page: 1 · 2  |
 neftv
join:2000-10-01
Broomall, PA
 ·Broadvox Direct
| yea right, years... ... to break even. Somehow I don't believe that after all they took (coughs clears throat "stole") the Money from Pennsylvania. Watch one year from now or in the future Verizon will cry wolf and double or triple the monthly subscription rates for fiber. Poor Verizon how much is enough. Ya took PA's money. | |
|  | 
technick
Premium
join:2000-12-16
Loganville, GA | Re: yea right, years... Can someone be a good mate and post the NY Times article, I hate registering for these annoying things, and I am running out of time for today =\ | |
| | | | | | 
rit56
join:2000-12-01
New York, NY
|
Phone Line Alchemy: Copper Into Fiber
By KEN BELSON
Published: October 11, 2004
KELLER, Tex. - Rick Montey and his two-worker crew want to present a new image of the local phone company: prompt, friendly and hands-on helpful.
At the home of T. J. Smith here in this Fort Worth suburb, Mr. Montey helped choose an inconspicuous spot to bore a small hole through the side of the house for the fiber optic line that would enable Mr. Smith's son to download big computer files quickly for his graphic-design work and let his granddaughter pull video clips off the Internet.
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Three hours later, only after the Smiths knew how to use the new system, Mr. Montey and his crew pulled away in their Verizon Communications truck. The family paid nothing for the installation, beyond the $34.95 monthly fee for the high-speed fiber optic service - which they can drop at any time.
The new offering is part of a multibillion-dollar bet by Verizon and the other Bell companies. They are gambling that by going door to door to replace century-old copper wire technology with high-speed fiber optic lines, they can hang onto their most valuable asset: a direct line into the home of each customer.
Verizon and the other regional Bell companies are losing customers by the millions as people drop their old phone lines in favor of cellphones, e-mail and ever cheaper phone services from cable companies.
To battle back, the phone companies are trying to outdo their archrivals, the cable companies, by installing a network of fiber optic lines to reach tens of millions of American homes - lines able to carry not only phone calls but television programming and Internet connections at six times the speed of cable company lines.
In the process, the Bells hope to become a counterweight to cable companies that often operate as monopolies in their specific regions.
"Without fiber, their customer base will evaporate," said Michael Render, president of Render, Vanderslice & Associates, a market research firm in Tulsa, Okla., that tracks fiber optic networks. "The world is changing too rapidly. Building fiber networks is a must-do."
Though the service is available now only in this small town and a few other cities nationally, Verizon expects to make its fiber connections available to a million homes in parts of nine states by the end of the year.
For all the billions of dollars Verizon and the other Bells plan to spend, success is far from assured and failure could be catastrophically expensive. Cable providers, with lines into 73 million homes, are a formidable opponent, particularly with their new Internet phone services. And it is not certain either that the Bells will be able to offer fiber-based services compelling enough to get customers to sign up, or whether future technologies will render all that expensive fiber obsolete.
Still, if the Bells need any reminder of why they need to act now, they have only to look at AT&T. The old Ma Bell spun off the regional Bell companies more than 20 years ago to pursue a seemingly unfettered communications future, but it has fallen on such hard times that this summer AT&T decided to retreat almost entirely from the residential phone market.
Despite the urgency, it will take years, if not decades, to wire every home with fiber. The Bells are starting first in suburbs and new communities, where access is easier. In cities like New York, the Bells are likely to bring fiber only to the basements of multi-story buildings, not all the way to each individual apartment, and then use existing copper lines to bridge the gap.
As the telephone companies embark on this most ambitious rewiring of America since the old Bell System strung copper lines from telephone poles early last century, they know that today's competitive market will not let them approach their job as the regulated monopolists of yore.
They have to keep appointments, rather than expecting consumers to wait home all day for the phone truck to drive up. They no longer mail customers Internet-access gear and expect them to figure out how to install it, as the Bells have often done in recent years with their high-speed D.S.L. service. And in this hotly competitive era, they are not charging an installation fee - even though the job, in equipment and labor, can easily cost $1,000 or more a home.
