Cable vs FIOS
 

Verizon installed FIOS lines on my street last week and the service should be available in the next month or two. The service is $49.95 for 15 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up which is about the same price as my cable modem at 5 Mbps down.

My question is, "Is there a limit on the speeds one can get over cable?" Basically, will they be able to offer similar speeds to compete with Verizon? Should I switch? Does FIOS have other advantages?

Thanks.

http://www22.verizon.com/FiosForHome...netForHome.asp

I'd be jumping to try FIOS if I could. I'd switch to that and switch from Comcast TV to Dish Network. But right now it's a no-go in my street/area. It's up and running in some places in the Pittsburgh metro area.

I don't really need 15Mbps. They offer a 5Mbps service that's cheaper than what I get from Comcast (only by 6 bucks, though).

Service over the cable company lines can go faster, yes, but will it get to 15 at the same price? Don't know. In every system like this the bandwidth is shared at some point, but it's shared closer to the houses in the cable systems as I understand it, which could pose a problem with faster and faster speeds. A cable line can go to at least somewhere around 30Mbps, but whether they can put things in place to sustain that speed for everyone when half a dozen or so on the same loop are downloading at the same time, that would be the tricky part.

If FIOS and similar services become widespread, though, they will have to compete. Not only that, you might see Verizon competing in the TV area as well, at least with some sort of video on demand. Not sure if they need extra regulatory approval for that or what. Probably. Most cable contracts with municipalities are set up as monopolies.

Ya know; speedwise it seems useless, I get 6mbit from Comcast, and the only time I ever use part of the full speed is when I am downloading from P2P; web, email or other applications don't even get close to the full potential of the line, so as much as the geek in me says that 15mbit would rock, I don't think even I would need it. The only possible advantage is using them as leverage against your cable operator to lower your monthly rate.

Cable can reach the same speeds (or even faster) with the new DOCSIS 2.0 spec, and some operators in Europe offer this, so it is entirely possible that Comcast, in the near future will follow. FWIW, by the end of summer ALL Comcast subscribers on the CHSI Gold package (used to be 6/768) will move to 8/768, which IMHO is faster than any consumer needs.

The really important fact is what is the upload speed? As ScottC says, 15mbps is more than most of us need but the real gating factor is your upload speed.

All interenet access service is shared, cable is on the local segement, xDSL and FIOS are in the Central Office. Cable being shared at the local segment can be slower because of congestion/the number of households sharing the cable. I'd go to FIOS, but I wouldn't pay for 15mbps.

FIOS is a disaster waiting to happen. VZ has semi no clue what they are doing. They are only spending this huge capital investment to meet certain regulation they claimed they could meet and avoid a repeat of having to pay back states money (they paid the state of PA 1 billion in damages).

Things to remember:

Fios - runs on batter backup at your house and on the pole - leaves more to go wrong in a power outage.

The internet does not run at those speeds so good luck every actually attaining them.

VZ is just a nasty company

Cable - will work in a power outage if you have a UPS on your stuff, the batter deployed for them are a bit different in the way power of power consumption.

Internet still does not run at those speeds.

Most cable companies are not as nasty as VZ

-Vincent

Vincent makes some very good points. Fiber is terribly complicated, and most technicians are not trained to work with it...

This is not necessarily true. Cable relies on the similar distributed amplifiers and equipment that fiber requires. They use battery backup throughout neighborhoods to accomplish this.

Also, cable companies also use fiber, although not into your residence, hence the "Hybrid Fiber Coaxial" term.

Heh, good rant against Verizon. Far as I'm concerned, Comcast and Verizon are about equally evil. I haven't been a residential customer of Verizon in a couple years. (I do deal with them at work sometimes, but only for voice.)

Anyway, main reason for my post: The upload speed of FIOS is 2Mbps. This is notably faster than anything else approaching that price point.

What I'd like to see is Comcast offer a lower-priced service. The increasing downstream bandwidth, as mentioned, is starting to get pretty pointless. Comcast is still hopeless for TV, though. I want to go from economy basic to something with just a couple more channels, but the step is from $12 to $46 with nothing in between. Dish has a nice package at $32 (with incentives to make it even cheaper the first few months). But if I went with Dish and kept Comcast internet, Comcast would stick me with a $15 price increase on that. Argh.

Regarding power - unless they're running an office-powered type of circuit (T1, analog POTS) the facilities that terminate the ciruits still need to receive external power, which is susceptable to power loss just like your home equipment. Its how much the providers want/have to pay to have a resilient power infrastructure.

The question I'd be asking is during the time of utility power loss, who's responsible for powering the FIOS demarc transceiver?

