Review by Bob99 
member for 11.4 years, 2274 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 293 days ago
 Teaneck,Bergen,NJ
 $84 per month about 10 days "Reliable connection. Lower total cost." "No Usenet news server. No IMAP for e-mail." "A fine Internet connection and phone service."
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We got a letter from Verizon telling us that they were going to move our phones to fiber whether we wanted it or not. So I figured we might as well switch the Internet to FiOS also, and get a double-play package. We previously had regular Verizon copper phone lines and Optimum Online. We do not have any TV service. We get TV over the air with a roof antenna.
We got the 15 Mbps/5 Mbps plan, which is roughly the same as we had with OOL. We have two phone lines. We are on month-to-month, no contract. The total monthly cost is significantly less than we previously paid for OOL and regular local phone service, plus a separate long-distance carrier.
They would have installed it the next business day after I called, but I needed time to have an electrician put an outlet in the garage for the ONT, so I delayed the installation a week. The installation took about 4 hours, not including a lunch break of about an hour. The installer left a card with his cell phone number so I could call him directly if there were any problems.
The ONT is Alcatel-Lucent model I-211M-H and the router is an Actiontec MI424WR Rev I. At my request they ran Cat 5e Ethernet cable from the ONT to the router. (Remember, we have no TV.)
Everything works fine. There's nothing very exciting about it. The Internet works like a normal Internet connection. The speed is very consistent, just slightly above the stated speed at all hours. The phone lines work like normal phone lines. Our fax works fine on one of the phone lines, with no special provisioning.
I am using the Verizon DNS servers, at least for now, and there haven't been any problems so far. With OOL I used OpenDNS because there were sometimes problems with the OOL DNS servers.
The Actiontec/Verizon router is very good. I thought I would use my own router - which was one of the reasons I asked for Ethernet instead of coax - but the Actiontec has a couple of features that my old router didn't have, and it seems to have a stronger Wi-Fi signal. I was previously using a Linksys WRT54G2 V1. My main complaint about the Actiontec is that the user interface for managing the router is very convoluted and confusing, and the user manual does nothing to reduce the confusion. The router runs very hot.
Verizon dropped their Usenet news server a couple of years ago, so if you use Usenet you need a third-party service. The Verizon e-mail supports POP3 but not IMAP. There is also a web interface for e-mail, of course. They advertise Wi-Fi service, but there are practically no hotspots in my area - just one a few towns away.
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