"I've never thought of myself as a salesman," said Mr. Montey, a 25-year Verizon veteran, "It's the biggest challenge in my career."
Within weeks of AT&T's decision to back away from the household market, Verizon, the biggest Bell company, began offering its first residential fiber service to customers here in Keller, a town of 30,000 people 15 miles north of Fort Worth. From April to August, Verizon contractors dug up Keller's neatly laid streets and buried fiber optic cables that connect to the Verizon central switching station in town.
Customers like Jim and Margaret Archer are the types of Keller residents that give Verizon hope. The Archers struggled for years to send e-mail and search the Web with their pokey Internet connection through a dial-up modem and a regular phone line. Their house was too far from Verizon's central switching office to get a faster digital subscriber line.
So when Verizon began burying fiber cable in their neighborhood, the Archers jumped to order the service. "Now we've got the good stuff," said Mrs. Archer, 61, a part-time paralegal. Next year, they hope to dump their satellite dish when Verizon begins selling TV programming via the fiber network to compete with the local cable TV provider.
Fiber, which carries digital information as pulses of light rather than electric current, is not new. For years, phone carriers have been laying fiber between their municipal switching stations, on long-distance routes and across oceans. But only now are the regional Bell companies, having lost 16.3 percent of their local-line customers in just the last four years, laying fiber to residences.
Nationwide, only 146,500 homes have been connected to fiber, said Mr. Render, the market researcher. That number is up from 64,700 homes in September 2003, Mr. Render said.
The numbers should continue growing. Verizon plans to spend $3 billion to offer fiber service to three million homes nationally by the end of 2005. SBC, dominant in the Southwest and the Midwest, and BellSouth, big in the Southeast, have also been installing fiber to homes in newly built neighborhoods in their regions. In older areas, they are taking fiber to switching stations or to the curb, and relying on old copper lines to reach the house, a strategy that may reduce connection speeds.
To build a nationwide fiber network comparable to the cable industry's, the Bells would have to spend at least $100 billion, or $1,000 a home, experts say. But so far, the companies have committed themselves to spending only about $10 billion, before determining whether further outlays make sense. And even that amount has raised alarm bells on Wall Street, where investors remain wary of costly projects.
Still, the experience of running fiber cable past every home in Keller and selling services to consumers has given Verizon a taste of what may follow. Early indications are that customers like the price: as little as $34.95 for one of the fastest Internet lines, a price comparable to what cable companies charge for considerably slower connections.
Getting the service to consumers is another matter. In Texas and other states with flat expanses, workers typically bury the fiber using boring machines that often lay the lines near the older copper cables. In places where the terrain is hilly or rocky, lines are strung from poles, a faster, cheaper process, although one that leaves the fiber line susceptible to storms.
After a customer puts in an order, Verizon sends a crew to connect the main fiber line to the side of the customer's home. Then another installation crew, like the one led by Mr. Montey, connects the fiber to equipment inside and outside the house.
This is a new kind of work for Mr. Montey. For decades, phone companies have operated as stodgy utilities, with little need to improve customer service. With fiber, they have to turn themselves into retailers. Phone workers, accustomed to splicing lines and hanging from phone poles, are now spending hours teaching customers about their broadband connections, even becoming PC advisers because so many home computers are riddled with viruses.
The company said it was too early to say how many homes in Keller had subscribed to the service, although it said it had received up to 80 orders a day.
Verizon is now laying fiber in Dallas County, Tex.; Huntington Beach, Calif.; Tampa, Fla.; and in parts of six other states. The company has not announced the additional six states, but said most are in the Northeast. Analysts have said the list includes New York and New Jersey.
Because it has been swallowing the installation costs, Verizon is eager to use the fiber to start selling television programming, which analysts say will be comparable in price to many basic cable packages. To do so, Verizon and the other phone companies are having to negotiate contracts with networks, buy the equivalent of cable TV franchises from municipalities and sell advertising to fill their air time.
Despite its high installation costs, fiber could be a money-saver in the long run. Unlike copper cables, glass fibers do not rust, and require less electricity and maintenance. By 2008, Verizon's fiber network could save the company about $1 billion annually in operating costs, according to analysts.
