In the past 5 weeks or so, the service has been uninterrupted, and working well.  Here are my thoughts so far, in no particular order:

Television

• The television is so much clearer than what we were getting with Comcast.  It may very likely be due to the unexplained interference coming from the Tivo DVR being in the mix (last Comcast cable tech’s assessment), but it didn’t make much sense to me. Now that we’re using the Verizon DVR, the mystery Tivo interference is moot.
• Speaking of the DVR, it is no Tivo.  It’s not as intuitive to use as the Tivo interface, nor does it have all the cool capabilities like Tivo Desktop, streaming Netflix, etc. However, using the Verizon DVR service is cheaper (by $2.) The Verizon DVR isn’t terrible, but it’s “good enough” for us to get by.  I like having the combined box and DVR.  The less components and wires, the better we are off.
• I like all the channels, but Bruce Springsteen is right.  500 channels, and there isn’t much on. There are a lot of channels in the 20s-40′s that are just “local programming”, and unwatchable.  Use the DVR to find what you want, and live with your recorded programs.
• We’re almost at the end of our 3-month free trial of HBO and Cinemax.  It’s nice, but not all that necessary. I’ll miss Entourage and the occasional stupid movie playing at the moment.
• Oh, on a tv-Tivo-related-to-the-network note, since I got rid of the Tivo, I don’t need to support the accompanying 802.11b USB wireless adapter that I was using all these years.  It slowed the entire wireless network down to mixed b/g, and prevented me from using a stronger encryption, such as WPA2.

Internet

• I still don’t like this Actiontec router you are forced to use.  While it’s a benefit to have one less device plugged in, I still prefer the flexibility of choosing and using your own hardware. The wireless range is not as good as my old Linksys WRT54 — I used to be able to check the weather on my iPod while parked outside.  Now I can’t even get decent signal  strength in the backyard.
• The NAT table in the router is tiny, which fills up quickly, and requires a cold reboot of the router every few days. I’ve been doing it every 3 days or so.  Not a tragedy in any sense, but argh.
• I’ve got the 10 Mbps downstream, 2 Mbps upstream service.  When you browse, it’s the same perceived speed as before, but the service is noticibly faster when downloading large files or uploading photos.  Most of the time, in any rate.  There have been a few instances where you wonder, “Uh, where did the fast internet speeds go?”

Phone

• We get free local and long distance, including Canada.  We could have used this back when I was spending my time in Canada all those weeks. The phone service is about the same, except we’re saving the most by getting the local and long distance for one low price.
• I wish there were other benefits to having the phone service over network, like the ability to get cooler, newer VOIP phones or something like Cablevision when Caller ID details flash on the tv, but I guess not.

That’s it in a nutshell.

I originally used my Yahoo! account which is tied to my Flickr, but it’s always full of spam, and I don’t know why.  My Comcast accounts I used for personal email and bills, and they both go to my BlackBerry and my MS Outlook at home.  I was thinking about creating Verizon email accounts, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Google GMail service and their spam blocking. Starting fresh, I’m trying to think this through.  One account for bills and such, one for personal, and I don’t want to get any spam!

Interestingly enough, someone has already taken joel.ipe@gmail.com and joel_ipe@gmail.com.  I have half a mind to email these other versions of me, and find out how I’m doing.

I finally settled on one personal Verizon account to receive attachments and stuff to download to my Outlook.  I also set up another account just for bills. I set up a third account at GMail for Facebook and I guess any other online location where the email address will be visible.  My Comcast email addresses will be valid for 30 days, then shut down.  I haven’t decided what to do with my Yahoo! email account.  I don’t need it anymore, but it’s tied to my Flickr account.  Hmmmm.

A different work crew with that experience will return tomorrow, my presence is not required. After I get back from work tomorrow (sometime around 6pm), my installer will meet me at the house to finish the job, if everything goes okay in the afternoon.

Although Verizon didn’t complete the install, I’m somewhat intrigued by them. Granted, I think this was certainly their problem, and think they could have identified this flooded box issue more timely. Although the installer showed up a bit later than expected, he never left the area from 1pm to 9pm, except for a late lunch. Verizon brought out additional people in the late evening to try to resolve this issue for both myself and my neighbor sharing that junction box.

The dynamic in play here is that Verizon is trying to make a good impression on new customers. My neighbor has the service for a week, and now he has an outage. I can’t get my new service installed. Verizon is making a big push to supplant Comcast cable in this area. If we, as new cuatomers, got fed up with Verizon, we would switch back to the warm arms of cable with no chance of returning to Verizon again. Bad word of mouth would certainly take place.

Based on past experiences, unfortunately, Comcast would not have done the same level of effort if I was a regular customer.  They would have sent out crew after crew for days, fixing one piece at a time.  Then again, once I’m a regularly-paying Verizon customer, and this kind of outage happens again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Verizon behaves likes the cable company too.  It’s the nature for companies to get lackadaisical about their customers.  Only now at the end of my tenure with them has Comcast unfortunately shown any interest in offering me any deals to save me money, even when I called months ago to inquire.

I hope my Verizon service is up and running tomorrow night. For now, my wife is watching cable tv, and I’m online using my cable internet.

Last Thursday, a Comcast technician was supposedly dispatched to our house to check the lines outside to find out what happened to our service, assuming something happened to the connections outside.  Lo and behold that night, we still have no tv or internet.  All the Comcast Live Chat rep can tell me from the details in the service record is that the technician noted that our lines were damaged.  Okay, but did they do anything to fix it?  No info.

So we waited for our service appointment until Monday. I got to the office super early, so that I could leave at 2pm to get home for the appointment.  Just before 3pm, I arrive home to find the Comcast van in our parking spot, and the technician snoozing in the van. I wake him up, and he tells me that he fixed the problem already.  Turns out, the cables outside our house were damaged, so he fixed them.

Uh……….

I told him that we had someone out here last Thursday who reported that.  Why wasn’t it fixed then?  Get this: this technician tells me that he doesn’t know, and “maybe he was a moron.”  We go inside, and verify that our service has been installed.  Can you believe that we could have been fine last Thursday, and I wouldn’t have had to jump through hoops on Monday for a job I didn’t have to be home for?

Unbelievable.

So why am I switching?  In a nutshell?  Verizon’s FiOS service.  FiOS is fiber optic, which is pretty cool.  After over two years of telling us through mailings and signs hung on our doorknobs, it was turning into something akin to vaporware. I even read in our community newspaper about the frustrations the community association was experiencing from dealing with Verizon.  Sounded like FiOS was never going to happen. 

Oddly enough, and seemingly overnight in March, a Verizon salesman knocked on our door, and asked us about signing up. When?  Now. Now? It was all deployed?  So he said. Well, I didn’t chomp at the bit, since we don’t have an HDTV.  What’s the benefit of HD channels when you don’t have the tv to watch them.

Relax, we didn’t get an HDTV (though I keep trying to wear my wife’s logical resolve down.)  Verizon is doing a pretty neat bundle — FiOS TV (with a number of HD channels), phone (local and long distance), and broadband (10 Mbps downstream, 2 Mbps upstream.)  Total cost before taxes and fees?  $94, which I have been told by the CFO (my wife) will save us $50 a month.

$50 a month? My wife makes a lot of sense. Even better, looks like we’ll be getting back all of our familiar NYC regional channels that Comcast had gradually taken away from us over the course of a year.  Bite me, Comcast. I put in the installation request today, so I’m looking forward to trying out Verizon’s fiber optic network in a few weeks.