since the intitial hassles). I work from home so I'm on it all day so I'd notice if it was dropping on me.

Plus it is super fast…..I get about 4.7 mb down and 1.5 up…..that's a lot of porno! And still much cheaper than cable….

Fine on my end. The set up was no sweat.

Originally posted by MTB-Markie:
Mine is great.

FiOS or DSL?

Originally posted by vansmack:

Originally posted by MTB-Markie:
Mine is great.

FiOS or DSL?

From the title of the topic I thought that was clear……

DSL.

They were useless at setting it up. It took an age then it started to work about a week before they bothered notifying me that it was working.

All the complaints I see for verizon DSL are about set up. When and if you get set up the service seems great.

Originally posted by MTB-Markie:
From the title of the topic I thought that was clear……

Thanks.

We're doing an independent study here about the penetration of Fiber Optic connections to the home. I was pretty certain that FiOs was not yet available in the District and just wanted to make sure.

Originally posted by vansmack:

We're doing an independent study here about the penetration of Fiber Optic connections to the home. I was pretty certain that FiOs was not yet available in the District and just wanted to make sure.

What about Portland? And who would provide it? Verizon doesnt recognize my address.

Originally posted by pdx pollard:
What about Portland? And who would provide it? Verizon doesnt recognize my address.

You're a Qwest territory. Don't hold your breath for Fiber Optic.

Right now it's only SBC/AT&T and Verizon that are rolling out Fiber Optic to the home, unless you live in a very smart municipality that set up Municipal fiber like Utah and a few others has done because the local phone company is taking it's own sweet time.

Originally posted by vansmack:
You're a Qwest territory. Don't hold your breath for Fiber Optic.

guess i'll have to stay with comcast :(

Yeah, I went through the phone number search and it is "not currently available".

I dont see how it would be much better for me right now….

If T.V. channels started streaming their shows than that would be a different story.

Originally posted by MTB-Markie:
If T.V. channels started streaming their shows than that would be a different story.

You mean when, not if.

And the only reason why they don't is because there is not market for it due to lack of connection to the home. South Korea, Japan, most of Scandanvia, Singapore etc. already have it…

Originally posted by vansmack:

You mean when, not if.



How do you pay for content in those countries?

How about FiOS vs. Comcast High Speed?

Originally posted by amnesiac:
How about FiOS vs. Comcast High Speed?

Well going by the numbers Chaz listed above I would say FiOS if you can get it. Comcast says I should get up to 6mbps down, but it is normally between 2 and 3. Although I have had no problems with it.

Originally posted by MTB-Markie:

How do you pay for content in those countries?

It's mostly subscription based, using models like Netflix for movies, and deals with your cable and satellite company for On-demand.

The Netflix example is a good one because the IPTV quality is high def, which you can't get from a current DVD. It's cheaper to operate on the business side, and at 20 Mbps, you can get higher quality video over the Fiber then you can get from the DVD that gets delivered to your door.

The only live TV over IP that is making any money in Korea is from the gaming industry. They watch people play computer and video games like old men spend sundays watching golf - except they watch there broadcasts over the fiber and 7 dasy a week. The rest are currently losing money, as one would expect in the first few years as it starts to take off. However, the on-demand over IP is taking off. Think of it as personal TiVo over the fiber, with no space limitations. These are also subscription based at about $25 a month, set to mirror your cable/satellite plan (in terms of channels offered).

I haven't seen the individual show model (that seems to be taking off here in the states) overseas. It's a lousy idea modeling the iTunes music model, but here's the difference: nobody wants to keep these TV shows forever, so why the 99 cent per episode price tag? It's completely different from music. The subscription fee is the way to go here, but alas, nobody is talking about it.

Originally posted by vansmack:

I haven't seen the individual show model (that seems to be taking off here in the states) overseas. It's a lousy idea modeling the iTunes music model, but here's the difference: nobody wants to keep these TV shows forever, so why the 99 cent per episode price tag? It's completely different from music. The subscription fee is the way to go here, but alas, nobody is talking about it.

Well somebody wants to keep shows forever, or else tv on dvd would not be so popular. But I agree that paying per episode is stupid.

I wonder what BBC will eventually do. In the UK you pay a license fee, which is essentilly a subscription payment. It would be great to watch good T.V. again.

Originally posted by amnesiac:
How about FiOS vs. Comcast High Speed?

It's not even close. Cable is still shared bandwidth maxing out at 10 Mbps.

Fiber, while currently slowed by the phone companies intentionally, can max out at 1 Gbps. In the labs, we've been able to split one strand on Fiber Cable 40 times (Dense wavedivision Mulitplexing for the geeks out there), so essentially one strand can carry up to 40 Gbps. Cable will never be close to reaching those speeds.

And the more hi-def channels a a cable provider is offering over the co-axial cable, the less internet bandwidth is going to be available for the consumer.

As soon as there's more competition in the market for Fiber, the sooner will be talking about speeds of 20Mbps-50Mbps and nobody will be talking about Cable internet providers, unless you live in rural America and cable is all you can get.