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Verizon, Fiber Or Die?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:41 PM
from the copper-kiss-off dept.
from the copper-kiss-off dept.
dynamator writes "I live about 550 meters from my Verizon central office. I pay for their higher-tier 'Power Plan' DSL service, which boasts 3 Mbps down and 758 Kbsp up. For the past year, I've enjoyed excellent performance on this line. However, this past month Verizon has been hooking up my neighbors with FiOS, their new fiber-to-the-home system, and guess what, my connection speed and dependability have taken a nosedive. What can I do to build the case that this is really happening? Will anyone, least of all Verizon, care? Are they making me a fiber offer I can't refuse?" We discussed a few times last year what Verizon may be up to.
Related Stories
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Verizon Accused of Slighting Copper Infrastructure 249 comments
High Fibre writes "Regulatory hearings in Virginia raise questions about Verizon's stewardship of its copper infrastructure, with workers accusing the telecom of cheaping out on maintenance in Virginia due to its preoccupation with its FiOS network. Ars covers the fracas and gives more time to Verizon than the local media do. From Ars: 'During testimony given before the Virginia State Corporation Commission last week... workers painted a dire picture of the state of Verizon's copper network, saying that the equipment required to make repairs — including tools and cable — is not even available.' Verizon disagrees, saying that while it's a challenge to manage and maintain both networks, they are not neglecting their copper infrastructure." A union official gave written testimony about the Verizon problems, presumably so that individual workers would not have to testify in public and open themselves to retribution.
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Technology: Verizon Copper Cutoff Traps Customers 269 comments
theodp writes with more mainstream attention to an issue discussed here a month back: "As it hooks up homes and businesses to its FiOS fiber-optic network service, Verizon has been routinely disconnecting the copper infrastructure that it was required to lease to other phone companies, locking customers into higher broadband bills, eliminating power outage safeguards, and hampering rivals. A Verizon spokesman argues customers are being given adequate notice of the copper cutoff, which includes this read-between-the-lines fine print: 'Current Verizon High Speed Internet customers who move to FiOS Internet service will have their Verizon High Speed Internet permanently disabled after their FiOS conversion.'" Customers are supposed to be informed by both the sales person and the installer that their first-mile copper will be cut, and this is not happening.
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Technology: Verizon, Copper, Fiber, and the Truth 367 comments
Alexander Graham Cracker writes "Starting last spring, reports began surfacing of Verizon routinely disabling copper as it installed its fiber-based FiOS service. We discussed the issue here a couple of times. In my experience, every time Verizon has installed FiOS at a friend's house, they have insisted they have to cut off the copper and move the POTS to the fiber. By doing so, they block anyone else such as COVAD or Cavalier from renting the copper for competitive access. Sources report that today, at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Verizon executive VP Thomas Tauke denied ever doing that. (The transcript should be up in a day or so. The AP coverage does not mention this detail.) I wonder if Rep. Markey's staff is interested in hearing from people who experienced Verizon disabling copper, and without notice?"
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You do not deserve fiber! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:5, Funny)
HAH! My speed is faster than your speed, and my modem is bigger too. And don't let me get started on the size of my hard drive, it's really, really big!
Ok, when I was little it was all about the size of your carburetor.
Get off my lawn.
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Re:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:4, Insightful)
I can get comcast out to my house, sign up for service, use it for a month, and then disconnect. No worries, no fees, no nothing.
It's the same bitch I have will cell carriers. Why the fuck can't I go out and buy my own phone and attach to your network for a month or three of service?
Seriously. If your cell/internet/cable network is soooo awesome, I'll *WANT* to stay with you. I shouldn't have to lock myself in for two years...
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Get a neighbor to help test your connection? (Score:5, Informative)
Could you see if you can use a program like Netcat to stream a large amount of data from your system to theirs, and see what kind of throughput you get? If Verizon is really not giving you the bandwidth you're paying for, this may be one way to prove it.
There are some kinds of connection shaping that this test won't detect, but at least it's a start.
Re:Get a neighbor to help test your connection? (Score:5, Informative)
Iperf [nlanr.net] is excellent for this, especially if you want to test details like packet size, port number, UDP vs TCP...
