Lies .. Verizon FiOS Follies and destructive competition and SVC!

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: February 19, 2009 10:50:06 AM EST
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: "'Jonathan B Spira'" <jspira () basex com>, "'Lauren Weinstein'" <lauren () vortex com 
>
Subject: RE: [IP] Verizon FiOS Follies and destructive competition and  
SVC!

Lies, damn lies and shiny glass.

When I first ordered FiOS I found the fiber behind my house wasn’t and  
had to work hard to convince them that there wasn’t really a fiber  
behind my house (the database is always right). I’ve already written  
about the many truck rolls it took to implement a simple keystroke  
change in a database so I could move a distinctive ring line to VoIP.

Despite all its wonders FiOS is not all that “lightning fast” compared  
with Comcast – 20Mbps vs 16Mbps – and both hit the network limits  
though FiOS still has faster up-speed. Verizon also offers 50Mbps but  
you rarely get anything near that speed. Comcast has made my house  
DISOSS-3 ready so thing may change again.

I have both Verizon and Comcast so I can do comparison testing. To  
connect between a FiOS and Comcast connection I’ve found the bits  can  
go the long way, via New York and Chicago because there isn’t just  
“the Internet” – we have private Internets that interconnect only  
grudgingly and at a high cost.

At least Comcast doesn’t block my ports whereas I have to put work  
around Verizon’s arbitrary and perverse block on port 80. What good is  
their offer of 20Mbps up-speed when they block a port and make me work  
around that problem. Comcast also offers multiple IP address. It isn’t  
just about speed. As an FYI I do use Verizon for TV these days.

Confusing broadband competition with Internet competition is naïve and  
tragic. The idea of competition is that the we benefit from companies’  
attempting to offer the best service. But this demonstrates the dark  
side of this competition – the internecine warfare between  
“Internets”. As long as you accept the idea that the Internet is just  
a bunch of private fiefdoms and silos you can call this competition  
but if the value of the Internet comes from the ability for all of us  
to communicate among a large community then this form of synthetic  
competition among phone companies and cable companies is a cruel hoax.  
We have competitive delivery not competitive connectivity.

It doesn’t help that Verizon doesn’t provide useful documentation on  
their EthernetóFiOS bridging though I did find I could run their VoD  
over a standard router so I don’t have to depend on their buggy access  
point. So not only is the competition bogus, the very idea that cable  
content must be tied to a delivery pipe is a lie. It’s just IP traffic  
and nothing but IP traffic.

New protocols like SVC – Scalable Video Coding – make it even easier  
to run video over any transport! And as people become more practiced  
in video distribution it makes even less sense to build private “video  
Internets” just like it doesn’t make sense to build private phone  
networks these days.

Hmm. I have some time today maybe I’ll make another stab at getting  
Verizon wireless to deign to tell me where $800 of payments came from  
– I don’t want to pay $158 bill till I find out if they owe me $800.  
But they don’t seem to have any mechanism for figuring this out. Hmm …  
and they want to be my gatekeeper? Not that their faux competition is  
any better. After dropping RCN I found they had outsourced billing to  
a collection agency. But then TWC sold my late mother-in-law’s account  
to a collection agency that seems determined to reach her.



From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 09:40
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Verizon FiOS Follies



Begin forwarded message:

From: "Jonathan B Spira" <jspira () basex com>
Date: February 19, 2009 9:31:01 AM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Verizon FiOS Follies


Dave, hi and good morning to you!

If my experience with Verizon FiOS is typical, then something is  
really wrong as I apparently experienced the Verizon FiOS Follies

"First announced in July 2004, Verizon FiOS couldn’t come to my  
neighborhood in New York City soon enough. Using fiber-optic  
connections instead of copper wire to bring telephone service,  
Internet, and television into the home, FiOS (which stands for Fiber  
Optic Service) was certainly worth the wait. So was the pain of the  
installation process and problem solving that followed."
"After five hours plus, and a call for a more experienced installer,  
my FiOS service was up and running – more or less...

"It was the plain, old telephone service (known in the industry as  
“POTS”) that turned out to be the big problem ...


http://www.basexblog.com/2009/02/18/fios_follies/


Regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Szívélyes üdvözlet/Cordialement/ 
Cordiali saluti/Saludos/Vänliga hälsningar

/s/ Jonathan

Jonathan B. Spira
CEO and Chief Analyst
Basex, Inc.
8 http://www.basex.com


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