SBC, which is running fiber cable only to newly built homes and neighborhood switching stops in older areas, will get only 70 percent of the savings that Verizon's network is expected to achieve, but it will spend only half as much time and money on the project, according to Ernie Carey, the chief of SBC's $6 billion fiber installation project.
The continued reliance on copper for the final link to the homes of consumers makes sense to some experts, who say improvements in software compression and Internet connection technology make to-the-home fiber unnecessary. They point to companies in Japan and South Korea that are already selling high-speed Internet connections and video over copper networks.
No matter how much fiber they bury, the Bells cannot be complacent because the cable companies will continue to market their own services.
"The cable guys are not going to wait three or four years" for the Bell companies to catch up, said Jeffrey Halpern, an industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. "The Bells need a revolutionary change, not an evolutionary change." | |
| | | | roediddy
join:2003-08-29
Townsend, DE
| Re: yea right, years... Hello,I know I'm late in respnnse,anyway here goes.In regarding to apartments in New York, yes it would be an issue,other than that,Verizon would run cat5e wire from the box that is placed outside to your pc for broadband connection.When video is available coax wire would be then connected to the inside cable wire for tv.And with them making there money back.This plan was already in the works for almost a decade.;) | |
| | 
Musicscom
Premium
join:2004-08-24
Washington, DC
| I agree they're using our money. But I also think it's going to work out nicely. $1,000 x 73,000,000 homes is $73 billion, or, about one year's income for Verizon.
They probably have twice that much in petty cash alone.
TV over Internet or Phone lines is called NexTel.
I don't believe that it costs $1,000.00 for each house though; company figures are usually ten times the actual cost.
As for $100.00 a month for all combined services, that would a lot less than what people are paying right now for TV cable, Internet, and phone connections.
I also don't think they'll raise the rates, not at least until they have the majority of the market. And at that point, the rates are F.C.C. regulated and scrutinized anyway, while competitors will force them to keep the rates low too.
It's funny about AT&T, because Comcast is AT&T/Comcast, a Pennsylvania Corporation.
Most of the stocks are in various pension funds, especially government employee pension funds. So that's who pretty much sits on the boards of directors and determines the direction and rates of the services, i.e., your friendly government employee, policemen's and Firemen's Retirement Funds, AFSCME Retirement Funds, and a lot of private Retirement Funds, including IRA's, Roth's, etc.
It looks like it's going to work and will be a lot better than the privately held cable companies. | |
| | | | 
welltheres
@optonline.net
| Well, there's thieves and there's REAL thieves.. Remember Haliburton? Billions still to go to this company under no-bid contracts as long as you keep plugging away at those Republican levers in November... and theres the few billion Verizon appropriated for the Keller, TX fios rollout... hmm,, still not something to get up in arms about unless you live in PA.. but this haliburton$$$$-kaching has got to go man...
Look at the gas price$$ lately?
Frankly, I'd love to see the cable co's deliver fiber to the home, for right now, it's within 5 miles of every DIGITAL system with cablemodems...Upgrade the equipment, roll out the fiber and take back customers starting in Keller TX, that will light a fire under VZ to deploy elsewhere... not just string cable like it's February 2013(i.e. christmas lights come down time... hehehe) | |
| vic102482
Premium
join:2002-04-30
Upper Marlboro, MD | Id pay 1K activation fee In a heartbeat for fiber to my house. | |
| | | | | vic102482
Premium
join:2002-04-30
Upper Marlboro, MD
| Re: Id pay 1K activation fee said by teknikk  :
said by vic102482 :
In a heartbeat for fiber to my house.
Sure...
I sure as hell would.
--
I tie a rope around my penis and jump from a tree, don't you wanna grow up to be just like me!!!! | |
| | | | BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
 ·Comcast
·Comcast Formerly ..
| Re: Id pay 1K activation fee you and I both the speeds alone would save me time on the road and the less time i spend driving the safer my life is... Especially with the way people drive around here.
--
"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!" | |
| | lesopp
join:2001-06-27
Land O Lakes, FL | I wouldn't!
