Waiting for Verizon.. [telecom]

Unfortunately, Steve's experience was similar to mine. I'm guessing others have similar "tails-of-woe." The sales people lie, but the installers do a good job - when they get there.

The salesperson lied to me about certain discounts I would be receiving. After a couple of billing cycles without the discount, it took a 20 minute call (is that short?) to straighten it out. The did give me what they promised, but it took a while.

In my case, my FiOS install window was 8-12. They did actually call me to say they were running late and asked if I wanted to reschedule or wait (I guess that system wasn't in place in Steve's neighborhood). I chose to wait. The guy finally showed up well after 5:00pm. Since I only got phone and internet and had everything pre-positioned, it was a simple hour install. He did a good and professional job.

Once it got up an running, it was much faster than previous connection. Although, it does slow down at times and is unusable with T-Mobile's "voice over WiFI." Oddly enough, Vonage works fine over it, so something with T-Mobile must be different.

My advise to anyone considering FiOS is to be prepared for a run around with the installation and to document carefully everything the sales people promise. It's probably better to order online, as the screens will show you exactly what is loaded in the system. If you call them, they may go "oft script" to close the deal. Once you get it, you'll probably like or even love it; but it's not a simple journey to get there.

-Gary

It is not only Verizon, I had problems like that with AT&T California, I was sold U-verse service, but the installer could not get it to even come up, bad outside plant. They now have removed my whole area from the service until they get around to replacing 2000 feet of cable.

I only get net service from Cox. Every time I move I tell them where to put the jack and that is ALL they are to do. I will connect everything I need to connect.

But built into my data plan is a wire maintenance plan. So I get them to do telecom and network wiring for me. Nice huh?

That's not quite what I meant.

The expectation for any modern broadband service is that it should have excellent uptime and high reliability. The question is what happens when something does break down the road. Perhaps something not as blatantly obvious as a complete service outage, but instead packet loss, bandwidth slowdowns, staled connections, DNS problems, etc. At this point you have become fully dependent on the service, and you're now at the mercy of the competence of Verizon support.

Have those of you that have been using FIOS for a while had positive experiences in dealing with Verizon support for more subtle and highly technical issues, or are you just crossing your fingers and hoping it'll never come to that?

Was your testing just to confirm Verizon's claims, or did Verizon ever give you reason to believe you might not see their claimed bandwidth? (Of course I'm sure they have lots of "best effort" wishy-washy wording in their contract, as no low-end ISP wants to commit to providing a guaranteed bandwidth.)

You probably haven't had a need for this yet, but for others with business-class FIOS, have you tried getting custom PTR records for your static IPs?

If I was going to depend on an ability to run servers - even for personal use - I'd want to be sure they were expressly permitted by the contract.

Sounds about right. I see $110 for 25/25 Mbps with a 1 year contract.

I guess my objection to their pricing has always been that they charge an excessive premium for static IPs. (I wonder how that'll change when IPv6 starts getting rolled out.)

Of course it's still a great bargain if you look at it purely from a bandwidth perspective, and ignore that they offer the same thing with dynamic IPs for $20 less.

I think the price difference used to be more, as they used to start the business plans at $100 with non-symmetric bandwidth. Now I see the slowest link you can get with a static IP is 25/25.

If only somebody like Speakeasy resold FIOS...

(At one time Galaxy (gis.net) was a FIOS reseller, and it looked like there was going to be a competitive market of FIOS resellers, but it hasn't materialized, and Galaxy has since dropped it. A Google search for "fios reseller" turns up several hits, including a CA ISP that is undercutting Verizon's prices. But the trick isn't necessarily to get a better price, but a more competent support organization.)

-Tom

The online system has its own problems. I've had orders lost and suspended, requiring hours with the sales and inside plant people to fix. I think the real problem is that Verizon is a collection of stovepiped groups, none of which can complete an order by itself, and none of whom will take the responsibility to get the others' cooperation.

Well, at least there is hope in your case. I live in an older beach community served by PacBell/SBC/AT&T and their cherry picking plans don't include my area.

But, they have a place on their site where I can sign up and help bring it to my area. I wonder how much they pay? (I can hear Ernestine snorting now.)

Verizon, at&t, and others are all very large companies. They serve communities all over the country, and various services, eg POTS voice, broadband (ie DSL and fibre) and cellphone are provided by different divisions. It seems there is a great deal of variation in service quality provided depending on the carrier, geographic area, and the type of service offered.

Accordingly, I'd like to suggest when discussing service issues, that posters be specific as to the geographic area and service in question.

For myself, I've found Verizon offers excellent service and support for POTS in PA and NJ. I suspect this is because both the service techs and the business office are legacy Bell System operations with a long record of good service in those states. Even if the employees themselves were hired post-divesture, they were still trained by people from the 'old school'.

However, I've found support for wireless and broadband to be not as good. I suspect this is because many of the business people are more sales oriented, working on commission under tough quotas with high employee turnover, rather than service-oriented with rigorous training. Unfortunately it seems that carriers today want to dump the legacy attitude on focus on aggressive sales, even if it means sales people promising rates and installations that aren't true.

