News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

June 21, 2007

internet

FiOS is popping up everywhere

Posted Jun. 21, ’07, 6:33 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Internet

FiOS conduit I’m a net addict. I have been ever since the days that I would connect through a Geoport modem to surf around ZDNet’s Hotfiles. We’ve come a long way since those days, haven’t we? By the time I got to college and a fast, fast connection, DSL and cable were finally becoming commonly available.

These days I rock an 8 Mbps/768 Kbps connection through Comcast and a cable modem. Sure, I could have gotten DSL, but it would have been a lot slower and practically forced me into getting a phone line through Verizon. As cable modem speeds increased, DSL became pretty much irrelevant. Verizon’s turned this around with their FiOS service. It’s fast. Really fast. For about the same I’m paying now, I get almost the downstream and more than double the upstream (15 Mbps/2 Mbps).

Combined with their new TV service that’s available, it’s been getting some really great adoption rates in areas that it’s offered. They’ve got a million FiOS customers. I’m supposed to get the option to get the service soon. I haven’t had any particularly bad experiences with Comcast, but I’ve got to have the latest and greatest.

A net connection is supposed to be platform agnostic, but considering the initial setup I had with Comcast, that’s not strictly true. Do any of you use the service? Did you have any Mac related issues? Are the rest of you champing at the bit for this to come to your neighborhood?


10 Comments

Peter Cohen said:

Yeah, but it looks like FIOS service on the Cape is still way off in the distant future.

I'll cry for myself as I'm eating cracked lobster tails at the beach this weekend.

June 21, 2007 7:37 AM
Jason said:

When FiOS came into my neighborhood I was all over it. I bailed on Comcast, and their ever increasing rates. I'm on the 5M down/2M up plan, and have had zero issues with it on any of my systems -- Mac, Windows, and Linux. It was the upstream speed that made the switch worth it for me. Loading things to Flickr and YouTube are amazingly fast. The TV service is not available to us yet, but we are looking forward to enjoying that when it comes, too.

June 21, 2007 8:10 AM
Shawn.I said:

We just upgraded to FiOS from Optimum Online a week or two ago. The speed is great, though the router goes in and out some times. We have it wired up to the PC, so I dunno if it'll work on Macs, though the website claims it does. Any problems I've had on my MBP, my sister has also had on her Vaio, so it's not just Macs. Those problems haven't happened since the first two days, though.

Be prepared for technicians that don't know what they're doing with Macs if you get it installed.

June 21, 2007 8:33 AM
Equinox said:

Waiting for it to come to my 'hood. I have a DSL that is not enough for what I do in the 'Net. So Fios looks great for me.

June 21, 2007 10:25 AM
Paul said:

Verizon FIOS came to my neighborhood in Maryland last year. I had experienced frequent problems with Comcast billing, and made the switch. Although the FIOS installation technicians were less familiar with Macs, the configuration went smoothly enough. Since then, I have enjoyed months of reliable broadband service, very glad to have an alternative to the cable company.

June 21, 2007 11:16 AM
jt said:

I had Cablevision for years. I switched to FIOS 4 months ago. I am constantly checking my speed at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
from their NYC server. CV upgraded me to the 20,000kbps package for free to hold my business. ( When I did not go with them, they then charged me.. da bastards!) I had both services for 5 days. I could never get CV over 12,000 to 15,000kbps. Mostly it was well below 10k. At night time it was terrible. Right now, as of 5 seconds ago, I am at 20,652kbps on Fios. With NO restrictions. CV's modem would time out if I need to upload a large file for work. CV threatened to deny me service if my modem continued to trip. Their bandwidth had limits. The file trickled out at 6kbps. Fios is great. COMPLETELY Mac compliant. I have 5 Macs. All work great. Seamless. On top of that they gave me new fiber optic land line phone service with the package price...not a wannabe voip.... real phone service. The modem is wireless. I have a new imac on wireless just a few feet away and it is at the same speed. No issues. Not one! BYE CV....

June 21, 2007 12:32 PM
Eleventeen said:

If you're smart enough to write this blog, you should be smart enough to enter all the applicable information in your favorite home networking appliance. My significant other's parents have Fios and use it with their D-Link router and Mac's just fine. Last time I went down there, their 5/2 Fios actually felt faster than my 12/768 Comcast package.

June 21, 2007 12:57 PM
Philippe Azimzadeh said:

FiOS only arrived in my Maryland neighborhood (Timonium, how did Paul(above) get it so early?) about a month or too ago. We switched from DSL's 3 mbps/768 to the lowest FiOS plan (5/1.5) and it went very well. Like 100% great well well good well. My dad was the only one at home when they came to install it and he doesn't know anything about computers so he just let them do their thing and when I came back home we had superfast internet!

June 21, 2007 12:58 PM
tayker Author Profile Page said:

I live in a new development, and the house we purchased was built with FiOS capability. I couldn't see going back to dial-up after getting cable. Now I can't see going to anything other than FiOS.

June 22, 2007 3:45 AM
Paul Biba said:

Got the 20meg fios service about 2 months ago and it works like a charm with my Macbook. They use a rather cheap Actiontec router which sometimes has to be rebooted to assure connectivity. I just got an Airport Extreme which I am going to hook up in parallel so I can get a more reliable router.

June 22, 2007 6:08 AM

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