At 10:25 PM 2/20/2010, Chris Dunford wrote: >They will *try* to sell you fiber optic phone service. You don't have to take >it. I have FiOS broadband (which I love) and copper phone service.
Where are you located? Who is your POTS supplier? I'm in Annandale, VA, and Verizon is my POTS supplier. Cox cable came to my 1950's subdivision two miles from Annandale center in the early 1980's. Verizon has just in the last few months put FIOS in the neighborhood -- they started last fall and are presumably finished, but may just have suspended fiber installation operations for the winter. It's a nominal middle class suburban Washington neighborhood. Full of 50 x 25 ft ranch houses with full basements that have been built out over the years. Some of the houses are smaller, 40 x 25 ft or even 30 x 25 ft, but most are 50 ft wide. Cox Cable now gives me 20 mbit/sec service, which is mostly server limited, not local network limited. What do you get from FiOS, where? I think the real difference is the Cox vs. Verizon corporate culture, not whether the medium is coax or FiOS. I suspect that coax is now obsolete, except perhaps for the house drop, and all new installations will use glass fiber, not coax. I suspect that some parts of Cox Communications' local network is already fiber. Cox doesn't block any service that I actually use, and I haven't tried to find out what the total blocking list is. Will Verizon block my Skype, Magic Jack, or other independent VOIP that I install? Other bandwidth-limiting practice? Fred Holmes ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