Historically, Bell provided good service in PA and NJ. But some other Bell territories, such as served by baby Bell NYNEX, did not have as good a record.

Speaking of Verizon vs Comcast, what is the overall quality of service from both companies, and, technically, quality of voice service, between service through Comcast's voice options and through FIOS?

I'd like to save money through a package deal, but I don't want to have to have the demarc moved from its current location. Last I heard, phone service had to be routed through a special box inside the house using Comcast's method, and I don't want to have to rely on VOIP should power/Internet service go down.

Insights welcome.

Thanks.

Scott

If I recall correctly, sometime in the early or mid 1970s New York Telephone (I think that is what it was called) service standards fell to all time lows in metro-NYC. I was there a lot in those days, and I recall perhaps 50% of the pay stations in Manhattan being out of service.

If I recall correctly, inter-office trunks also fell in the dumpster, more because of bad maintenance than growtth. Thus, the grade of service also went into the dumpster.

But, no one could match General Telephone Company of California for extremtly poor service in the 1970s, especially in the greater Los Angeles area. It got so bad Pacific Bell complained behind the scenes repeatedly to the California PUC how General's lousy tandem arrangements were affecting Pacific's metro service in Los Angeles.

I personally felt the wrath of GT's then awful toll service.

I don't have Vz's FIOS myself but I know several people who do and they like it. The only drawback was during an extended power failure which exceeded the time of the backup battery, once that happened they had no voice telephone service until commercial power was restored. (Given the nasty storms and power outages we've had lately, I would think the backup battery needs to last longer; I think it's rated at three hours.)

I think a problem will be with _all_ consumer-oriented broadband services will be when the initial promotional pricing ends and the cost goes up steeply. Some carriers/services keep extending the promotions or offer new ones, but the rules always change and the consumer has to invest time to keep on top of it. If the consumer does nothing the plan may default to a high level. Of course, other services these days, like banks and cable TV, pull the same stuff.

You are correct about NYC; it was circa 1970 when telephone service quality seriously decayed. The problems included:

-- Far more rapid turnover (connects and disconnects) than in the past or what the company expected. This put a high load on installers (back then someone came to a home or business to wire in or remove all telephone sets); as well as the central office. One big problem was that the main distributing frames became overloaded with jumpers causing problems.

--Difficulty in hiring and retaining skilled personnel. Oslin wrote that the phone company was forced by external pressures to hire unqualified people which hurt service quality.

--Old switching equipment not adequately maintained. For example, if a line-finder was bad, lots of people were hurt.

--Growth in traffic volume exceeded estimates, straining equipment capacity.

--As to pay phones, urban decay and vandalism contributed to the outages, which were severe. There were still many 3-slot payphones in service in those days. I remember a large bank of payphones in an H&H Automat and only one was working, and there was a line to use it. NYC circa 1970 was a troubled city. Things have changed dramatically.

The Bell System got much negative publicity from these problems. They finally mobilized a task force and brought in craftsmen from other Bell companies; sort of as if NYC had a hurricane and needed extra assistance to restore service.

Another unrelated problem was a bad fire in a major switching second circa 1973. Everyone served was out for a few weeks until the switches could be laboriously cleaned by hand with q-tips and cables respliced. A new ESS was installed and others quickly reprogrammed to handle some of the toll and tandem switching capability that was lost. Crews worked around the clock to restore service.

Sometimes I wonder if service problems today are a legacy from sloppy or rushed cable work done back in the 1970s. Perhaps splices and building distribution panels (say the panel in the basement of a large old apt building) were adequate for voice grade communications but don't hold up well for DSL. I also wonder if some of the old wiring in apt and office buildings may not be well maintained, but I'm just speculating.

On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:46:06 -0700, hancock4 wrote: .......

Isn't that sort of statement just an acknowledgement that telephony cabling and infrastructure has a "use by" date?

Why is there an expectation that infrastructure that has its technical origins back in the early 20th century will still be up to the job of satisfying the demands of this era?

I think that people have been more than well-served by this sort of infrastructure over the years it has existed, but there must come a time when it is acknowledged that total replacement is necessary and that such a thing will cost money.

In a message dated 3/17/2010 5:31:45 PM Central Daylight Time, snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com writes

As I recall, a foreman from Oklahoma City spent almost a year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant (sp) area of Brooklyn supervising the rebuilding of outside plant, including drops. He had an armed guard assigned to him because the area was so dangerous. Long retired, he died last month. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

A resourceful individual could come up with a better arrangement than this battery backup.

Example: My father lived alone. He had a cablemodem, a router that supported his VOIP line, and a cordless phone [in addition to his PC, monitor, and printer].

I got him a very hefty UPS and plugged all three devices cablemodem, VOIP router, and cordless phone) into it (and did not plug in his computer or other devices). That would have lasted for quite a while had the need arisen.

I would suspect that this FIOS unit does not use much power. Adding it to the list of necessary items to keep voice going during a power outage should not be overly demanding.