There are installation costs associated with both sides of the dmarc and my guess most of that $1,000 is paying for the Verizon side. | |
| | | | 
starstuff
Fly By Wire
Premium
join:2001-12-05
Mcallen, TX | You bet! no problem here. | |
| | | | SanJoseNerd
Premium
join:2002-07-24
San Jose, CA
1 edit | said by vic102482 :
I'd pay 1K activation fee
in a heartbeat for fiber to my house.
Me too. I actually paid $800 installation & equipment for DSL a few years ago, and was mighty glad to be able to get it at all.
Edit: And before that I paid over $1000 for ISDN. | |
| | | |
Yep Its Fiber
@aol.com
| SO not your money dont worry about it That is why u buy in bulk and after they steal all there competitors customers and that we might end up paying $100 for internet+cable+phone combo maybe even more but u get the point in a year they would get there money back if people us an all verizon service. | |
| 
decadent
Premium
join:2002-04-02
Piscataway, NJ | Two year contract In 25 monthes they will get their money back with cheapest package: $40/month. In that case 2-year contract is fair. | |
| | 
retrogame
join:2003-04-14
Auburn, MA
·Charter Pipeline
| Re: Two year contract quote:
In 25 monthes they will get their money back with cheapest package: $40/month. In that case 2-year contract is fair.
You're erroroneously assuming that 100% of that $40 is going towards the install cost. The cost for bandwidth, maintenance, system upgrades and customer and technical service reps comes out of that $40 as well. It will take them alot longer than two years to earn the install cost back. | |
| | |
decadent
Premium
join:2002-04-02
Piscataway, NJ | Re: Two year contract The equipment and fiber still belong to them. So, they need to earn back only labor and equipment amortization cost. | |
| | | |
retrogame
join:2003-04-14
Auburn, MA
·Charter Pipeline
| Re: Two year contract They have to pay a backbone provider for the bandwidth their customers use. Data transmission isn't free, even if you own the backbone, you have to pay for the equipment, electricity to run the equipment, maintenance, personnel, etc... To my knowledge Verizon doesn't own a major internet backbone, so they pay someone like UUNet, AT&T, Level3, etc... to provide them with bandwidth. | |
| | | | | Zorglub
join:2000-11-18
Fremont, CA
| Re: Two year contract I think most people are missing the point. The Bells are using copper that was installed decades ago. That fiber will last 40-50 years or more (a loooong time...). They won't get a cash back in 2 years, but from an accounting stand point, they'll make money almost right away since the equipment will be depreciated over a pretty long life.
Furthermore, they have no friggin' choice. Either they invest and keep their customers, or they die. That's the choice. Now, they should just get over it and start investing in their assets. I know that's hard for them after having milked the existing equipment they've had for a century, but they have no choice.
$1000 seems pretty low if you ask me, and I would expect that amount to go down as they standardize their process and buy bulk equipment.
Finally, with fiber, they'll probably lock in the customer with a bundle of services: $35 for VOIP, $35 Internet access, $60 for HDTV. That's $130 a month that probably 80% of the subscribers will spend. It seems like a no brainer to me. Plus, with fiber's bandwidth, neither cable nor the dish companies will be able to compete. | |
| | 
TechieZero
Tools Are Using Me
Premium
join:2002-01-25
Wesley Chapel, FL | I did a 2 year contract with Verizon just for ISDN. I will gladly jump to fiber! | |
| jimbo2150
join:2004-05-10
Youngstown, OH
| Trials Only Probably only until the trials are over (lucky bas***** who get the free trial-runs for free).
When they actually finish deploying it will break us... cost us a lot of money to install.
The government and FCC has said they want to keep prices down... but I haven't heard anything since. When it is releases I bet the subscription rates will be horrendous. | |
| 
DrTCP
Yours truly
Premium,ExMod 1999-04
join:1999-11-09
Round Rock, TX | Just like Sprint trial... Sprint's fiber trial a few years back ended up sprint loosing over 3000 per subscriber.
