Verizon Announces $70 Fios Gigabit Service (Well, Almost Gigabit)

[palladin9479]

This is complete vaporware, I live in the DC metro area where we have Verizon FIOS on every block and I am a current FIOS 150Mbps customer. This offer doesn't exist anywhere out here, instead they charge us a "discounted" fee of $79.99 per month for 150Mbps, goes even higher for 300/500. It's "discounted" because after one or two years the price goes up to the "normal" price of $119.99 per month.

At least you have FiOS. Best we have is Cox and their Gigablast is not even in every area (Phoenix). Tempe only got it because they were being offered Google Fiber and so Cox rushed in and installed Gigablast.

But even Chandler, one of Intels largest fronts, doesn't have it or anything close to it.

Hell even Dickinson ND has gigabit fiber due to the oil boom up there.

Yeah but the cost is obscene and they gouge you badly after a year or two. What happens out here is everyone switch's between Verizon and Cox every year or two because ALL those advertised prices are only for the first year or two, then the real price kicks in which is usually $40~60 user more a month.

That's why I never bundle and only get internet. I stream what I want to watch anyways. I pay $100/month for the best Cox has which is still weaker than a mid tier FiOS connection since it is still going through copper cable instead of fiber.

That is for unbundled internet only service. When you first sign up they offer a "promotional" rate for your first 12 or 24 months, then the discounts disappear. You can see them on your online bill if you look at the details, they are billing me $119.99 base rate for 150/150, then discounting that rate with -$15 and -$25 discounts for $79.99. The $15 discount goes away next year, the $25 USD one goes away the year after. It's a 50% rate increase if you chose to stay with that. What all my coworkers do is whenever the promotional rate is up they argue either for another promotional rate or switch to Cox, which also offers the same promotional rate system.

 

[razor512]

Also, my cable modem is an outdated Actiontec MI424-WR that I only use for routing (not wireless transmission). It's probably bottle necking the 75MB/sec FIOS speed I'm supposed to be getting from Verizon right?

The actiontec routers for verizon can handle over 100Mbps but they are poorly coded, they are essentially dev kits from actiontec where verizon throws in their bloatware on top. the end result is a device where the base firmware eats up nearly all of the RAM, and when you make too many connections (e.g., torrents), things slow down, and over time the memory leaks means that things can get unreliable over time, thus requiring regular reboots of the router.

For my fios service, I just ran an Ethernet cable from the ONT, and into my own router. I then disabled the DHCP on the verizon crap, then changes its local IP to be 1 higher, then did a LAN to LAN connection. This simple change allowed me to bet more consistent throughput, no gradual slowdowns, and better handling of multiple connections.

If you are using the fios service over only coax (for TV and internet), then you will not get the full speed on a 75 Mbps package if you have 2 or more TVs hooked up, as under ideal conditions, it offers about 270Mbps which is shared with the TV traffic and internet. Realistically with the overhead on coax, you may have around 70% of the PHY rate coming through as actual throughput, so in a more realistic setting, you may get a PHY rate of probably 230Mbps, and the real world throughput may be 161Mbps, and each STB will eat up around 30-40Mbps. and if you have a DVR, then it could potentially eat up 60+Mbps on its own, or worst case, recording while watching on demand content while the second STB uses the multi room DVR to watch a recording.

With any fios install, make sure you have Ethernet for the internet connection, even if you will be using the fios router, you will still get better performance.

 

[Martell1977]

So my local provider (in Denmark) would like to sell me 300/300 Mbits for 51$ per month, or 500/500 Mbits for 66$ per month. What the hell is wrong with the capitalism in the US, it was supposed to bring cheaper prices all around.

The utility companies are allowed to have artificial monopolies, i.e. where I live my internet options are Charter, FIOS or satellite(data limits). AT&T and others are not allowed in the area. Same with the gas and electric companies...no competition. Competition is what Capitalism thrives on and retarded politicians broke it.

TLDR; The utilities are socialized and so lack of competition lets them do whatever they want and the people get screwed.

 

[RomeoReject]

Can someone educate me on network speed? The theoretical max speed of the 802.11ac standard is 1000MB/sec. But you will never really get that. Most of the time, you'll get maybe half that if you're lucky and sitting an inch away from the router.

What then is the point of overpaying so that your network is 1000MB/sec if all your wireless devices will function at half that? I only have my desktop hard wired by CAT5 cable to the router.

You can either use MIMO (Multiple In, Multiple Out) signals which could theoretically allow multiple devices to run as close to peak transfer as possible, the newer ad standard, or you could still use good 'ole hardwiring. It's not really the fault of the internet that wireless speeds haven't really increased all too much.

Your population in Canada is highly concentrated along the U.S. border and isn't spread across most of the Northern territories. It's a lot easier to cover concentrated areas than all of the rural areas that are spread all over the entire U.S.

That's true, but we still have population everywhere, and the infrastructure still goes up to those northern provinces. So again I say: Unsure as to why running infrastructure all over the place for less people is OK here, but doing the same down there is a valid excuse to jack up pricing.

 

[palladin9479]

The US price vs performance issue is a result of state sanctioned monopolies of the utility companies.

It's extremely inefficient for multiple providers to run electrical, sewer, telephone, water, and television wires, pipes and poles. It costs a lot of money for upfront investment and then takes a long time to make it back, so what the state / local governments did was guarantee these private companies exclusive access to any infrastructure they built along with advantageous tax benefits for the loans / grants to build the infrastructure. Now that was decades ago when there was a different company in every area. What happened later is that after the internet was created, these companies each figured out how to best provide service with their already existing infrastructure, the telephone companies provided DSL because they already owned the telephone lines and equipment necessary to make it work. The cable companies provides cable internet for the same reason. The electric distribution didn't get involved because believe it or not, most (not all) of them are actually non-profit cooperatives and can't operate outside their mission statement without inuring tax penalties.

So fast forward, successful internet providers start expanding by buying out other providers, mergers happen and before we know it we have these giant ISP's that own exclusive rights to huge area's of the USA. Originally those rights were split up to different companies but as they were merged or bought it all got lumped together. Without major competition they were free to provide whatever service they wanted. Nobody can compete because nobody can get rights to build a *new* set of poles and wires, this is the problem Google ran into, they couldn't secure the permits and rights to build infrastructure. Also these companies have no incentive to spend capital to upgrade infrastructure to support a heavier network load. The performance limitations are 100% within the ISP's own internet network.

Any country that was careful not to let unchecked monopolies form wouldn't have this issue, they saw what was happening in the USA with the mergers and just noped the fuck away from that.

 

[alextheblue]

Also, my cable modem is an outdated Actiontec MI424-WR that I only use for routing (not wireless transmission). It's probably bottle necking the 75MB/sec FIOS speed I'm supposed to be getting from Verizon right?

Someone else mentioned this all but: it's not bottlenecking raw transfer speed. But the MI424-WR is a steaming pile of electronic garbage with an antenna strapped onto the back for most other purposes. It's got the worst wireless experience I've seen since my ancient 802.11b router. Plus it falls on it's face the second you have a lot of simultaneous connections, such as torrenting or many-user usage. It's not great for gaming either.

However, I have a different recommended solution: Buy the Quantum router. You can buy it outright from Verizon for like $150 IIRC. That's a little bit overpriced but it's a supported drop-in solution. I used to use my own router but after it died I just grabbed a Quantum.