Verizon’s FIOS (fiber optics vice copper to the home) has been touted as God’s gift to digital TV and broadband Internet access. (Disclaimer, my brother-in-law works for Verizon, does FIOS installs, and has FIOS TV and Internet.) I have been resonably impressed with the TV service, usability, functionality, on-screen menus, DVR, and such.
However, if one had DirectTV and wanted only FIOS Internet access from Verizon, for example, they would have to pay five dollars per month more for the Internet access if they didn’t bundle IP phone service with the deal. See it here. To me this is close to a deal breaker and for posterity, it would be a deal breaker. I haven’t had a land line for eight or ten years and surely wouldn’t get one to save five bucks a month on Internet access…which is probably what Verizon is betting on.
I understand that Verizon wants to make money and that bundling phone service with Internet access theoretically is a good deal for the consumer. Realistically, it is only a good deal if you are still using a seriously outdated landline service that you should have bailed on years ago. For me, ditching a landline pretty much paid for my Internet access. Why should those of us who saw years ago how the telecom cards were going to fall be penalized for being early adopters? Why would we want to pay for a service that we’ve given up and never missed? Shouldn’t someone like the FCC be investigating these cheesy marketing practices?
Verizon generally has a good thing going with FIOS but the technology is the only thing that saved Verizon in the broadband wars with the cable companies. FIOS I am sure was conceived as an alternative to DSL which could never compete with cable’s pricepoint speedwise. From my experience DSL was much less reliable, and often harder to configure, than cable Internet access. DSL was always, and still is, severely hampered by distance constraints. If you are located more than 15,000 feet from the nearest presence of your phone company, you’ll be lucky to get download speeds of .5 Mbps compared to the 15 Mbps for Verizon FIOS’ basic package. Yet, even with the prevalence of FIOS, cable Internet access still dominates in rural areas. It just isn’t cost effective yet for Verizon to roll out FIOS in rural and small town USA.
Now, I have Cox for Internet access and TV. I pay for 5 Mbps downloads but often see download speeds similar to those promised by FIOS. Go to DSL Reports to check your download and upload speeds. I pay the same amount per month for my Internet access as I would for FIOS’ basic package. I do not see much in the way of speed differences while web surfing at home as compared to web surfing at my brother-in-laws house. I don’t know if watching TV and using the Internet at the same time is any different on FIOS than it is on cable. I assume there are some Quality of Service (QOS) standards that ensure at least that your TV signal has the bandwidth that it needs, even at the expense of Internet access performance.
Nonetheless, at the rates that I get for what I pay, I can, and do, stream music for hours every day while web surfing and downloading files to my heart’s content. I can also watch movies on demand from Netflix without any problems. I guess that what I am trying to say is that I am not sure that Verizon FIOS is all that, especially if, to save five dollars, I would have to get phone service I’d never use.