In particular, these trials are show-offs to FCC so that Bells can get a cut and once they achieve their regulatory missions the trial will be terminated. | |
| | rpsmith
join:2004-04-19
Huntington Beach, CA | Re: Just like Sprint trial... The "regulatory mission" applies only to fiber. If they've won a victory, it will only take effect if they *don't* terminate their fiber plans. | |
| 
marigolds
Gainfully employed, finally
Premium,MVM
join:2002-05-13
Saint Louis, MO
| Not a Trial According to Verizon, this is not a trial:
»www.multichannel.com/article/CA4···ral=SUPP
The cost is running about $800/home for their first million homes passed. Which means they are spending a lot more than $1000/subscriber. Of course, this is a drop in the bucket compared to the $5 billion SBC is spending on fiber to the node.
Pricing sounds like it is:
5/2 for $39.95/month, $34.95 with POTS
15/2 for $44.95/month, $39.95 with POTS
30/? (not listed) for $199.95/month
Verizon is already working on delivering video over the system, but does not have the capabilities yet.
--
ISCABBS - the oldest and largest BBS on the Internet
telnet://whip.isca.uiowa.edu
Member: American Association of Geographers, American Geophysical Union, American Water Resources Association | |
|
rit56
join:2000-12-01
New York, NY
| city dwellers woes the part of interest for myself and other city folk is the paragraph stating they will eventually run the fiber to apartment buildings and then connect it to the existing copper lines of which they have no intention replacing. that alone will keep me from using it. cable it is.... | |
| |
technick
Premium
join:2000-12-16
Loganville, GA | Re: city dwellers woes I don't think you understand, copper will still be able to get you to the fiber to get online. What do you think these high speed network cables are made of? | |
| bogey780
join:2004-03-19
Here | 1000$? That's below industry estimates of diber service. OSP had it estimated at a 1800$ cost per house. If that's the case then it's competitive with copper. | |
| | 
jap
Premium
join:2003-08-10
038xx
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: 1000$? ... 1k/house in Keller: a new, wealthy, city with wide streets, flat terrain, low public-space construction regulatory costs, houses uniformly setback & spaced, prolly alot of already buried, clean, straight, large conduits to pull through (anyone know if this is primarily an aerial or buried buildout?) and relatively cheap labor. Try pulling fiber in the older, NE cities and the cost will triple.
IMO, long before VZ (or others) get their fiber laid hordes of us will be on fast, stable, cheap wireless and the performance benefits of FttP will be of non-interest to most users. | |
| rpsmith
join:2004-04-19
Huntington Beach, CA
| $1,000? What's the big deal? This is investment, folks. All companies do it. An ROI of a few years doesn't strike me as a bad deal at all, for them. They aren't going to raise prices because of this. Cable companies invested too, wiring fiber and coax for HFC networks (that they have a monopoly on, lest anyone forget). Probably that job was pretty expensive too, yet the price/bandwidth ratio keeps going down.
We need both cable and ilec's. Despite the fact that telecom plants are inherently monopolistic in nature (the "why wire twice" problem), the initial focus of ilecs on voice and cable on video has (almost accidentally) given us two viable competitors, and now we are realizing the fruits of that as customers. I don't think we will see bandwidth prices going up--much more likely they will fall with time, in adjusted dollars. | |
| | nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD
·Comcast
| Re: $1,000? What's the big deal? two competitors is called an duopoly, not that far removed from monopoly. What's to prevent the ILECs and cablecos from having a "gentleman's agreement" to not compete in each others area?
Plus, we've seen what the ILECs effect on cable pricing has been - zip, zero, zilch, nada (comcast, anyway).
With the FCC ready to exempt ILEC fiber from sharing requirements, they will be the only game in town when the fiber is laid. As long as there is no meaningful competition, prices will ultimately go up and stay up.
The major, if not only, reason for the great prices of broadband in Japan, Korea, etc is COMPETITION. As long as there is no meaningful competition in U.S. broadband, prices will stay high. | |
| | | 
footballdude
Premium
join:2002-08-13
Imperial, MO
| Re: $1,000? What's the big deal? said by nasadude :
What's to prevent the ILECs and cablecos from having a "gentleman's agreement" to not compete in each others area?
