Review: Verizon FiOS
I’m staying with a cousin in New York for a few days and have been able to experience Verizon’s FiOS internet service for the first time. FiOS is the first commercial offering of FTTH (Fiber To The Home), although availability is still very limited. Verizon has several different packages ranging from 5mbps down/2mbps up all the way to an incredible 30/15. Compare that to your traditional ~5mbps/384kbps cable line and you’ll see why I’m bouncing off the walls here.
Verizon FiOS modem/router. As for the coax line coming from the back, that is post-ONT.
While cable lines have yet to be used to their full potential, as referenced by this post highlighting developments with DOCSIS 3.0, FiOS’s fiber optic line is here and now to the select few. The reason FiOS is only for the select few is that, unlike ubiquitous coaxial cable lines, fiber lines must be manually installed at each residence (not cheap).
The particular package I’ve been using is rated for 15mbps down/2mbps up. A bandwidth test from speedtest.net backed up these claims, although a few days prior to running bandwidth tests to take screenshots, I had seen speeds of 16 megabits down. I also tested the connection by uploading a 423MB file to my S3 account and it was carried out at a steady 570KB/s to my delight.
On the downside, Verizon’s DNS servers are fairly slow. Fortunately, I’m an OpenDNS user so I didn’t have to deal with that. CNET gets into details regarding FiOS’s slow DNS:
Verizon’s Fios network and its DSL (digital subscriber line) service actually had the worst response times of any broadband provider measured. According to VeriTest data, the Verizon Fios service had an average DNS response time of about 180 milliseconds.
For those interested in getting FiOS and lucky enough to have FiOS availability, installation isn’t exactly a breeze. In addition to the individual fiber optic line needed in your residence, you’ll need to have an optical network terminal (ONT), battery backup, power brick and large modem/router combo installed. Neither of those are small devices. However, for more than triple the speeds you’re getting now, I don’t think anything as trivial as that would stop you. Don’t let those great bandwidth speeds get to your head though, rumor has it that Verizon can block certain (80, 25) ports at their discretion so you can’t use all that bandwidth to, say, run a server.
Verdict: When is FiOS coming to my neighborhood?
Who’s your current ISP and would you switch to FiOS if you had the chance? I’m on a Comcrapcast cable line and would switch to FiOS in a heartbeat.
I have Comcast too, and would switch to FioS immediate if I had the chance — the 15/15 would be perfect for me. Too bad I’m in Colorado with no FioS in sight…
Since I am in the Southeast I will never get to experience the pimpness of FiOS. Unless Verizon buys at&t that is. Either way, I can’t say that I would immediately switch.
How is the reliability of FiOS? Is it crapcastic?
I don’t think I am one to vouch for FiOS reliability as I’ve only tinkered with it for all of 2-3 days.
My parent’s place has had it for over a year I think. Dad’s holding back for a while though, waiting for Verizon TV offering to become available as well. He wants the whole package, TV, phone and internet (to completely drop Comcast!)
Also, girlfriend’s parents just got it hooked up this week. It took weeks though for all the lines to get put in! Lotsa digging too.
Anyways, not getting it in the city (San Fran) for a while. It’s much easier to get it in the suburbs… bleh. Jealous.
P.S. I’m still trying to setup Slingbox at Mandy’s parents’ place ;) That fast upload speed will come in handy for streaming across the country.
First I gotta get the box though…
I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for FiOS. Back in May, Verizon ran fiber cables right down my street. Curios as to when FiOS would arrive, I asked the Verizon Tech and he claimed by July.
Well, July past and now Verizon and my city government are in a legal dispute over taxes. Doesn’t look like we’ll have fiber until the issue is resolved. One day, one day…
I wonder how expensive the 30/15 line is… I’m practically squirming in my seat at the thought of that much raw bandwidth.
I wouldn’t dare take this chance to brag about my 45mb fiber connection at my home in Japan.
Broadband connections are fairly fast in general here in Sweden (24/3 mbit is very common), and in particular if you are a student. I have a 100/100 mbit fiber connection and am very pleased, it’s cheap too ~ 15$ a month.
Hello there!
Just found your blog while looking at random stuff because I’m awake an some ungodly hour of the morning for no apparent reason. I actually have Charter’s 10mb down/1mb up and get close to those speeds. I have speedtest results posted on my blog. Basically, I got 7562kb/s down and 985kb/s up. That was while streaming music and having other random crap running in the background, along with having the cable line split before it gets to the modem and router. Either way, it’s worth what we pay for.
