Comments on: Verizon's fiber guru talks strategy

Mark Wegleitner, chief technology officer of the company's broadband division, talks about the Comcast-BitTorrent controversy and the future of Verizon's fiber-to-the-home network.

[Unknown2You]

The whole Bit Torrent thing is a Red Herring. The only reason why AT&T, Time Warner and Comcast want to have Bandwidth Caps is because of streaming video over the net. For instance it's very easy to download 4 to 8 GB a day if you use a service like Xbox Live Marketplace. Not to mention video from YouTube, Joost, Hulu, Netflix and anywhere else. Especially with more videos being offered in HD. These companies see these video services as a threat to their cable television subscriptions.

[veghs]

Verizon is about to offer Fios in our neighborhood very soon (they completed laying the cables). At the same time, they just notified me that they are increasing the monthly fees for the current DSL service! Is it a coincident or part of a strategy? On the one hand, it introduces an intermediary step between the low DSL prices and the (likely much) higher Fios prices, so the price jump would not seem that big; on the other hand, it may just drive people away right before Fios is offered. If I were the local cable company, I would push with my marketing right now.

[fafafooey]

Verizon has never been able to get DSL to my house and they say Fios is at least 5 years away in my area (suburban, I suppose what they consider "low density"). Heck, I can't even get more than a 21K modem connection from my house. Thank God for Comcast. At least they can get me high speed Internet, but Verizon can't.

[bigdbag]

the basic fios plan is about the same cost as a mid-tier dsl plan

[gr33nman]

What ever happened to the billions invested by the US government for fiber infrastructure that was supposed to be implemented by telcos years ago? Why wasn't this even addressed in this article? The money disappeared, and magically, so did the issue. Show me the money.

[BruinGuy]

I've had FIOS since January and absolutely love it! I opted for the 15mb plan and I get 15mb down and 2mb up.

I also have cable and land line via the package. Replacing TimeWarner's 5mb and cable I saved $22 per month. The savings came from the land line's elimination of long distance charges in north America.

However, one thing does make me nervous. It's that my phone system now goes through the fiber. That TOC that lives in my garage must have power for the phone to work. It comes with a 3 hour battery and I added a 1kva battery. However, during the 1994 Northridge earthquake I was without power for over a day. With the old copper wires the phone still worked. Now, with fiber, I'm not so convinced. Guess I'll just buy a generator for peace of mind.

[freemarket--2008]

Ever heard of cell phones? Mine is $10 per month (plus tax).

[BruinGuy]

I've had FIOS since January and absolutely love it! I opted for the 15mb plan and I get 15mb down and 2mb up.

I also have cable and land line via the package. Replacing TimeWarner's 5mb and cable I saved $22 per month. The savings came from the land line's elimination of long distance charges in north America.

However, one thing does make me nervous. It's that my phone system now goes through the fiber. That TOC that lives in my garage must have power for the phone to work. It comes with a 3 hour battery and I added a 1kva battery. However, during the 1994 Northridge earthquake I was without power for over a day. With the old copper wires the phone still worked. Now, with fiber, I'm not so convinced. Guess I'll just buy a generator for peace of mind.

[zekester137]

I've had FiOS for just over 4 years now with almost no problems. They just sent me some stickers for my equipment that say: "In the event of a power outage, the FiOS battery will power your wireline phone service, including 911, for up to eight (8) hours".

[superj42]

I wish they would put FIOS in Michigan.

[mrkgeek]

I see the whole discussion being very pointless as the FIOS or ATT U-VERSE service seam like very experimental and available is only very limited percentage of population that has access to internet in US. In the Midwest there is no plans for such service as far as I know

[sevort]

ATT is well present in the Midwest and expanding rapidly, so things are not that bad. But I'd rather have FiOS, than U-Verse.

[wfolta]

I've never been a fan of Verizon. Incompetence, arrogance.

I live in Arlington, Virginia, a high-tech area with many condos clustered along the Metro line. You'd think it would be a high priority for Verizon: young, affluent, tech-saavy, high-density housing. But no, it seems they've been busy wiring... my friends out in the suburbs where it's single-family-homes and at best townhouses have FIOS. Evidently Verizon's been wiring things the opposite of what they claim: low-density first, high-density last.

In the same distance that their fiber passes 10 houses in the suburbs, they could pass 400 condos in Arlington. Hmmm... I wonder which they chose...

[k2dave]

A generator would be a bit much, unless you want to be able to power your entire home off it. If it just was phone service you want to maintain, buying a UPS that once the 3 hours is up, you can plug your TOC into the UPS when you need to make a call. This assumes that you don't need to wait for a incoming call. Another option, which would be much cheaper is to be able to power the TOC from a car in such cases.

[benjaminstraight]

Good article.

[supoman]

I don't think you can compare the two. AT&T U-verse is vaporware where as FiOS is available in most of the northeast corridor and expanding everyday.

[Csisson]

I'm part of that "low density" area and part of the 30 percent that Mr. Wegleitner is writing off as not worth Verizon's time or effort. I shouldn't have expected any better. Their provide phone service the same way -- lack of services others take for granted, antiquated equipment and lines, the list is endless. Remember the hey day of phone service when phone providers' moved heaven and earth to lay lines and provide service to every home in America? Evidently the same mentality doesn't apply today in regard to high-speed Internet service and Verizon has decided that some of us just aren't worth the effort.

[billstewart]

You don't need a generator to keep phone service working in emergencies - you need a cell phone, and at most a backup battery for it.

As far as bandwidth caps go, it's a cluelessly bad idea that US cable companies picked up from the Australians, and doesn't even make much sense there any more (unlike the early days of the web when there wasn't much bandwidth to Aus and the content mostly came from the US.)
Similarly, the "no web servers on your home broadband" policies are a bad idea that US cable and DSL companies picked up from early US cable modem trials, where the cable system didn't have any way to manage upstream traffic and a local phone company's "Web Hog" TV commercials were making effective-if-bogus PR points for DSL and the cable companies were terrified that somebody's home-based web server with porn on it would swamp a neighborhood's bandwidth and make them look bad.

[brucerobb]

Should be "down the chute" (not "down the shoot").

What does Verizon have to do to increase its "footprint"? I visit the FiOS website every so often and leave my ZIP code so that I "can be notified when service becomes available". However, since Verizon doesn't do landline service here, only cell, are they even gonna have FiOS here in SC?

[FLAdude20]

All this negative talk about Verizon's Customer Service is new to me.
Not only has the FIOS quality been great for me, they even assigned a PERSONAL ACOUNT MANAGER (PAM) who I can call from 9am to 9PM. She has all my info and takes care of any questions immediately.
Regarding quality, I was a DSS subscriber since 1995. It was state of the art in those days, but I always noticed the black leverls had video compression clearly visible. It drove me nuts. When I switched over to FIOS it all went away. I'm a happy guy ^__^

[jomiotn]

I have had Verizon since it was known as GTE. All I have to say about it is, I can relate to all of you. They can do well, or just suck. GTE, Sprint, Verizon whatever, they need to do more with FIOS as far as reliability is concerned. At least in SoCal Inland Empire. When it works it's great, when not, well? Verizon needs to keep things going. I've had FIOS since March '07, & had to call at least once every other month for problems. If they ever fix things right, it'll be a miracle.