Greed. Ego. You ever met a corporate CEO? They ain't a bunch of shrinking violets. | |
| | | rpsmith
join:2004-04-19
Huntington Beach, CA
| said by nasadude :
two competitors is called an duopoly, not that far removed from monopoly. What's to prevent the ILECs and cablecos from having a "gentleman's agreement" to not compete in each others area?
So what's the solution? A repeat of the DSL fiasco? Spell it out. Frankly, I think the duopoly will work out OK. When FTTH gets here, cable will lower prices and build out their own networks. | |
| bmn
? ? ?
Premium,ExMod 2003-06
join:2001-03-15
hiatus
| Simple solution... Split that sucker up across 20 months (little more than a year and a half) at $50/month... Hell, I'd even pay for it, assuming they deliver the speeds and some sort of service level where you can ACTUALLY use that speed (small servers at home). 
--
Victory Not Vengeance
Viva La Fee' Verte! | |
| | | 
Bill
Light Up The Halo
Premium,VIP
join:2001-12-09
clubs:
1 edit | Will this raise regular phone bills ? Will this raise the rates of regular peoples Verizon serivce ? If I don't have Fios I don't want to be paying money on my bill to help install it elsewhere. If the people who were getting it installed at their house were paying the 1k install fees, then I'd be ok with it.
I just don't see how Verizon is going to be able to take the 1k per house in the shorts and be able to pay it off in the next few years without raising prices of other services... sounds more like a few decades before they really start making money off Fios.
Just my 2 cents.
--
Secure-Wifi.Net: database of 22,308 APs in the LA/OC area.
| |
| | 
mxy15
join:2000-09-12
Kendall Park, NJ
| Non-Techie Question So how much of a speed jump are we talking about with a direct optical line into the house? I have OOL right now and I am already thrilled with the speed but the article seems to suggest the optical lines are much faster then cable but didn't give exact figures. | |
| | | | | matrikz2
join:2004-09-29
Pottsville, PA
| Re: Non-Techie Question Lets also not forget that fiber optic lines is the backbone of the internet, so in time Verizon can and will sell bandwidth to other ISP's. Not to mention will be able to upgrade speeds at cheaper prices as time goes on. I am a network admin (which means I build networks for those of you that didn't know). With fiber optic lines bandwidth is pretty much unlimited. So Verizon will be able to make a killing as time goes on with this roll out. Which is why the $1000 est. cost per house for install means nothing to Verizon. | |
| 
mrherzog
join:2001-05-06
Coquitlam, BC
| Total Income Lets not forget that they'll own the backbone and network. Sell off bandwidth to corporations....cha ching right there....sell some more to other isp...and then branch out to schools and such as a "tax break"...thus inkin the figures a bit more.
Years to break even...sure, but the reward in of having such capital would make any bank kill to host Verizon's chequeing account.
Trust me....they've already made a fortune back...just from the interest. | |
| raye
Premium
join:2000-08-14
Orange, CA
| I would spring for the $1,000 Provided that I OWN the lines and get a good (i.e. $100/month) monthly rate for at least DS3 upstream/downstream speeds or better with my own block of IP addresses.
If I find a better provider (i.e. a REAL backbone provider) I should be able to switch with no fees or extra add-ons, since I OWN the fiber.
One can only dream... | |
| | mc_365
join:2004-07-29
Brooklyn, NY | Re: I would spring for the $1,000 You would only on the fiber from your house to the node.
You would then need to connect to something else. | |
| 
wesm
tmb.org
Premium
join:1999-07-29
Lewisville, TX
| a (clear) post title Some interesting tidbits ..
The initial run from the strand on the street to the house is being done by a company called Housley(sp?) Communications, based in nearby Carrollton. They have crews from Fort Worth and Carrollton and had to commit to completing 70-80 installs per day to get the contract. They're also the ones who ran the fiber underneath the streets. Once they've done the connect to the street, Verizon comes in to finish out the install.