Of course, we have the whole package (internet/digital cable/phone). I’ve always liked Charter. Esp. since they review your services and switch you to new promotions when the ones you’re using expire if you call. And no, I don’t work for them. I’m just an extremely satisfied customer who is elated that she doesn’t live in Comcast’s service area.
I thought you’d like to know what their speeds really are… because you know, I get that without having any extra lines run or anything. And I live in an 80 year old farmhouse in a rural area.
So no - I wouldn’t go with FiOS if it were offered here. Not worth the extra cost and trouble.
Man oh man… I’m jealous that you are even in the same state as FIOS availability… lol…
I’m a Comcraptastic subscriber down here in GA as well and would love to get my hands on FIOS - but, like Blake mentioned above, I figure its a long time coming. We’ll probably see some sort of “light Docsis 3″ implementation before we see FIOS.
*sigh*
Given my horrible experience with Comcast in the past (unwarranted collections agency calls and equipment failures) I would switch to Verizon in a heartbeat. I don’t care if it came with a exercise bike that I had to pedal to get those speeds, it would be worth it for that kind of performance around the house.
I have had FiOS Internet for almost two years and the TV service for about nine months.
FiOS DOES BLOCK ports 80 and 25. Not maybe, no servers are allowed. If they install FiOS with coax only and do not provide Ethernet to the router, you are then basically stuck with their router. After using their router, you do not want to be stuck with their router. The billing is a mess, the DVRs suck, the TV’s HD content is below most of the competitors at this point. The motorola STBs freeze needing regular reboots, they are slow and not too exciting. The Internet speed and service is very good.
I have had several friends already drop FiOS triple play to go back to cable or satellite. Seems FiOS is a next generation network built on yesterday’s equipment. FiOS has a long way to go to be compelling, the hype is amazing, but does not match the experience. Don’t get too excited, its just cable TV nothing more.
I’ve had FiOS since May of this year, and I love it. We had one ONT (Optical Network Terminal) get fried because of lightning (I live in the lightning capital of the world), and Verizon’s DNS servers SUCK (using OpenDNS now). But other than that, it has been heaven. I get between 15 and 20 mbps down and 5 mbps up. It really shines when you’re doing huge concurrent downloads. Crank up those BitTorrent connection limits and watch a Linux distro download at blazing speeds, without adversely affecting your web browsing.
Note: I’m not using their TV or phone service, so I can’t speak to that. The Internet service rocks.
I’ve been trying to convince my dad to get FiOS in Annapolis for a while. Problem is, Comcast can compete. I get ~15mbps/~3mbps in Annapolis (and San Francisco) via Comcast, so it’s hard to justify the switch.
I so want it too. They are not in my area of Ohio ( Cincinnati ) yet :-( but I am on their list, so lets hope it works and they alert me.
Check out my download speed.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/194093922.png
Way higher than FiOS.
It is because we (UW) are on internet2.
Not sure why all the Comcast bashing here. My experience with them when I switched to cable from Verizon DSL was way better, and I’m talking from a customer service standpoint. I’ve had a few heated support calls with Verizon that have made them my #1 most hated company. Although their DSL worked ok. Comcast support is much better. Someone mentioned equipment failures. Is this their fault or Motorola or whoever supplied the hardware? Comcast always replaced modems / cable boxes at no charge if I had a problem.
I have Cox, and the upload is just terrible. Download is fine, but I’d definitely jump to FiOS at my first chance.
I’ve tried FiOS in a few different locations (I go to school in Massachusetts but my house is in Annapolis) and I really didn’t notice a difference from my Comcast connection. Similar to Mike, I get about 15mb/2mb on my cable line. Plus, at least in our area, the Comcast tech support is really pretty good (far better than Verizon’s). Plus, I have a friend who has the full TV, phone and Internet FiOS package and it goes out on him all the time. Since the cost is about the same, and the line speed seems to be about the same, I see no reason to go through the hassle of switching.
@Sharvil - that’s cheating. :-) that’s a non-residential, campus connection. if we start comparing university connections…
It’s all over my area, but naturally not in my neighborhood. I’d switch in an effing second if available.
I would dump Charter in a heartbeat to get at a service like this!
Depending on your location, Verizon also offers a 50MB download speed. If I recall, it’s about $99/month. I have the 20MB download speed and consistently score around 17MB download speeds on those online tests. I have had the service in two locations for nearly a year and have had to reboot the wireless router only twice. The service itself didn’t drop - the router just needed to be goosed. That is better than ANY other ISP I’ve ever had. Faster and more reliable. I heart my FIOS!
