Verizon, Fiber Or Die? 291
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.
Have you called them? (Score:5, Interesting)
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........
Tech support on slashdot? Gimme a break! (Score:1, Interesting)
- Line profile name (this should include what type of profile you are on, ie: interleave or fastpath, or al2 vs. al1, if you were up here)
- Sync Speed (Kbs) up and down
- Relative Capacity Occupation (%)
- Noise Margin (0..31 dB)
- Signal Power (0..20 dBm)
- Attenuation (0..60 dB)
Yes, to the ones who have done this thankless job, you can now guess what area of the world I work in and what I do now. Woohoo.
If your RCO is maxxed and you are syncing at less than the profile, your modem is syncing too high and this will cause dropouts. Your profile must be lowered, the line improved, or modem replaced. If the noise margin is under 6 dB (it's nicer if it's above 10 dB, honestly), again, you will have dropouts. Improve the lines or replace the modem. Signal power, don't worry about it too much, although both sides should be somewhat similar, it shouldn't be a big deal. Attenuation you want as low as possible, generally on a clean line, this will indicate your distance from the SLAM, and therefore the maximum speed. If you were capped at 3 mbits, you probably have an attenuation of over 35 db, which means 3+ km from the SLAM. Anything over 56 dB means you're screwed, and you're probably 5+ km from the SLAM. You could try to get the tech to send someone out to hook you up to another remote, if it exists. Good luck with that.
If you're already on interleave, you've probably got interference issues or a bad line, but nobody will care. If you're not on interleave and don't care about gaming, tell the tech to put you on interleave and say bye-bye to the problems.
Yay. That was fun. Next call please!
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:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:At least you can get FiOS... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Verizon and high pressure tactics (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).
Re:There's no winning with some people (Score:2, 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.
Re:Don't jump to conclusions (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, the point is, anything could have happened and the only thing intentional is the degree of assistance the telco will ultimately provide. Even if it is your responsibility (inside your house) they should at least charge you and happily come fix it.
Thanks,
Leabre
Re:They won't care (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:They won't care (Score:-1, Interesting)
They're also saying we're too far from the CO for FIOS (wtf) even though they tore up the street in forn tof my house to lay the lines, and left equipment on my lawn that killed my grass (which they denied)
They're a government sanctioned monopoly who helps the government spy on people with special protections. They could really give less a shit about you..
that is, until you switch to cable. Then they're whore themselves out.
I plan on going either wireless or VOIP for phone soon, I dont want anything to do with verizon.
they already got paid (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:AT&T and Uverse (Score:2, Interesting)
Blazing fast? Well, sure... for one computer, 6 meg down a bitn under 1 meg up. 2 computers 3 meg down a piece, they split the bandwidth. We have a houshold full of computers. Not a deal breaker but annoying. Could not get my VPN to work through their router (deal breaker), & the techie appeared to have total access to that router with out my permission. Oh & torrents did not work well.
The final: HD quality sucked. Now we have Wide Open West, multiple static IPs, faster speeds (6.5 down 1.5 up, torrents scream, & I can use my own proxy server. Excellent HD! And they aren't Comcrap!!!!!
Re:Horrible Customer Service (Score:3, Interesting)
But in my area, they dropped PPOE for FIOS about 1-2 years ago. If you put in PPOE credentials it ignores it at this point. I only found out because I've had FIOS for 3 years, and last year I added TV. When the tech replaced my router with their actiontec, he didn't put in any credentials, and said that had been dropped some time ago.
Also, if you're nice to the installer, they'll put the ONT inside your house which is far more convenient.
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).
Re:You do not deserve DSL! (Score:3, Interesting)
Congratulations on your DSL. They won't even sell me DSL, and fibre to the curb is out of the question since it is 15 miles to the nearest curb.
Verizon doesn't care, and the won't. When our dialup went from steady-for-hours to a few minutes at best, it took us all kinds of hell raising over a number of days to get them to fix it. Now we are back to 24K dialup. Forget 33.6, and forget any notion of 53K.
Well, not quite. Yesterday I put up a skyway dish. Happy to say we are seeing something like 5x the maximum speed that I can get from my self-proclaimed "broadband and entertainment company," a company of liars.
Re:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:3, Interesting)
I am content with my $42.00 top tier DSL.
Fios is available, and gee, I have to pay them $99.00 a month because I cant unbundle the other crap from the internet service. I dont want to pay $99.00 a month for their other crap. I dont want the other crap. Stop forcing me to take your other CRAP!
DSL has a law forcing them to unbundle it from phone service. That law does not cover Fios.
Re:They won't care (Score:0, Interesting)
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.
Do you know why? Because if the PUC has too many unresolved complaints, Verizon might not get their next rate increase, so your complaint could be worth millions of dollars if it pushes them over some particular limit.
Re:You do not deserve fiber! (Score:2, Interesting)