Keller is first on the list, but they have ambitious plans, at least based on what they've told Housley, to expand to Lewisville/Flower Mound and possibly Denton by the beginning of next year. Most other affluent suburbs are serviced by SBC, interestingly enough.
So .. SBC .. Here's a hint: My town is about 30,000 people and is roughly 15 miles north of Dallas.... *hint hint*
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are easy to annoy and have the root password. | |
| | 
nycnetwork
join:2000-11-12
Brooklyn, NY | Re: a (clear) post title I'd like to see some tracerts and what's teh ping like on your first few hops. | |
| | |
TechieZero
Tools Are Using Me
Premium
join:2002-01-25
Wesley Chapel, FL | Re: a (clear) post title Yeah me too. Give us the tool link! | |
| mrcowboy99
join:2004-08-07
Grapevine, TX
1 edit | Grapevine is being installed They are currently working in front of my house in Grapevine, TX. (just down 114 from Keller) I can't wait!!
My neighbor and I are waiting on doing Wireless and sharing the monthly cost between us. | |
| | Galvage
join:2004-02-11
Taconite, MN
| Re: Grapevine is being installed Thinking about it if you had copper from say the basment to a 3rd or even tenth floor of an apt building you would still be able to get at least 6mb of bandwidth. IN fact you could concievably get that up to around 40 floors with no issues beyond a possible frayed wire. | |
| | | Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO | Re: Grapevine is being installed You can do better then that being that with "copper" you can get 10/100/1000 connections.
Apartment owners should become little ISP's. | |
| mc_365
join:2004-07-29
Brooklyn, NY
| $1000 sounds like a low estimate to me. If you think of the cost of Fiber Technicians salary+benafits (union). Then think of the cost of fiber cable. Add on the cost of specialised tools and trucks. Combined with cost of Service Reps doing house calls. Then there is all the network equipment upgrades and end user modems and what not. Also all the other stuff I couldn't think of that's there, if they can do it for $1000 (with no Gov't funding)a house that's amazing.
Personally I would pay $1000 install fee if I was guaranteed a 10yr lease option at the current monthly fee, that was transportable to a new location if there was fiber available there. It would also have to include 3 static IPs and some sort of UP time grantee. I know 10yr is a long time but we are looking at 10yr before we have widespread coverage and there is no grantee of any additional severices being offered in the future. | |
| | joshokc
join:2003-09-26
Tulsa, OK
| router control this doesn't sound good
What other equipment do I need to get for with my Verizon Fios Internet Service?
As part of your Verizon Fios Internet Service, you will receive in your Welcome Kit a Broadband 4-port router (or you can opt to upgrade to a Broadband 4-port 802.11g wireless router for an extra fee). Both routers have been approved by Verizon for use with Fios Internet Service. Your router will enable you to create a home network so that multiple computers can be online at the same time. Your router also contains special diagnostic software that can help us trouble shoot and correct problems should you experience trouble with your Internet connection. You will need to use the Verizon provided routers with the FiosSM Internet service
»www.verizon.net/fios | |
| | |
skill123
@comcast.net
| Re: router control These are the same arguments being made when copper was dropped into the ground too! Dollars are more, but probably not much more if any more due to inflation. Can you imagine what people were thinking when all this expense of dropping copper into the ground. At least it was regulated then and there was no risk for the CLECs, but these companies have been amortizing the cost, which is set at 100 years, the functional life of the copper. They will get to amortize the cost and show a profit earlier, which will be less of a drain on their earnings. I think $1000 per house, if it's accurate now, will come down. | |
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wezol5484
| FiOS FiOS is awesome and they really did install it in 3 hours. I live in keller and we just got it last week. Charter sucked and went down numerous times a day, while costing more than FiOS. We found out that our next door neighbors were a few of the "test" homes they used to work the kinks out of the system, and they said it only went down ONE time (thats while they were working kinks out) in I think 3 months they were testing it. It hasnt gone out once for us.
I love it | |
| | BStrauss3
join:2001-12-07
Lewisville, TX | Re: $1000 sounds like a low estimate to me. Not to mention that the demarc box is $600 alone... | |
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Verizon Fios
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Fios sounds nice
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