Cable modem vs Verizon FIOS?

We're currently using a BrightHouse cable modem to connect to the Internet. The connection has been getting rather unreliable, and I'm considering switching to Verizon FIOS.  So I'm looking for any feedback anyone has about experiences pro or con with these services.

With our BrightHouse connection, I've swapped out the modem a couple of times (by schlepping it to the local BrightHouse office and exchanging it). There's no cost involved, but it's a hassle and should not be necessary. I've also changed coax cables a couple of times. What's odd to me is that our cable television feed seems to work almost 100% of the time (we typically will have some minor outages during the hurrican storm season). So I now (again) have a BrightHouse technician scheduled to come to the house and see if they can figure this out.

The fiber connection from Verizon is enticing. For US$50 a month, we can get 20 Mbps down/ 5 Mbps up ...which is about double what we currently have for throughput. I'm trying to verify with Verizon that the wireless router that they say I would have to use will allow me to disable SSID broadcast, use MAC address filtering, and use WPA encryption. The sales folks are quite friendly, but know very little of the technical details ...which is a whole 'nother issue that I'll choose to ignore at the moment :)

So... anyone have any feedback?

I'll continue researching and will post findings and whatever we decide to do. Cheers :)

Comments

[mike]

i've never had more problems with internet then i do with verizon fios. honestly, i would recommend staying away from it, and stick with cable. i am paying for a 20/10 connection. i have like a 5/3 connection. when i first got it, no problems. a year and a half later i'm having issues. i have bad connection on my xbox too. i called them, they sent a guy. it was working, and it gradually slowed down again.

[peter]

\verizon =MaBell all over agian



give me copper or give me death .. long live POTS

to be honist cable sucks too but not as bad a verizonFIOS

for 6 years in our new house the bilder used RG59 !!!!for a 280 foot run to the trunk LOSSY!! no it was NOT RG6....

on analoge it just got a tiny snowy on the high channels "no big deal" .. wen we went digital our service was crap .. then i befriended a cable guy to to a full sweep test of our system .. over 50dB loss!!! (I am a HAM so i can smell bad coax from a mile away ).. so he had the cable company put in RG11 to our house !!!!!!1.3dB loss......better ....shure fibre has more headroom to grow as 10GIG fiber exsitsand cable maxes out at around 150 MBps..but "for now " fiber its a OVER KILL ....personaly i think the "last mile " should allwas be copper as is easer for a layman consumer to splice and work withand cables back bone IS fibre ..

fibre to the "hood" is a good idea but NOT to the home

also combining services is NOT a good idea !!!! case in pointoften my friends DSL dies and so does his phone ... they share a common line ..for him is all or nothing ..its one thing to combine TV and WEB but PHONE is a life line and POTS is quite reliable and if you keep POTS you can still use your 56K modem :-)heck you can dial any number buy shorting out the line its called pulse dial modeall you need is a speeker and a switch...

BTW i live accross the street from the fiber> copper hub for TWC ;-)i was offered by comcast a few years back a fibre connection for 290 a month ..I my self use a commercial account so i get some stactic IPs and a nice Upload speed ..15down 5 up ...yummy!!!

and I do a ton of serving of files from my home so those port blocks on VZ fios are a no go for me

and the SSID thing .. legally i HAVE to use my call-sign as i use my WIFI on a high power dish under part 97 and the FCC states that a HAMs router SSID must be there call..""""if your ever in DM13DC log in to KG6LSE ;-)"""

the only big problem with our cable is its thermally sensitive..for 2 weeks out of the year the cables go though a expansion cycle that can causeloss of signal it only works when is cold.....

on the flip side i do have verizon for my new cell phoneas my nextel does not work where i live ..and VZ cell is GREAT!!!!!!

[Jeremy Knauff]

Avoid Verizon at all costs.

We have been using them for our business and have had nothing but problems. They will magically add charges for services that they never provided, claim not to have received payment (their excuse is - we receive so many checks every day) then when you provide proof, they just say "oh, I guess you did pay it." When we switched from DSL to FIOS, they pulled our DSL lines, but then couldn't put in our FIOS lines until almost 6 days later.

In short, they provide nothing but excuses and their "customer service" is completely useless.

[frank]

today is jan 26th 2009 i have fios im in long island ny.and i have to say it kicks the hell out of optimum i get 20/20 and i dont even pay extra for it its there new speed. and 20 up 20 down i get all of it WOOOOOOOOO. ANYTIME OF THE DAY i was seeding some torrents i had a constant upload speed of 2.3 MEGABYTES per second i topped out at 2.31 but was sustained at 2.25 megs a sec and my download is the same oh and the cable service is much better cable is outdated go with FIOS and speed is always the same no matter what day what holiday what time of day it never has gone down once and maintains its speed at all times bye cableeeeeeeeeeeeee