FIOS

Upgraded to FIOS last month and am so far fairly satisfied. I was mainly looking for a way to decrease our monthly phone bill currently around $99 a month. I did not get to that but the upgrade from DSL to FIOS resulted in the same charges - at least for now.

It took Verizon several attempts to install it. The first appointment was for between 1 and 5 but the installer did not show up until 6 pm. At this point he decided that he needed to run a cable into house and was not going to be able to do it at the time.

Point against Verizon: They should have known that we were not FIOS ready and that a cable was needed.

The installer said that Verizon would call and reschedule. I was ready for a blowoff like I got from Comcast. (They said we needed a cable tap and would call to reschedule but never did.) Surprisingly Verizon called and rescheduled.

Point for Verizon: Keeping true to their word.

This resulted in several reminder calls that they were coming out on a Sunday to do the installation until the Saturday before when they called to cancel.

Point against Verizon: What was up with that? Although my guess was since they needed to run a cable across a busy street they needed extra hands to hold up traffic and they did not want to pay over time for this. If they had told me this I would have been fine with it but instead they hemmed and hawed that this kind of installation cannot take place on a weekend. Why didn't they know this before hand when they scheduled it on a weekend?

Point for Verizon: Yes, another reschedule and this time they allowed me to pick any day of the week.

Finally, the installation was done although it took almost 5 hours. The same installer showed up. I was pleased since he already knew the situation and did not have to go over the same problems again. The installation was completed around 6 pm although he said he was leaving to do another house.

So far FIOS seems to be a bit faster. K1 and K2 think it is as far as their Internet games are concerned but for what I do I don't notice much difference.