I got this FiOS report via another list I'm on, and the
author suggested that I forward his note to this list. By
the way, it seems like Verizon allowed him to keep two
copper phone lines and change a third phone line to glass.
This means I either heard the sales rep wrong or the sales
rep was wrong.

---Peter Schmidt said:---------------------------

Hey, I promised I'd post about my Fios experience, so here
it is in a nutshell: the service is as advertised.

I am getting full value from my 15Mbps on ftp downloads, for
example:

defiant:1>> wget
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/iso/FC3-i386-disc\
2.iso

[...]
09:50:32 (1.46 MB/s) - `FC3-i386-disc2.iso' saved
[668,520,448]

That's 1.46 megaBYTES per second, about 18 times faster than
what I'd see with my DSL connection. Downloading the data
for an entire CD in under 10 minutes is pleasing to me...

Now, here are the gory details:

I ordered 15M/2M Internet service from the Verizon website.
I told them the primary computer is a Win2K box, so they'd
be able to follow their install process and use the
auto-registration software. I think they would have been
stumped if I hadn't told them I was using Windows or a Mac.
Of course my desktop is Linux, and now that I'm
registered, there's no issue with accessing the service from it.

They scheduled the install for within 1 week, and gave me an
8am-5pm window. A couple days before, I found a big box on
my doorstep with "hold for Fios installer" written on it.
Looked inside, it turned out to have the ONT (optical
network tap) and the battery module. The ONT is about
8"x3"x3", and needs to be plugged in to a wall outlet (not
an extension cord). The battery module is about 12"x12"x3".

The installer showed up around 9am on the appointed day. He
is a high-end VZ craft guy who has been trained to do the
ONT install, internal CAT5 wiring and software
install/registration. We quickly agreed on the location for
the ONT and battery unit. Both got mounted to the wall in
my basement next to the breaker box. He went to work.

About an hour later, he came to tell me he had the ONT
installed, but "no light." He went off to confer with his
boss. Long story short, we didn't get light to the house
until 2 days later. They spent a day and a half
troubleshooting it to piece of
defective-from-the-manufacturer fiber _inside_ some piece of
gear on a pole a block or two from me.

Communication with me during the process was _excellent_, I
got updates every couple hours from the installer. He said
this is the first time they had this issue, yet they were
able to repair the equipment themselves, instead of having
to acquire a replacement (and delaying me a lot more). The
repair crew worked until 8pm the first day, 8am to 7pm the
second, and 8am to 11am on the third before finally
completing the repair. They were actually talking about
working round the clock! They are _serious_ about making
this service successful.

So, once we did have light to the house, the installer
completed the internal wiring in another hour. You get 1
free CAT5 run plus jack included in the install, though you
can pay for more. I was cheap, and had him run the one to
near a point where my own wires run.

Once that was done, he got me, and we connected the D-Link
DI604 4 LAN/1 WAN router to the wall. Then we plugged my
Win2K PC into it, and I changed it to use DHCP. It picked
up an address, so we run the install CD.

It immediately wanted to upgrade IE (which I had removed
from the machine), so I gritted my teeth and said OK. Then
I had to reboot. After that, we zipped through the steps of
the registration. I picked a new username and password, and
the software confirmed I was good to go. We then pointed IE
at infospeed.verizon.net, and the speed test there indicated
7Mbps. The installer had told me I probably wouldn't see
15Mbps unless we used the install SW to modify the MTU and
TCP parameters on the PC, so I wasn't alarmed. He was happy
to see it was more than 5Mbps, since it meant I hadn't been
wrongly provisioned for the 5M/1M service.

We let the SW tweak the PC, and retried the test. Sure
enough, over 14Mbps. I declared myself happy, and the
installer bugged out of here. I then got to work rewiring
my network. One small surprise when I went to reconfigure
the D-Link through its web interface was that the install SW
had set my Verizon username and password as the
administrative name/password on the D-Link. This is not a
step most users would need to do, and it was documented in
the Verizon booklet.

I've been happy with it ever since!

Notes:

I was fortunate that I didn't have to be out of my office
this week, or I wouldn't have been home over the couple days
of installation attempts, and they would have had to
reschedule me. I suspect what bit me is in fact an unusual
event, since the installer had done several others with no
problem.

I have 3 Verizon local numbers coming into the house: home,
business and fax. I had them do the Fios install on the fax
line, and it still works fine. However, this let me dodge
the worry about an extended power-outage - beyond the 6 hour
life of the battery - taking out my home phone line.
Assuming the service continues to be reliable, at some point
I am going to seriously consider going to VoIP for the home
and business lines, but I'm not in a hurry. (I'm looking
forward to a personal Asterisk PBX on a Linux box to do
fancy stuff with incoming calls...)

If things had gone as planned, I figure this install would
cost Verizon $700-$1000. High end craft person, truck roll,
about 3 hours on site - it's expensive. If I don't sign up
for the triple play - especially TV - I don't think they'll
ever recoup the installation cost. However, the software
would work fine for sell-installs, which would be feasible
with the 802.11g router option, so they are positioned to
take some cost out. But the ONT install is going to take a
truckroll for the foreseeable future.

So that's the long version, hope it's interest/use to some
of you!

Regards -- Peter