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Re:Get a neighbor to help test your connection? (Score:5, Informative)
*Speed comparison based upon performance with a 56.6 Kbps modem. Actual speed may vary. Actual throughput speed will vary based on network and Internet congestion among other factors.
What affects my connection speed?
When you connect to the Internet using Verizon High Speed Internet, the speeds that you will experience will vary based on a variety of factors, including the following:
There are these problems when testing speeds to your neighbor.
- Upload speeds are lower than download. So you can only test upload speeds this way.
- Your neighbor needs to be using the same ISP.
Better ways could be to download large files from your ISP. But you'd have to find a file where a traceroute (tracert cmd from your computer, not from a public server) shows the path to that server is fully with Verizon's control, has single digit milliseconds of latency, no packet loss, and not too many hops away. Otherwise use a public speed test service [dslreports.com].Maybe one day we'll see a class action lawsuit on various ISPs that claims they intentionally lied about the average speeds customers should see, But I'm not holding my breath.
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If I were you... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If I were you... (Score:4, Insightful)
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They won't care (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They won't care (Score:5, Interesting)
Rogers and Bell are just as bad up here as well. I've spent 7 hours on the phone (15 minutes total talking, rest of the time on hold) with Bell resolving billing issues. With Rogers I lost service in Toronto for 10 days, and the rep actually accused me of lying that my modem wasn't online - he claimed he was pinging it - and became abusive. I hung up on him. The next day Rogers discovered subway workers or someone else had cut a line that caused my outage. Why they didn't figure something was up when the rest of the neighborhood was complaining, I don't know. It certainly couldn't have affected just my place.
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Re:They won't care (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:They won't care (Score:5, Insightful)
~Rebecca
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Re:They won't care (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, in 2006 Merck sold the marketing rights to a cancer drug to a small company named Ovation, who then charged exorbitant rates to recoup the costs. Merck kept the sales proceeds, and continued to produce the drug, but Ovation was the company charging patients ten times more. Ovation's business model is to act as a buffer for large pharmaceutical firms that want to get a large payday out of a niche drug without getting their hands dirty.
For more information, check See No Evil: When We Overlook Other People's Unethical Behavior [ssrn.com] (Gino, Moore and Bazerman 2008) and The Preference for Indirect Harm [springerlink.com] (Royzman and Baron 2002, Social Justice Research).
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Fishers center! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:They won't care (Score:5, Informative)
File a complaint with the state Public Utilities Commission.
I did it in Illinois where it can be done online. Miraculously within two weeks I had supervisors from falling all over themselves trying to solve my problem, and what had been broken for months got fixed in a matter of days.
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Have you called them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Have you called them? (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's no winning with some people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's no winning with some people (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:There's no winning with some people (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:There's no winning with some people (Score:5, Informative)
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AT&T and Uverse (Score:4, Interesting)
Supposedly it is blazing fast, but AT&T doesn't offer static IP addresses on Uverse......oh well........
Re:AT&T and Uverse (Score:4, Informative)
Ever heard of Dynamic DNS [wikipedia.org]?
I use FreeDNS [afraid.org] and find it be reliable and easy to use. Disclaimer: I have no financial or other interest in the site except that I find it useful.
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Re:AT&T and Uverse (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure how the smaller ISPs are, but most of the time the big guys want to make people pay for the staticness if it is available at all.
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I'm your neighbor, and I drink your milkshake! (Score:5, Funny)
Verizon and high pressure tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
Example, I've pushed a half dozen people away from Verizon when I explained that their costs for the same service would actually RISE if they switched away from Cox.
In one case the sales droid for Verizon told one former co-worker of mine that Verizon owned all the coax cable that Cox used. That's complete and utter bullshit. Cox owns all the coax.
Re:Verizon and high pressure tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess it helps my cognitive dissonance that I've been around the block enough times that I've been screwed by all the companies. My favorite story about our cable company was when they held on to our checks for 2 weeks then charged us late fees. So we switch to direct-debit (yeah, young and naive at the time). Anyway, they DEBIT our accounts 2 WEEKS LATE then DEBIT the late fees as well. So while Verizon is evil, they don't seem any eviler than any of the others to me.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you mean per month? $105 a year would be insanely good for DSL just by itself (that's under $10 month).
