Tales From The Ipe!

Well, we finally have FiOS at the house, not without a lack of trying. I think the honeymoon period is officially over.

If you aren’t up to speed, the deal was that a new work crew would replace the main fiber optic cable supplying connectivity to my side of the lot during the day, my tech would confirm everything was okay, and he’d show up after I got home from work.  I called twice in the afternoon to Verizon’s FiOS “Solutions Support Center”, and they had no clue what was going on, and only relayed my messages to dispatch, with a promise to call me.  5:30pm rolls around, and still no one has called me.  If I told you it was a cable company, you wouldn’t be surprised.  I like competition in the marketplace, but I’m wondering/realizing that telecom or cable, it’s the confused big company mentality.

The FiOS Optical Network Terminal

I showed up at home around 6:45, and the tech was sitting in his van surfing the web.  I asked if he was ready, and he was.  I let him in, and lo and behold, connection problems still remain.  After some troubleshooting, he discovered that now the underground cable from the junction box to my house was bad.  As a temporary solution, he laid down a temporary cable above ground, snaking along the grass and over the sidewalk into my house.  At some point, Verizon will have to come back when we’re home, and rewire our house. The tech finally left around 8:30pm, after setting up the modem/router and the HD DVR.

So what’s the verdict?

TV: My wife and I certainly noticed an improvement in the picture quality, even though we are looking at digital channels on a standard definition TV. The DVR is decent, but my wife says it is not as intuitive as our Tivo.

Internet: I’ve tweaked the router, which replaced my rented cable modem and my trusty Linksys 802.11g router.  I’ve changed the password, set up encryption, added my devices, and poked around.  I haven’t tried the signal strength all around the house yet, but David you’re right, so far it’s decent.

I did a speed test on dslreports.com, and the results are posted below. We signed up for 10 Mbps downstream, 2 Mbps upstream, so download is about right, but upload is a little low.  Eh, why quibble? Close enough. Overall browsing and downloading the new Firefox 3.5 were fast, but not noticeably faster. I think it is speed can only be noticeable when it is slower. 🙂

Phone: It works, since I heard a dial tone.

That’s about it, I guess.  I’m not a fan of their ugly-as-heck Verizon-Yahoo! co-branded home page.  We tried setting up email sub-accounts, but we keep getting some odd error message, and there’s no technical support live chat that I can find.

[shrugs shoulders] Surprisingly, I’m not ecstatic or overwhelmed with joy.  Maybe I’m preoccupied.  I’m glad it’s all up and running. Maybe it’ll sink in later about how supposedly “cooler” my life is now.  It’s all under-the-hood, so to speak, so you aren’t going to feel a revolution.  I’m sure I’d be more awestruck if we had the big screen HDTV to enjoy all the HDTV channels.  Maybe next year if the stars align…..

I did note that although we have 300 channels, nothing is really on.  Bruce Springsteen was right. 🙂

EDIT: Added photo of the Optical Network Terminal that Verizon installed in our laundry room.

There’s gonna be a Verizon party at my house tonight. Here’s the scoop.  The neighbors I’ve spoken to, and the discussion posted online, prepared me for one possibility. I didn’t expect the troubles. To prep, we cleaned up the basement in various spaces, I took a vacation day, and dropped off the kids early to school

Here’s what I expected:  The 8am on-time arrival of a Verizon technician.  I expected the tech to be here for approximately 6 hours, considering that we only have one TV and one PC to hook up.  Done by 2pm, I could take my daughter to her 15-month well-child visit @ the pediatrician.

Here’s what I got:  The tech never showed up at 8am.  I called around 9am, and received a new (“updated”) expected arrival time of 12pm.  Um, 4-8 hours of install means you are eating dinner with us?  The tech finally showed up at 1pm, and started to work. 

About 3 hours later, he shows me that the central box in the yard that has the connections for our entire row of townhouses is filled with rainwater, and that’s why my neighbor is having issues, and why I won’t be working. 

Uh huh. Riiiiiiiiight. 

The latest update is that they have called back some guys from North Brunswick to do some emergency work, and may be here working outside and in my house even after 8pm. 

I’m glad I haven’t cancelled my cable service.  This should be interesting.  More later.

Yup, they’re coming on Monday, 8am, and we’re ready.  I’m taking a vacation day, as I asssume I won’t have any internet access for most of the day.  Of course, I copied a lot of files over to my laptop so I can do work while the Verizon installer is puttering around in my house for the day.

I’ve been reading up on what to expect.  From what most people have experienced, the guy shows up around 8am, for 4-8 hours, installing the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) and possibly even replacing the coax in the house.  We had no idea where this guy was going to be installing and working in the basement, so we spent time cleaning up the basement in various locations.  I happened by chance to speak to one of my neighbors on the way to the recycling corner, and he just switched to FiOS a week ago.  He took me on an imprompto tour of his basement, where they installed it in his laundry room.  I dunno at this point.  I suppose I’ll just point him to the basement, and keep him off of my couch, and drinking my beer.

I’m not thrilled by being forced to use their stupid wireless router. I’m a geek.  I like to use my own stuff.