HELLO FiOS

The Verizon tech (Mike) arrived at around 8:30 am. He had to run a fiber optic line from about 2 houses down the street. Drilled a hole into the basement, mounted the equipment, configured our laptops and was out the door by 10:30.
I just did a speed test that came back 33ms ping, 15.34Mbps download & 5.14Mbps upload. Pretty good!
Here's a photo of the equipment that he mounted on the basement wall.

Actual Tellabs 1600 Optical Network Terminal (ONT).

Typical Fiber Connection on Optical Network Terminal

Typical Interface side on Optical Network Terminal

Typical Modem

Goodbye DSL

I received a letter from Verizon a few weeks ago stating that our copper landlines were being discontinued (removed) and that we would have to switch our home phone service to fiber optics (FiOS).

From what I have read, Verizon and other landline companies are doing this to save money as it is expensive to service multiple systems within one service area. I can see their point even though I will miss the old POTS copper line system with its own voltage supply. It was nice to have home phone service during power outages. The copper line system has been extremely reliable over the past 34 years that we have lived here. We have had zero problems with it and even the DSL service we started 1 1/2 years ago has been very reliable.

I'm sure Verizon also wants everyone to switch to fiber optics so that they have the opportunity to up-sell  their customers to their high-tier, high-priced TV and internet services. Good business decision on their part and a win-win for them I suppose.

Anyway, our new FiOS system will be installed next Friday and will use our house electricity supply. I have read our electricity cost will go up about $5-$7 per month. It will be equipped with a battery backup system that is supposed to last a few hours. I know people that have FiOS and after the system is a year or two old the backup lasts for about 1/2 hour. The batteries should be replaced every couple of years.

The good news is that our internet service speed will increase to 15/5 Mbps which is way faster than the 1.2/.37 Mbps that our DSL service has now. That will be nice as we do stream movies and other internet programming to our TV.

Verizon has stated that our price will stay the same as what we were paying now. We'll see how that holds up in the future. 

Here's the letter...