Horrible Customer Service (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Horrible Customer Service (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what will happen:
They'll come install a second ONT on your house. You'll get 20% faster speed. You'll pay about 5% less. You won't have PPPoE and the associated latency anymore. You'll get 24/7 access to live, helpful customer service reps. Plus you'll have the option of static IPs for a fee should you decide you need them.
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At least you can get FiOS... (Score:5, Insightful)
...because in Boston, which just so happens to be the silicon valley of the east coast (and has been for decades), I can't get FiOS.
Why? Verizon is holding the entire city hostage and refusing to do a fucking thing until they get a state-wide cable TV franchise license so they don't have to play on the same field as the cable operators (who have always had to negotiate per-town.) Look at the verizon deployment maps; it's a sea of blue and green, except for a giant void near Boston.
They've fed all sorts of bullshit to people; at one point, they were claiming that they were not doing "metropolitan areas." Funny: I guess New York City and DC aren't metropolitan areas? Everyone in the burbs and even the boondocks in eastern MA gets FiOS, but no, not Boston...
Re:At least you can get FiOS... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:At least you can get FiOS... (Score:5, Informative)
and no, we don't get FIOS either.
technology center of the US and we can't get fiber.
I see many roads are torn apart. not sure what they are digging up and doing but they are NOT planting fiber, that much is clear.
(at least not consumer or customer fiber. maybe they think terr-a-wrists are underground so they keep digging up our streets...)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:At least you can get FiOS... (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that happened was that the Boston area IT firms were largely minicomputer outfits (like DEC and Prime) or special purpose engineering workstations (Apollo, Symbolics), not to mention many spin-offs and laboratories involved in advanced CS work. The thing was the area's IT market got hit by a kind of perfect storm in the late 80s and early 90s: the collapse of the minicomputer market segment, the flagging of investor interest in artificial intelligence, the weakening of the workstation market, and a post Soviet Union drop off in government spending on the ultra-high-tech defense research that was a regular source of business creation in the university rich Boston area. At the same time, continued high property values made it less attractive for young engineers graduating from Boston schools to stay here.
Still, the Boston area continues to grow high tech startups in a variety of technical fields because of the sheer volume of academic research here; it's just that we haven't experienced the next big thing after the informatics boom of the 70s and 80s, and we missed out largely on the Internet bubble of the 90s. When the next thing happens, say if biotech takes off like informatics did in the 70s, we'll probably see Boston as an early hot spot, as it was in the 40s through 80s for computers.
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Re:At least you can get FiOS... (Score:4, Informative)
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no competition = zero customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
Line interference or impedance (Score:4, Insightful)
Go Cable (Score:3, Informative)
Most likely if FIOS is around, the local Cable Co. is probably price matching Verizon's FIOS Service. Possibly beating Verizon's price. Although be warned. Depending on the Cable Co, it could be worse service than what Verizon is giving you.
Verizon's tech service has been going downhill for awile. My first experience with it was they couldn't hook up a friends house for some reason because he's close to a state border. After dicking with Verizon for two months of appointment cancellations and broken activation promises he called the Cable Co. (in this case, Adelphia) and had Broadband in his house in three days. Then when he canceled the DSL service he never received, they charged him for two months of service and a breach of contract for service he never received.
Another example is two weeks ago I was working on a PC who already had Verizon. He was on the basic plan and I recommended that he upgrade to the power plan. He called them and asked for the upgrade from basic to power and they said it would take a few days (Vs Time Warner's and Armstrong's "call to upgrade and get the speed instantly" support) A few days later, he gets an e-mail that welcomes him to Verizon and happily tells him that he's now paying the power plan price for basic tier service. In other words. Verizon happily raised his bill $10 a month for the exact same level of DSL service he was already receiving. Thankfully he got that strengthened out after talking to a billing rep during his work hour since billing closes at 5PM and tech support had no clue what was going on.