You can appreciate Comcast when you had BellSouth DSL in 2000. DSL at that point was fairly new to the home. We had BellSouth for about 10 weeks. No lie, it was down for half that time. We paid next to nothing since we got so many service credits. At one point it was down for nearly a month straight. We ditched it and got something else (Earthlink maybe, I can’t remember) and it worked fine from that point on while we were at that house.
Anything would be better than the fairly paltry internet connection available to me.
A fairly typical broadband connection in the UK is about 2Mbps, in reality very few people actually get anything close to that… 1.6Mbps is probably closer to the mark.In Sweden, Korea and Finland I could get 100Mbps… in Korea for crying out loud, and for less than I am paying now.
I chronicled my dislike of UK Broadband here: http://wilcosworld.co.uk/2007/08/31/broadband-in-the-uk/
I have FiOS and I am ready to go back to Cablevision’s Optonline. Yes, download speeds are fantastic, however, I own a Cisco router and much rather use it, than Verizon’s crappy one. Also, the NAT tables are far too small causing timeout problems constantly. If my dad is watching streaming video (youtube style stuff), my net is toast. And he is using WiFi while I am hard-wired into the modem.
Another problem of course is Bit Torrent. I can get incredible download speeds, however, if a torrent is coming in, the net is done for until the torrent stops.
Phone service is fine, so no complaints there, the TV quality is awesome as advertised, however, the DVR blows. They don’t give you CableCARD by default so I think that needs to be requested. The tech that came in was rather clueless and spelled bad too I might add. Had to swap out my cablebox because it didn’t work first time. He had to call another guy up to finish up, because he was there most of the day.
I think I’ll sacrifice some download speed and be very happy to go back to CableVision.
Interesting. I have experienced NONE of the problems Jonathan reported.
I do know, however, that FiOS is still very new in most areas and in some cases the person you get for the installation may be doing it for the first time.
I don’t believe anyone mentioned AT&T Uverse? Its a fiber network. I got fiber to the node(not home) however in new neighborhoods they are installing it to the home! I got it because I could get more channels that way than with Comcast. Overall its fine and about the same speed as Comcast.
The only problem is that I also use the Tmobile HotSpot and it will hardly ever connect to the At&T “gateway”. Anyone else having this problem?
I live in Midlothian VA and swited to FIOS from Comcast. What a difference! I absolutely love it. I got the base package as far as speed goes and cant imagine needing more.
I had verizon Fios installed in a brand new Oregon apt complex in late 2007. The speeds are wonderful but the router drops VOIP calls for me when I dial into conference calls which is often. You have no options when it comes to routers. Actiontec is a very small company with no VOIP stuff built into it. They don’t even have a firmware page for my router. Support is lousy. They hang up on you. You can’t pay bills online unless you have phone service with them.
Just had fios installed yesterday. Love it! I’m getting up to 22,000 KBS down and 3500 up. I live in northern New Jersey
WARNING- the router’s firewall was pre-configured to accept ping requests..
Not good! To change this- go to the firewall settings in the router, remote admin, and un-check the Allow Incoming ICMP Echo Requests box.
I am not sure why they allow pings. Maybe for support..
Other then that security hole, I am VERY happy.
Hi, I found your site while searching for FiOS reviews. It sounds like FiOS is a great offer - thanks for your review. I was wondering if you could explain more about why OpenDNS is better than the DNS that Verizon uses? I looked at the OpenDNS website, but I still don’t really get what makes it different (other than the fact that it has built-in adult filtering - that’s pretty cool).
I have FiOS available in my area, but I’m currently with Comcast. I’ve had no real issues with Comcast so I haven’t been in a big rush to switch, but I’ll call Comcast tomorrow to see if they can match Verizon’s price; if so then I’ll stick with ‘em, but if not then Verizon will soon have a new customer.
My dad tells me that when Verizon brings FiOS to our neck of the woods, he’ll consider switching to it not specifically for internet service, but to get real HDTV.
Currently, we have DirecTV satellite TV, Verizon 768 kbps DSL, and Verizon local phone service. We are holding off switching to DirecTV HD because we don’t want to be stuck in a two-year aggreement on DirecTV HD when Verizon FiOS comes to our area.
VErizon is horrible at DNAS because just plainly it sucks i play PS2 online and Verizon fios keeps telling me that i have no connection so when i run a test it says the network connection is timed out. i can not get pass this error please if you know anything about this reply and help im am really upset with verizon fios. it had my emotions up for it and then it let me down.
