Review by batsona 
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 777 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Ellicott City,Howard,MD
 $44 per month (12 month contract)
 about 27 days
 "4ms to VZ gateway is great!"
 "Price is creeping up...."
 "Favorable cost/benefit ratio"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I'm glad I'm with FiOS; this makes more sense than Comcast. Pages zip around faster than before, even tho I have 5MB downstream vs. 6MB with comcast; the difference is having 2MB upstream instead of 384K. It makes all the difference. It took 27 days between order, and use-of-service, becuase the gentleman said they were very backed up in the area with 2-3 installs per day. I ordered the 5000/2000 service.
Cable tech arrived 10 days before the inside guy; they had plenty of 'fun' trying to fish my line thru all the trees under the telephone poles; the guy had to call for help right before he drove from Howard county back to Anne Arrundl county to get a 500' legnth of Corning Fiber. I pulled the copper out of my basement & wire-tied it outside, then pulled the ~40' spare feet of fiber he left outside into the basement & wire-tied it so it looked nice 'n professional-like. I have a basement-located ONT.
The installer was very nice & got the job done quickly. He suffered a 30 min setback where there was no light on the fiber. He had to drive around the block & scamper up a pole to re-seat my connection at the tap, which did the trick. Another 30 min, and I was up and running. I have Vonage svc, and turned off my VZ pots lines, so there was no voice to deal with.
PS-- The increase in upstream speed, from 384K to 2MBit is what does the trick. I'd read lots of whitepapers about poor WAN performance when the 'return-path' for the packets is constrained. You can have all the bandwidth in the world downstream, but if you have a tiny upstream, you can set your TCPreceiveWindow to 10-million, and it won't do you any good. A good clear upstream makes 5MBit FiOS run faster than 6Mbit Comcast.
Good, stable, fast, and less expensive than the "incumbant".
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Update 8/15/2008: Still good service. No downtime that I can remember since installation! The original base price of $35/month is now at $44.99/month. Even if it were equal with cable-based service (CMCST), it's still be a better deal. Fiber-delivery beats RF hands down.
Followup comments:  
dirtwarrior
join:2008-03-21 | you need to call verizon and get the free upgrade to 10/2 it doesn't cost you anything but you have to call to receive it call 1800-553-1555. | |
|  | batsona
Maryland
join:2004-04-17
Ellicott City, MD | Re: you This is available in 21042 in Howard County, in MD? | |
| | | 
Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA | Re: you It should be available in all markets. | |
| NbWY1
join:2003-05-23
Columbia, MD
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Vonage
3 edits | fios I live in Columbia Maryland and have 20/20. I ran pings to the gateway while running erands the other morning (progbably 3.5 hours). Got this when I returned 
Minimum = 3ms, Maximum = 64ms, Average = 4ms
It's really more like the whole internet is ran in a webserver just down the hall in a closet, and is just an integral part of your 1Gbps homenetwork. Any speed over 5Mbps won't help websurfing all that considerably from what I've found. | |
| | batsona
Maryland
join:2004-04-17
Ellicott City, MD
·Verizon FIOS
·Vonage
| Re: fios Agreed. --The key is always the upstream. Some cable providers give you tons of downstream, and very little upstream. Remember that a webserver won't *send* you any more traffic unless you *acknowledge* it periodically. Those ACKs are on the upstream, which, if constrained, will hurt your downstream performance. Example:
Cable provider: 6MB / 384K
FiOS: 5MB / 2MB
Even though FiOS has 20% less downstream, it made for a MUCH improved browsing experience because the upstream was way more than doubled. | |
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