Review by vincebusam 
Posted: 305 days ago
member for 1 year, 116 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
 $99 per month (24 month contract)
 about 7 days
 "Fast, excellent value"
 "Wow - this is _fast_!"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
As soon as FiOS was available to me, I switched over my static IP package (need to get Business FiOS for this)
Old Package: Speakeasy DSL, 1.5/768k, 5 static IPs, $85/mo
New Package: 20/5, 1 static IP, $99/mo
So far, it's been working great. The speed is fantastic, and I haven't had any problems. Overall I'm very pleased. It's certainly worth the extra $15/month.
Order:
After seeing the trucks working on the poles on my street a couple times, I got a couple letters, and called the phone numbers given, and was told I'd get a callback when it was available. Finally, at the end of Jan 09, I saw online that my address was available, called, and got an install date the next week.
Install:
The tech called right before the end of the window, showed up 15 minutes later, and everything was installed neatly within a couple hours. He ran Ethernet from the ONT straight to my server, no router or anything, as I requested.
Speed:
The link works as advertised. On the Speakeasy speed test, I get 19.5/4.5. Just pinging my gateway went from 20ms on DSL to 1.5ms on FiOS.
Support:
There were 3 minor issues/settings I was able to resolve over the phone. Support certainly isn't as fast or knowledgeable as Speakeasy, but got it done.
- I didn't get access to online billing at my install, and the web site wouldn't take my order number. They gave me a login/password over the phone
- When FiOS was installed, I plugged in my laptop to verify everything was working (it was). Then I unplugged the laptop and plugged in the server, which didn't work until I cloned the laptop MAC address onto the server's ethernet card. Resolving this was an interesting tech support call, but ultimately their suggestion of resetting the ONT resolved this and allowed me to use the native MAC address.
- Setting up reverse DNS requires a phone call, instead of just filing a ticket at Speakeasy.
Followup comments:  
IhateVerizon
@verizon.net
|  FIOS is great until there is a problem
I just recovered from my 5th outage in two weeks, despite trying to get a ticket opened on the packet loss, which is hardly worth the time. I had to go thru 3 help desk people whose job is to blame your computer or router for about 6 hours of phone time before saying they are escalating the ticket to an engineer. Then they tell you that a 24 hour time is imposed on engineering to get back to you on the ticket. Needless to say, I heard nothing from anyone in over two weeks... Verizon is a monopoly that cares less about its users.
Signed,
Disgusted | |
|  | vincebusam
join:2008-11-14
Los Angeles, CA
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Speakeasy
| Re: FIOS is great until there is a problem said by IhateVerizon :
Your Speakeasy speed test may be misleading. Verizon cleverly routes speed tests sites differently than your normal traffic, so if you have slow internet traffic due to packet loss as I did within the Verizon network, the speed test is likely to show near normal speeds.
I just did another test from my office - "normal traffic" in my use case, and verified I'm getting within 10% of the advertised speeds.
said by IhateVerizon :
I just recovered from my 5th outage in two weeks, despite trying to get a ticket opened on the packet loss, which is hardly worth the time. I had to go thru 3 help desk people whose job is to blame your computer or router for about 6 hours of phone time before saying they are escalating the ticket to an engineer. Then they tell you that a 24 hour time is imposed on engineering to get back to you on the ticket. Needless to say, I heard nothing from anyone in over two weeks... Verizon is a monopoly that cares less about its users.
This is the part about Speakeasy I'll miss the most. For big problems, I'll have a helpful tech on the line and ticket opened in a few minutes. Small problems I just file a ticket and it's taken care of. So far I've gotten an acceptable level of service, combined with the price/speed to make FiOS the best value for my needs. | |
| | yt
Premium
join:2008-06-03
| said by IhateVerizon :
Your Speakeasy speed test may be misleading. Verizon cleverly routes speed tests sites differently than your normal traffic, so if you have slow internet traffic due to packet loss as I did within the Verizon network, the speed test is likely to show near normal speeds. Do you have proof of this claim? | |
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