Review by coyotama 
member for 196 days, 1 visits, last login: 160 days ago
updated 196 days ago
 Dallas,Dallas,TX
 $180 per month- (24 month contract)
 about 14 days "Very Fast, Low Latency, Great Customer Service" "DNS Servers, Routers, and Field Technicians" "You're Lucky If You Can Get It"
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Install Co-ordination:
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Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I don't recall precisely how long it took to get the field technician out here to install, though my entire family remembers it as a very lengthy and botched process.
You ideally would be prepared with an electrician ahead-of-time to install CATV RG6 cabling, structured CAT 5e cabling, and modular analog telephone wiring throughout the household, rather than rely on the field technicians, who are no substitute for anything.
In addition, the "home gateway" residential-grade router that is issued to you, especially if it happens to be an Actiontec router, is largely a hunk of garbage, and you are better off paying extra for DirecTV or something for television rather than constantly futz around with the router.
The reason I say go elsewhere for cable television is due to the home gateway issued by Verizon FiOS is required to access TV Guide and Menu services essential for being able to use the FiOS TV.
Due to the fact that the Actiontec routers are worthless garbage, it is far better to pay more to get cable television some other way, and only subscribe for the broadband internet connection alone, maybe a basic telephone service for E911 services, but something like Skype for everything else.
I happen to like FiOS TV in terms of quality, whenever the Verizon-branded router isnt giving us problems.
My entire family has repeatedly called customer support, and we ended up getting the router replaced twice, and then upgraded (at additional cost), and that solved most of our problems.
The last major problem are the severely overloaded and unresponsive DNS servers that Verizon operates. I switched to Google DNS servers, and then to OpenNIC DNS servers for privacy reasons, and that solved almost all of our problems.
However, once you get it working, and minimize the issues caused by the worthless garbage routers they issue, and the overburdened and unresponsive DNS servers, the service often exceeds the "up to" speeds you pay for, the latency is extremely low, usually less than 14 milliseconds, sometimes even as low as 8ms in latency.
Verizon has gone out of their way, I am pleased to report, to ensure we were pleased with our service, they replaced the backup battery twice, replaced the ONT once, and replaced the router twice before they offered an upgraded router, which we went ahead and paid for.
The service, overall, is really great, assuming you have someone technically inclined in the household who can work around the DNS and router issues.
Although Verizon was very reluctant to drop the TV package from our account, they DID go out of their way to ensure everything more-or-less worked, so we let that slide.
We don't really watch TV very often, and there's usually nothing very interesting on, but I don't mind paying extra for it when we need it, for example, to receive election news, and things difficult to find online.
Overall, I am very pleased with Verizon FiOS, and am lucky to actually find myself in one of their limited service areas. My family plans to bump the service up to the highest level, 300/65 Mbps, once we've solved some unrelated problems.
I hope you find this review useful in your choice of broadband service provider, assuming you are lucky enough to have that choice.
Comments:
 | | rotuer issues? use ur own The rotuer is very simple for simple ppl. Its been able to handle everything iv tossed at it. If u want to use ur own router or special settings or what ever, when u change to 300 they have to come out and connect u via eithernet if ur not running it already, Just connect ur our router first and put the VZ one behind it, Just as long as it graps and IP and the coax cable is connected the STBs will get guide and menu. | |
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