Fios? Yeah? Nay? (credit report, houses, transfer)

[marnay]

We have the option of making the switch to Fios, we have Cox now. Since we just moved here 3 mos ago, not sure if it is worth the trouble of switching email address again.

If you have it, what do you think?

[Erma]

http://www.city-data.com/forum/hampt...r-norfolk.html

[Freefreq]

Im a FiOS tech and I can say it the best thing you would ever do.

Heres a comparison...

Cox runs their Network on mainly copper that you SHARE with God knows how many neighborhoods so your bottleneck starts once it goes out your door. Your signal runs down miles and miles of copper before it ever see's fiber at the Node. Your only as strong as your weakest link and saying the have hundreds of miles of copper that one fiber link from the Headend to the Node is useless so to say.

With Verizon its ALL fiber and you have a dedicated link right from your house directly to our CO. There is NO bottleneck within our Network. Your signal travels as a light source signal and as you know NOTHING is faster then the speed of light. Its glass so it doesnt short out or ground out and isnt affected by water so the delivery path is far more reliable then Cox's Copper.

Cox uses Amplifiers and Line extenders down the line to keep the signal flowing as it should. Signal loss on Copper is unreal. If 1 Amp loses power then everything after that Amp goes down. So even though there may be power at your house your Cable could be out cause the power is out 4 neighborhoods away.

Verizon has NO Amplifiers or Line extenders in our Network. The signal loss on Fiber is so low we dont need them. Its just 1 direct link and nothing more.

Cox cant compete with the internet speeds at all and never will be able to unless they build there own REAL fiber Network. Call and ask Cox if they can give you a 50 MB download speed and they cry on the phone cause they cant.

Picture quality is unmatched and your phone is crystal clear unless you have issues in your house.

Plus they send you $150 just to switch and your bill is lower too.

Another thing Cox doesnt and wont tell you is they are running a mainly Analog Network with some Digital services. They just like everyone else will have to completely make their Network digital. No more just plugging your cable straight into your TV cause you wont get anything. They know its coming and they have their deadline date and thats when alot of people in HR will be pissed cause they will have to have a box to get TV signal.

When Verizon built our Network they built it all Digital from the get go so we wouldnt have to make that transformation from Analog to Digital. Plus Cox charges you for Digital service......Huh ??

Want more info just ask Im here.

[bbguy05]

I have FIOS, it's pretty good so far. Lots of channels. And I like the all in one modem/router.

[telemonster]

I dislike Verizon due to an ongoing issue and lies regarding terminating service and my credit report. But on top of that, let me put forward some more thought.

The technology behind FIOS is indeed better. But is Verizon, as a company, better?

With the standard $40 cablemodem, it's possible to download in excess of 9GB of pirated television in a day. That's two seasons of a hit sitcom at pretty good resolution.

Cox Digital Television, Telephone and Internet are digital signals. They aren't analog. Most use QAM256 modulation on the line to pull the bandwidth. 6khz = 33mbps I believe.

Cox runs fiber to the neighborhood edge. So the above Verizon tech is wrong in that it's all analog amps from the head end.

FIOS I believe shares up to 30 houses on a single fiber. So if one house's customer premises equipment has a fault it could jam out the upstream datapath, since it uses CDMA or TDMA to share the upstream (it's a passive split, so there is no electronics between the central office and the houses with Verizon). See? I can come up with failure points for FIOS as well.

All providers share the bandwidth at the head end anyways.

Telephone is 8khz of bandwidth. It's always clear. Do people even buy landline service anymore?

Do people even pay for cable television anymore?

With regards to 50 megabit download speed, while this is nice.. not many people providing content will allow you to download at that speed. We had a 10 gigabit handoff at my former employer (via Verizon using DWDM just so you don't call out BS) and it was rare to find anything fast.

Verizon's stuff is new. Give Cox a chance to refresh their tech. Most consumers don't need the internet bandwidth (it's mainly useful for heavy piracy, but it's difficult to keep up with disk space even with a cablemodem).

I don't work for Verizon or Cox. But I know what a CMTS is, DWDM, FTTP, Lucent ESS 5A, Nortel DMS 100.

I am... the tele monster (r0ar).

FiOS . don't believe the hype. But please by all means buy the 20mbps service for upstream if your seeding lots of pirated video on bit torrent.

[Trevor92]

Here's another thread from this past January:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/hampt...-have-yet.html

In the above thread I talked about my experience with FiOS and compared it to Cox, and similar to telemonster's experience, the FiOS service was great and better than Cox in several areas such as On Demand content and quality and DVR features.

My problem was the customer service. Long hold times, being transferred from dept. to dept., and I eventually went back to Cox. A couple months later I had to prove I returned the modem and cable boxes with a UPS receipt or they would have billed me another $300.

I believe that's why you get the strong opinions. Some people love it because it's a great service and brand new compared to any cable provider. Other people hate it because of the brain-busting frustration that Verizon FiOS customer service can give you.

[Erma]

Originally Posted by Trevor92

Here's another thread from this past January:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/hampt...-have-yet.html

In the above thread I talked about my experience with FiOS and compared it to Cox, and similar to telemonster's experience, the FiOS service was great and better than Cox in several areas such as On Demand content and quality and DVR features.

My problem was the customer service. Long hold times, being transferred from dept. to dept., and I eventually went back to Cox. A couple months later I had to prove I returned the modem and cable boxes with a UPS receipt or they would have billed me another $300.

I believe that's why you get the strong opinions. Some people love it because it's a great service and brand new compared to any cable provider. Other people hate it because of the brain-busting frustration that Verizon FiOS customer service can give you.

I'm just wondering if it's a certain time of day with customer services or individuals (which are in every company). I've had FIOS for a long time and never had bill issues or service issues with them. The technician gave me his business card in case I needed his service.