Don't jump to conclusions (Score:5, Informative)
So my point is not to jump to conclusions. There could be a physical problem with your line that happened about when the FiOS was rolling out. Try hooking your modem directly to your Network Interface Box (usually on the side of the house) with all of your interior wiring disconnected (should just be a little jumper going into a regular phone jack - unplug it and plug your modem straight in). If your throughput goes up, you have a problem with your interior wiring. If it doesn't, the DSL provider is obligated to fix the problem. Make sure you tell them that you hooked your modem up directly to the network interface box, because the tech person should then immediately schedule someone to come out instead of having you try bridging your DSL modem and a bunch of other worthless garbage. They will still probably tell you to hard-reset your modem, but after that then they should send someone out. As in my case, it might take several different techs to find someone that can actually help. Same with support on the phone. Some people would randomly pick things out of some list a computer showed them, and ask me to follow various worthless steps. Other people knew exactly what was not wrong, based on what I told them up front, and so they didn't beat around the bush.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a telco. (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's the former Verizon won't help you. If it's the latter, a tech should be able to fix it. If you're only 550m from the CO you might not have an access cabinet in between you and the CO, but there should be many pairs into the pedestal near your house. A tech should be able to just do a pair change and fix it. The other thing that could happen is a port change in the CO. Both of these are quick, as long as the CO is manned. We have about 25 in this city, and only 1 is manned full time.
How paltry.... (Score:5, Informative)
$50/month here in Japan gets me 100Mbps (up and down) FTTH with no caps in place. Yes, you can all say "well Japan is such a small and densely populated country so of course they can all be wired up like that", which I hear so often. Well, why can't the US do this for their main cities as they are all densely populated. If they were to take this approach and then build high bandwidth links interconnecting these cities it could be done.
But the real problem here is that the telecoms and politicians are too busy filling their pockets and planning how to spy on you to care about doing anything to improve their networks.
Oh stop (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I'm not trying to brag here, I am making a point that different countries are, well, different. Even different areas of the same country are different. So it is great that you can get cheap Internet access, but have you considered everything involved in that? Have you considered that your situation might not be the same as everyone else's? Is it even the same in all of Japan? Can you get that same access in, say Tono (which despite being rural for Japan is larger than many US towns)?
Another part to consider is are they really giving you 100mbit Internet, or are they giving you a 100mbit connection to a WAN that is connected to the Internet? What I mean is generally speaking in the US, when you buy a connection you get the given bandwidth to anywhere. Your connection to your neighbour is no faster or slower than to anywhere else. The ISP has sufficient upstream to support that to their backbones and so on. So with my 10mbit link, I find that I get that to pretty much anywhere that also has sufficient bandwidth. It isn't just things on my network, it is anywhere on the Internet.
Well in informal testing, I've found that isn't always true with foreign ISPs. I remember several years ago when I worked for network operations on campus, I was testing with someone in Sweden, they were on a DSL service called BBB. 10mbit to the home, which at the time was pretty high end. However, they got crap connections to us, about 256kbit. Well, the problem wasn't on our end. I checked the routers, they were all fine, I checked the links, they were all low usage (below 20%), I tried transfers to a number of known high bandwidth sites in various places, all went fast.
A little playing around revealed that more or less BBB was a huge WAN, like we had on campus. They provided a high speed connection between you and them. So anyone else on the same ISP you got blazing fast speeds to. However they didn't have the bandwidth to support it to the rest of the Internet. So if you hopped off their network, things got much, MUCH slower.
So is your situation similar? It wouldn't surprise me if it was, because larger links cost lots and lots of money. It isn't a linear scale. While 100mbit gear is pretty cheap, if you have a bunch of people on 100mbit, you can't have a 100mbit uplink. If you do, that means that they'll only get their full rate if they are the only on using it. That don't mean you need dedicated bandwidth per person, but you do need more than what they each get. So while 100 people x 100mbit doesn't need a 10gbit uplink, you probably should have a 1gbit uplink, maybe more. Well the same thing is true at higher levels, and it starts to add up pretty quick to needing some real big links, if you are actually offering people that speed to the Internet.
Otherwise, you have a situation like we do on campus. I have a gig connection to my desktop at work. The switch it is connected to has a gig to our firewall, that has redundant gig to the building switch, which has redundant gig to the distribution switch, which has redundant gig to the core, which has redundant gig to the edge. However I wouldn't say I have a gig net connection. Why? Well two things:
1) At each of those levels, the connection is only a gig, but I am sharing with more people. Our building probably has 500 computers in it, the distribution switches it connects to probably handle 50 buildings, and the whole campus connects to the core switches. So while I could get a gig all the way to the core, I could only do it if I were the only one using it. In reality, I have to share with lots of other people.
2) We d
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