FWIW-
I signed up for Verizon's Business Fios
(fiber optic broadband) service a couple of weeks ago, and they installed it
last week.
<rant>
Now let me start by saying that if
I can buy the equivalent service for ANYTHING from anybody BUT Verizon, I
do it. Overall, their customer service stinks. I was an early adopter of Vonage, just to get away
from Verizon's phone service. And my company was a victim of
Verizon's hideous network design in hurricane Floyd, during which I never
lost connectivity but I could not move a packet because their billing center
drowned.
</rant>
So when the consumer Fios advertising
blurb arrived a couple of months ago, announcing megabits of connectivity for
under $100/month, I was skeptical. I reviewed the TOS and found that they
specifically prohibit servers of any kind, and will not provide static IPs.
That killed the service for me, because I run a couple of backup servers at
home and I need the static IPs. There were other problems, but the no-server
and no-fixed IP policies were deal breakers. I called and asked about a
business grade service, and was told on no uncertain terms that business Fios
was a concept, but it was at least three years away from
implementation.
But a friend of mine down the street
called around and found a Verizon person who was empowered to create Fios
business accounts. I called her and got a static block of five IPs with 15mbps
download and 2mbps upload. Straight pipe, no port blocking, no SMTP "you gotta
host with us" BS.
<rave>
The order process was very easy, and
the order taker was great. She wanted to be sure she understood what I
needed, and she needed to be sure that there was a good match between my needs
and their offering.
The installer was gracious from the start to the end, even to the point
of asking me for a brush so he could clean the snow off his shoes before he
entered the house. I could not ask for a better installer. He spent four hours
setting up the physical stuff, but he had only done non-business installs
before. Not surprising, since they are still not promoting Fios as a
business service. I spent two minutes setting up the router for a static IP,
another two showing him how to do it, and about ten to fifteen minutes
explaining the difference between dynamic and static IPs and the like. (The
installer's lack of experience was the only negative I can point to,
and I expected it since Fios is primarily a home service.)
I am not easily impressed, but I have
only one word to describe this service: WOW!
I am getting 15+mbps consistently from
test sites. My VPN to the data center runs almost as fast as my LAN here at
home. My backup mail server is
running without a hitch, as is my backup DNS. I have had zero downtime since
the service was installed, unlike my Covad DSL service which had downtime
several times a week.
</rave>
Anyway, sorry for the length of this,
but I thought it would be interesting to all to see where the telcos are going
for broadband. Their future clearly is fiber, and so far it looks really,
really good, at least at Verizon.
-Dave Doherty
Skywaves, Inc.
