What makes other Cities have FiOS Internet and Houston Don't?! (Dallas: hotel, home)

[tuanming]

Ever since I've heard of FiOS high speed internet I have been waiting for the day it would to Houston since then. As a matter of fact, I have waited for FiOS ISP for more than 2 years... I mean, who wouldn't be frustrated when you can instantly triple the speed of your internet for the same cable price? Seriously, this is why i think cable ISP should shave off a third of its price!

Currently, I have a 5mb line cable internet with Earthlink which i paid monthly... Every month I paid $45 (after taxed) and the same price or lower, FiOS offered a 15mb line which is 3 time faster than my current speed! I really feel that my cable ISP or other cable provider's for that matter, is really ripping people off with their pricing at that speed!

Anyway, I heard that once you're a FiOS customer your current phone line would not work because it used copper wires and it wouldn't be compatible with fiber wires, is this true? Last but not least, why is it that just about every other cities in Texas (exaggerating) have FiOS high speed internet service while Houston doesn't? This isn't fair, I mean why isn't Houston on the list in the first place?...Is Houston not important enough or something?! In any case, I wish FiOS would just come to Houston faster...so that I don't feel that my cable ISP isn't ripping me off! Speed is everything to me well, at least when I'm on the internet.

[j2773]

Not sure why we don't have it yet but I too have been waiting about two years for FiOS to get here.

[momof2dfw]

I have it

Garland, Texas (suburb of Dallas) was one of the first cities in Texas to have it installed. WOO-HOO!!! I'll tell you this and what we saw, have seen and experienced. A good friend works for Verizon but in another city. They pull in LARGE amounts of their guys to live in a city for over a year to install all of the lines. They practically took over one hotel in our area when they were doing Garland. They also use a few subcontractors - not as neat about their work as the Verizon guys . Luckily we had Verizon guys in our neighborhood and not the contractors. It took over a year for them to get the entire city done - almost all of 2004 and into 2005. I had heard who was next but do not recall now. Just this last fall (Fall 2006) were we able to get the FIOS even though they had the lines done they had not done our part of town yet and gotten it all connected. Now it is and we finally switched to FIOS a few weeks ago. I have not noticed it being any faster though so who knows I am just happy to have their cable over Comcast - TimeWarner. The tv cable offerings are MUCH better. When they first offer FIOS they do have the better deals so don't hesitate too long in switching. TimeWarner has to be losing a lot of business as I could not even get thru on their phones to cancel service and when I did they told me the computers were down and they could not do anything. So I loaded up all of my equipment from them and went to them. I was not alone there. TONS of people standing in line holding equipment to turn in and cancel their service.

[fbnewtz]

One of the reasons is that Houston is so large. Also, although there is quite a bit of money in Houston, there is a much larger poor population than Dallas and Austin areas.

[wstewart]

The big problem seems to be that Houston is located in the AT&T or what used to be SBC service area.
Verizon would have to come in a put in all new lines to customers and they are concentrating on building out areas that are in their service areas. That's what I was told by Verizon anyway. YMMY. Oh, by the way, I live in League City.

Bill

[ikonos]

I worked for verizon on the Fios project as well as with AT&T on their Lightspeed project. They use different technologies. Verizon's is expensive and has more potential, AT&T's is cost concisous but may not meet the requirements 5-10yrs down the lline. Fios will not be available in Houston area as it falls under AT&T and Verizon will not venture in to this area. Even in Dallas metro area both Verizon and AT&T provide their offerrings in some overlapped areas but not in all. Any way AT&T is trialing their Lightspeed in the San Antonio area and should be offerring it to customers in Houston area in another 1-1.5 years, but it wont be as good as Fios. Fios can potentially give you a bandwidth of 100Mbps (even though currently they are offerring only max speeds of 30 or 50 Mbps, however AT&T Lightspeed can only provide up to 20-30Mbps in near future.

[rushrb]

I spoke to Verizon today because we also do not have Fios coming to us in San Antonio yet. My company is based in Dallas, Tx. and I recently moved to SA so my IT supervisor asked me to see about getting Verizon Fios installed in my home where I will be working out of. I also will be using my VO-IP phone line to connect to corp in dallas. I contacted Verizon and asked them why they were not branching out to SA and she stated "We will not be going to the areas where AT&T owns the local lines". WHAT?? @#?$ So basically, we will have to suffer.

[icon7]

in many MPC's in Houston they have en touch which is fiber optic. one line goes into a box that then splits it to phone, cable, and cat 5e/6. i am going on month number 3 with them.....and i am quite happy. fast internet and voip works great!