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Review Update on August 2, 2013: I have since upgraded the internet connection to 75/35 and am very happy with it. For a while I had the fastest available 150/65 connection, but Verizon forces triple play customers to take their highest tier "Ultimate" TV package with that connection, and the price became too high for me, so I downgraded to the Extreme TV package and the 75/35 connection (no, Verizon won't let triple play customers get 150/65 with the Extreme TV package, at least not in northern Virginia). I would love to "cut the cord" and get only the 150/65 internet connection, but Verizon discourages that by charging an extremely high price for internet only. I downgraded the "value for money" rating a notch because of the rise in prices. The TV service is OK with the occasional unavailability of video-on-demand, something that customers shouldn't have to worry about at these prices. Actually, I downgraded value for money two notches after reviewing my bill for this review. One of the killers in the price package is the rental cost for set-top boxes, $32 per month for two boxes in my case. Here's the price breakdown: Phone: $30 Extreme HD TV: $65 HBO: $17 75/35 internet: $50 HD set-top box rental: $12 Multi-room DVR rental: $20 Contract discounts: -$10 Taxes and Verizon surcharges add another $13.50 to the bill. The multi-room DVR is nice, especially because it supports an external drive, but the rental prices are horrible. Review Update on December 9, 2010: Still the absolute best Internet option in my neck of the woods. As an update, given the amount of time that I've had this service, I'll point that it's reliability has been the best of any service I've had. The speed remains incredible, too. Review Update on October 13, 2008: Bottom Line: Still very happy with FIOS. Changes since original view: In June 2008 I learned of a free speed upgrade, thanks to a thread in the Verizon Fiber Optics forum right here on broadbandreports.com: »Verizon pushing FiOS internet to 50Mbps throughout US My original FIOS contract had expired and I had to commit to another year, but I was upgraded from my original connection speed of 15/2 to 20/5. About the monthly cost of $50: That's my guess at the price for the Internet-only portion of the service. Actually, I pay for TV, phone, and Internet service together as one of Verizon's "Triple Freedom" packages. Rounded up, the cost is $115. HBO, two standard set-top boxes and one Home Media HD DVR cost another $46. Some package credits lower the bill slightly and taxes and fee raise it, so the complete monthly bill comes in at about $165. My Actiontec router died on me recently. I went through some tests with Verizon tech support and they decided to ship me a replacement router. They said "two or three business days," but it arrived the next afternoon, a very pleasant surprise. The Actiontec router's user interface is quite friendly. As I mentioned in the original review, I particularly liked how easy it was to set up port forwarding for games (World of Warcraft, in my case). The router presents you with an extensive list of games to choose from and implements the required set of rules. Setting up wireless security, WEP or WPA, is equally easy. The wireless connection sometimes acts a little hinky, but it might be channel conflict with my neighbors. Whenever the wireless connection seems to slow dramatically, changing the channel has fixed the problem. I think that my neighbors and I need to sit down and discuss channel allocation. Sometimes the wireless connection has failed to work completely and nothing but turning the router off and back on fixes it (and I have already experienced this with the new, replacement router, too). In general I have always found wireless to be a notch below hard-wired connections in terms of this type of reliability, and I don't know if this experience with the Actiontec is something worse or par for the course. ***************************** Original Review: When FIOS became available in my neighborhood, I jumped on it. I let a neighbor get it first to see if any neighborhood-related kinks needed to be worked out. I was an existing Verizon DSL customer and Comcast cable (they picked up Adelphia's subscribers) was the only other internet options besides satellite. Advice: if FIOS is springing up in your area but the Verizon web site says that it is unavailable, call them and talk to a human being. If the human being says that FIOS is unavailable, ask them to double-check, citing the location of the closest neighbor with the service. That's how I got my order through. After all, my neighbor two houses down had it. I ordered phone, Internet, and TV service together. The Internet connection is the 15/2 tier and it runs like a champ. I had occasional disconnect problems with my DSL connection, but the FIOS connection has been much more reliable, and performance as measured by speed tests has been excellent. Installation was fine. Subcontractors came out a few days ahead of time and ran a cable from the street to my house (I have a 90-foot driveway). I was a little concerned about how close that cable is to the surface, but so far so good, and I guess I won't be using a core aerator on that section of lawn any more. The installer knew more about the TV service than the internet, but he knew enough to get me up and running on everything. The Actiontec router is very straightforward to work with and the web interface includes a large number of packaged port forwarding options for online gamers. My only minor beef is the latency to the west coast server on which I play World of Warcraft, which is frequently 200 ms or higher (I'm on the east coast). I realize that because of the distance some of this is out of Verizon's hands, but when I connect via other services my latency is better. All in all, switching to FIOS was a no-brainer: speed and reliability get two thumbs up. member for 22.5 years, 10939 visits, last login: 1 day ago updated 10.6 years ago
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