At my home, I have two UPS units. One powers my PC and monitor. The other powers my DSL modem, my router, and my VOIP device. Should I have a power outage, I won't be out of voice communication. Sure, my PC and my monitor will probably go down after fifteen minutes. But the devices that support my VOIP service will not go down unless there is an extremly long outage.

Of course, you are always dependent upon the ISP. If they go down, nothing else will matter.

I don't consider the fifteen minutes for the computer and monitor such a big deal. What that UPS is best for is keeping power spikes, blackouts, and brownouts from affecting your equipment.

Regards,

Fred

(Different friends have reported slightly different numbers when I've lent them my KAW. I don't personally have FIOS).

Looking at the battery in my APC small UPS, it's 12V and 7.5 AH. Figuring on a 50 percent drainage/efficiency number, that would be 12 [enter], 7.5 [times], 2 [divide] -> 45 watt-hours. meaning that a 10 watt demand would run for about 4.5 hours.

My commercial grade UPS (also from APC) uses 2 12V batteries with, iirc, 15 amp hours each. Or four times the capacity. That would give us about 16 hours. (The batteries can drain a bit lower, but the conversion efficiency overhead is bigger...)

A small car battery with 500 watt hours would get you... 50 hours.

Car batteries are inappropriate for this type of usage; their internal plates are w-a-y too thin -- they're designed for starting a car quickly then accepting a continuous recharge, period.

The correct types of batteries are marine deep discharge trolling batteries and the similar kind for powered wheelchairs and golf carts. These batteries have extremely thick lead plates and are also quite a bit heavier by volume (typically 50+ pounds per battery).

One of my hobbies is astronomy and I know what works and what doesn't to operate a computerized scope and accessories from dusk to dawn.

I get the 85aH (Amp/Hour) or greater capacity batteries at discount stores like Costco and they're also available at marine suppliers; the wheelchair batteries can be found at Sears and similar. I use battery cases from sporting goods suppliers such as Cabelas because one doesn't want these batteries "naked" and exposed -- they have enough current to vaporize a screwdriver, for example. :-)

Some of my smaller scopes work fine with "jumpstart" batteries such as these [note the cases from Cabelas on the right side] per , but the deep-cycle batteries are mandatory for prolonged use or high- power use such as the SBIG STV device at the left in the LX200+DS80 photo.

Another advantage of "external" batteries for a UPS is the UPS won't be ruined when the internal batteries go belly-up and leak; I've lost numerous UPS systems (APC, Best, etc.) over the years that way (with internal batteries only).

***** Moderator's Note *****

I don't think car batteries get a continuous recharge: IIRC, the voltage regulator interrupts the circuit from the alternator to the battery when the proper voltage is reached.

However, this brings up a good question: are car batteries suitable for use in _any_ backup service? Despite their shortcomings, their price/performance ratio might justify the compromises.

Bill Horne Moderator

Vonage is on that kick now, and promoting it widely. After 6 months the price goes up from something like $15 to $25 a month.

There's nothing to wonder about, this is exactly the case in major metro areas. When I first tried to get DSL in the early 2000s, Ameritech tried to turn it on for me, but it turned out they had absolutely no idea how I got service, what state the wires were in, and what else was hooked up to them (I was listed as 19,000 feet from my central office, we've since gathered that this is database code for "damifino"). They eventually gave up, and I didn't get DSL until 2 years later after SBC took over and from what I can tell, trashed lots of the old plant and started over. This turned out to be nice for me, because they set up a brand spanking new uverse vrad just one street over a couple months ago and I have stupid fast internet now, and crackle-free phone service for the first time ever. *

- -

• PV Something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews.

***** Moderator's Note *****

Someone please help out an old CO Tech, and tell me what a "vrad" is and what "uverse" is. Please.

Bill Horne Moderator

In some (not all) applications older infrastructure had heavier and more rugged construction than later construction. Some reasons include:

--Longer term outlook: Companies expected they'd be around for awhile and that the infrastructure needs would be stable. Thus, they were willing to invest for the long term. For example, central office switches were expected to last decades and were built accordingly.

--Cheap capital: Capital was cheaper going way back, so companies could raise money to pay for the heavy infrastructure. In the 1960s and 1970s capital became quite expensive.

--Limited material options: Not so much for telephone equipment, but way back they didn't know as much about long term durability and strength of materials. In order to prevent failure they were conservative and used heavy designs. This allowed a long service life. As time went on, they realized they could get away with lighter designs. They also discovered substitute materials later on that were cheaper and functional, but not necessarily as long lasting.

--Business freedom: Going way back there was less or no government regulation and companies had more freedom to do as they chose. Originally telephone service was expensive; a nickel per neighborhood call (dime for across a big city) meant the equivalent of $2 or $4 today. By the 1960s telephone companies were under great pressure to hold rates down and from unions to raise wages so they sought cheaper methods that weren't as durable. Some Bell companies felt this rate pressure more than others, and I believe what became NYNEX was subject to quite a bit of rate pressure, perhaps not enough to pay for proper service in areas that were costly to serve. (Maintaining the massive underground wire plant in NYC must be very expensive, especially they must dodge subways and numerous other utilities.)