I have comcast. I live on an Island and the owner of comcast lives here as well. The comcast triple play was first released in my area as a trial, comcast spend 6 months rewireing the hole island with fiber optics and have drop boxes all around the island, the cable modem i receltly got never goes below around 22mbps for upload and 8mbps for download. insanely fast. compared to my verizon dsl going at 768kbps
I just had my Fios Internet and phone installed. The tech was a good guy to work with. The only drawback I had was that he came right at the end of the two hour window period. However, I was happy to see my cable go away. Fortunately, I was able to do a speed test with my cable modem and my newly installed FIOS Internet as I had not shut off my cable modem service with Charter. Wow! What a surprise blazing speed with my hard wired computer at close to the promised 15/2 speed which I ordered. Tests ranged from 14/2 to 15/2. As for the wireless, speed was still good but not as my hard wired computer. I guess it also depends on how old your computer is. My brother’s laptop got at least 13/2 speed and my old Compaq ranged from 4/2 to 9/2.
The sales rep was great. She offered me the various options and whenever I had a question just to test her, she was very courteous and answered my questions with no b.s. answers. I guess it just depends on what FIOS office you get. When I called the general FIOS number listed on my bill, they couldn’t really help me with pricing and didn’t have access to the special price packaging. Funny thing is that they had to refer to my local FIOS service number (local as in State). So glad I got connected to my local FIOS customer service/sales center in Ca. I spent at least 45 minutes with the sales rep on the phone discussing various packages and in the end was happy with my deal. I’m saving at least an extra $20 a month on my phone/internet bill. Glad I switched even though I was a bit apprehensive with having to have a power supply to make my system work. Oh well, we deal more with Earthquakes in California. NOt that many to worry about.
“I have seen the light with Verizon Fiosâ€
I called Verizon FIOS to order phone, internet, and cable prior to my move in. My Consumer Order Summary was dated 3-28-08, and the scheduled installation date was 4-7-08. I reviewed the e-mail and all looked well. I move into my new house and install date comes. They setup an 8 AM-noon window. I already had the Optical Network Terminal unit (ONT) in my house, so I figured this would be cake for them. I am a Sys Admin at an ISP, so the internet stuff I could do myself with ease.
On install day, no one showed, no one called. I had my mobile with me at ALL times. So around 1:30 PM I called Verizon to see what was going on. If something came up, I had a week off to move in and if they needed to come by in a day or two, I was totally cool with that. After about an hour on hold I got in touch with a “state level” dispatcher. That said that there were “no facilities available for my order” and I was called. Nope, I wasn’t called; they did have my cell (which I had with me all of the time) in their records. I wanted them to come out later in the week if possible since I was home. They said that their next available time for me was 4-12-08, which was a day where I was going to a wedding. The next available time after that was at the end of the month, on a work day for me.
Basically because they did not show up, or even notify me with a reason, they put me at the back of the line. I was trying to escalate my request and the support only gave me unreasonable dates and that “no facilities available for my order” BS. I later wanted to get my copper line put back so I could at least get phone service, and after a long wait in hold they gave me the end of the month as a date. Basically I was being run around in circles and being shoved to the end of the line because Verizon screwed up my installation. I was told the only way I could get it sooner is if I “knew an installer who’d do me a favor,” and I was pretty much screwed with the window of time I had to get the service installed. The salesperson fed me a load of bull and the installer didn’t even call me with a reason. I tried to figure out what “no facilities available for my order” meant, and why this was such a problem since I already had the ONT in my house. Half of their work was already done.
The same day, I called a local cable company who installed my phone, internet, and cable the next day. They showed up on time and did the normal pre and post appointment verification. I unplugged the ONT in my house and let the battery go out. Verizon gave me such a lousy customer experience I swore I would never do business with them, and be sure to let other people know about their awful customer service and commitments they setup and do not honor. Verizon screwed up prior when they bought Bell Atlantic, and screwed up our perfectly find DSL service I had around 98/99. My money is going to a competitor, and Verizon won’t see it because they have abysmal customer service. I am certainly interested in fiber optic lines connected to my house, but so long as Verizon is the only provider, I will happily do without.
Herndon, VA
I have verizon FIOS. the speed of the internet is amazing as long as you don’t have to deal with the customer service. This is the worst customer service a human can ever get. Their customer service is the test for your patient and the way you handle anger and frustration. if you have short temper like me, don’t even try it. You have to wait for 40-50 minutes to get the real person to talk to you. That is not it, in the middle of the conversation, the phone got cut off. Don’t even dream about that the representative will call you back.You have to start it over again. after I was on the phone for over 2 hours, no issue was solved. no matter how fast the internet is, it is not worth you to raise your blood pressure for it.