Regarding the service - Just like power, it relies on the infrastructure that the provider has built, as well as pricing, performance, and reliability.

Performance wise, FIOS has cable beat out in about 95% of the domestic US markets as most cable providers won't/can't offer a 15mbit pipe.

Availability wise, cable has FIOS beat by a huge margin. The infrastructure that is in place can provide cable Internet to most places with little or no modification.

Reliability wise, its purely geographical and depends on the underlying infrastructure. Its just like cell phones - some providers have better service coverage in some areas than others.

Pricing wise, in larger areas they can effectively market products to where pricing is almost equal. In smaller areas you will find more predatory marketing schemes when only one type of service is available. (For instance, some of the remote areas of AZ and WV only have DSL access and its priced just like that - 1M/384k for $50/month)



Working for a DSL service provider that offered service in about 30 states in the US we had HUGE differences in the quality of service we offered as well as the pricing. the large areas where we faced competition (Rochester, NY and San Francisco, CA) the infrastructure was pretty reliable as well as the service marketed/priced competitively. In small areas (such as the AZ/WV states mentioned above) they were horrible infrastructures on horrible copper lines that people paid $50+/month for, and suffered throughout outaged and such due to no other options. (Talk about overselling the lines...wow)

Retrospectively, as both a cable (Time Warner) and DSL customer in Rochester I had better luck with DSL, but only marginally on uptime. Both were pretty reliable, speeds were comparable, and pricing was as well (not figuring my employee discount). My choice = DSL.

Down here in PA I had a choice of two smaller providers, which were similarly priced but cable offered a higher up/down speed, I decided to go with cable. Very minimal downtime (maybe 1 hour in the past 6 months), and no speed issues with the loop that I'm on.



Personal opinion, go give FIOS a try.

-JC

The real question (to which an end-consumer with no contacts will never get a straight answer) is not so much the "last-mile" loop to your prem, but the underlying infrastructure inside of VZ's network and how much commodity internet egress/peerage/drainage VZ has purchased for your area.

If your corner of VZ's network only has, say, 500mb of drainage to a single provider/peering point and you have 5000 people with 15mb circuits, you can see there might be a problem.

Everyone oversubscribes, but there are some DSL and cable companies who have oversubscription factors of 5000:1 and greater. Generally speaking, if everyone with the service can only squeeze 1mb/sec of bandwidth, having a 15mb pipe seems slightly stupid.

I think one of Motorola's new products combines a cable modem, router, VOIP, with an integrated UPS backup. I don't think having to supply your own power is a big deal (my parents still have an old rotary princess phone with the separate AC transformer to provide the light on the dial). If your power goes out, then except for those that have a laptop, it's not like you'll be doing much surfing. So really it's the voice applications where you need a battery backup to emulate what's in the homes now. A simple 200W-300W UPS I'm sure has more than enough reserve to power the modem, router, and VOIP for a few hours.

A previous poster was correct, the speed increases provided now really don't provide as much improvement as they used to. I remember going from 1.5Mb/s to 3.0Mb/s with Comcast, and then 3 to 4 late last year. I could really see the difference. My connection was up'd from 4Mb/s to 6Mb/s earlier this month, and I'm not sure if I noticed much difference.

Jeff

I dont thinkVerizon is (currently) as dumb as you think, but it and the other baby bells have been dumb dumb dumb the recent past.

As far as NASTYNESS, Comcast is as NASTY as any of the baby bells ever were or ever could be.

FIOS is a natural extension of Verison getting into the lucrative delivery tv conduit delivery business and also VOIP except they can do FIOS quickly and with minimum govt permitting. Some interesting things going on in TX.

MisterNice

I work with AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, MCI, and Qwest on a regular basis, for mainly business but ocassionaly home use too.

I prefet AT&T, Comcast, and Qwest - Customer services, quality of service and etc are top notch (with the expection of Comcast ocassionaly). VZ cant do anything properly. They are still have issues deploying ADSL - now they are moving on to fiber.

I am well aware that modern cable technology relies upon HFC, it is infact a reliable proven technology that the cable companies use. All FTTH will do is force the cable companies to reduce pricing.

If you try FIOS frm VZ I wish you luck and recommend you keep a back up HSI provider.

-Vincent

Wanted to add one other big difference to this list. With Verizon's FIOS, it is within the terms of service to operate a server (whether for fun or profit) on your premises. With Comcast's TOS it is not, even at the higher levels. Also, with FIOS bandwidth is it realistic to do so.

This was based on V's info from nine months ago, if anyone knows any different, please correct.

Are you sure you can run a server on FIOS? I could have sworn that was restricted too...

On Comcast you can operate a service when you have a business class level of service.

-Vincent