FiOS

My parents got FiOS internet at their home in Florida a few months ago, and it seemed to be pretty stable and blazingly fast — better than my expensive DSL! My parents! How dare they surpass me in the quest for newer/faster/better digital gadgets! I was appalled!

Anyway, after the shock wore off, I figured when I moved to our new house, I would take advantage of the 15mbps down and 2mbps up speeds and 5 static IPs for $99/mo — the same price Speakeasy was giving me 1.5/384 and 3 IPs on DSL. As soon as we moved into the new townhouse, I called and ordered FiOS for Business for the home office in the basement.

I noticed about a week later, the yard had been painted with markers for the current buried services, and a couple of days after that, a bit of the yard had been dug up, and a hoop of fiber was hanging around my POTS box on the side of the house.

The day before the install, I called to confirm everything was still on track, and it was (though I would have preferred the had called me instead). Right on the day, the tech showed up to install, he walked me through what he needed to do, and I walked him through the house to where the connections should be. He estimated 3 hours, and it was closer to 5, but that was because I made him drill into the concrete instead of the drywall, and it was also the first time he had to program static IPs into their new routers (from ActionTec— apparently Verizon bought the company to make routers just for them). That was well within the original 4-6 hour estimate I was told during the order, so no problems there.

The tech was very professional, and worked quietly (aside from the occasional power tools). We chatted a few times on his trips back and forth to the basement, and he was very open to discussing the technology, and about his job as an installer. The only small hiccup was when he went to do the installer on CD, it would not run properly on my Mac mini (the only computer I had in the house, as my servers were still at the old house running on the DSL). Our thinking was it may be because it was one of the newer Intel-based Macs, and the Mac software wasn’t a Universal Binary yet.

No matter — he ran the account setup on his Windows laptop (a very cool Panasonic ToughBook with a touch screen), and I breezed through that with the only issue being having to hand-write my settings from his screen (No screen capture? Sacrilege! Just press Command-Shift-3!) instead of being able to print them. Only a minor annoyance.

I needed a new wireless router anyway, so I had ordered the 4-port + 802.11b/g ActionTec router (it’s bigger than it looks). He went over the basic operation of the router with me, but left the more technical details to the manual on CD-ROM. He did not seem very familiar with the whole static-IP process. No matter, I’m able to handle that, and the router is performing admirably. He pulled up the Speakeasy speed test page, and I was getting 15.1/1.77 off the bat, not too shabby.

As he was packing up, he informed me that FiOS TV was expected to be available in my area by the end of this month (September 2006), though since the date had slipped before, he thought there was a small chance that might be delayed. He gave me some brochures about it, though he warned me it wasn’t working with Business FiOS at this point (maybe the static IP issue I’ve been reading about on DSLreports). Very tempting, considering all the trouble I’ve been through with Comcast recently.

So, things are blazing fast, and no problems so far. I’m getting Business FiOS 15/2 with 5 static IPs for $99/mo, and it was installed in 12 days from the order. The ActionTec router was $69, but there’s a $75 rebate on my 2nd bill, so it’s essentially free. I’m a very happy camper.