said by Thinkdiff:Wow.. That's the best argument against FiOS I've seen yet. You really have Verizon all figured out. Spend billions of dollars in infrastructure upgrades to save pennies on their electricity bills.
They should keep repairing 50-100 year old lines.. or you could, you know, use one less lightbulb somewhere in your house, but you're right. That would totally be screwing you over.
I'm all for FIOS, have it myself and love it. But there's a scale, efficiency and moving responsibility of power and maintenance to the user that people frequently dismiss - like you did. "Gee, it's only 30-watts!" Well, gee, it's only a $3.99 bogus line fee on your bill too. Multiply that by millions of customers and soon you're talking real money. It's the 30 watt bulb that always on. The ONT doesn't even qualify as a vampire device since it is always on and never in a power saving state. (Well, that I've noticed anyway.)
In any case, energy wise, FiOS is far less efficient for providing voice phone service to homes when it comes to power. It's much more efficient to keep lines energized in a limited number of locations than it is to distribute mini (and far less robust - 8 hours tops) backups all over the place. And have the customer maintenance the backup too. I'm sure Verizon will see significant drops in the power required to run this system when consumers foot the electric bill for most of the network. Long term, that's part of the reason it's more efficient [for them]. These are the gifts that keep giving once the buildout is complete.
And yes - I do believe that they should be repairing and replacing copper until there's something else that's AS RELIABLE in EMERGENCY situations as copper is. The whole point of regulations requiring high availability service was for safety of life, not because I was without power for two days, felt lonely and wanted to chat with g-ma. It's because I was without power for two days and my idiot neighbor was using candles for light and NOW THEIR HOUSE IS BURNING. And Verizon has neatly escaped this with FiOS. They've basically said, "we're no longer responsible for providing reliable phone service".
I think FiOS is a GREAT product. Suggesting that it replaces POTS is a bridge too far. We don't have anything nearly as reliable that provides safety of life service.
However, in the aftermath of Sandy people have noticed and are considering performance standards for wireless, etc.
So no, I don't think Verizon is screwing people for requiring some equipment in the home to use the Internet or watch TV. But to suggest that it's a nice and neat replacement for POTS is incredibly unnerving.