[BBLISA] Cable/phone/Internet post promo costs?

[bblisa at rootme.org]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2007 at 10:19:31AM -0400, scott at MIT.EDU wrote 0.9K bytes in 29 lines about:
: My wife and I are looking at the various competitive offering from RCN, 
: Comcast, and Verizon FIOS.

Keep looking, there are similar offers out there from DirectTV and
SpeakEasy for example.

I am one of the first fios installs in Dedham according to VZ.  I have the
20/5 package on a monthly basis with no annual contract.  Recently, my
phone bill has increased from $35/mo to nearly $60/mo with fee increases
and a slew of increasing taxes and tarrifs.  

Next, I was just notified my fios costs are going to increase from $45/mo 
to $60/mo starting next month, unless I sign up for a 2 year agreement at $45/mo.

: - How has overall service (customer and offerings) been?

Overall, the service is degrading over the year I've had it.  When first
installed, I saturated 20/5 all day and night.  Lately, I peak at 8-10
Mbps down and 2 Mbps up.  I don't do file sharing, but I do rsync over
ssh for backups and use IPsec vpns to work and other places.  It seems
the more consistently I use my bandwidth, the less bandwidth I have.
VZ's standard speed test is from within their network, and of course,
shows nearly full speeds at off hours, but the same speeds I'm seeing
during peak usage (say 5-10 pm).

The phone service has been flawless.  No disconnects, no loss in
quality, etc.  It's copper in the house to an ATM terminal to the CO and beyond.

The problem I've run into is that when VZ installs fios, they pull back
your copper pairs as far as the next central pole.  I watched the VZ
techs spend most of the day stringing the fiber out to me and pulling
back the copper.  DSL companies, such as Speakeasy, aren't sure how to
handle non-copper people at this time.  

I'm looking at possibly keeping the fios isp connection, and move the
phone to a voip provider.

My cable tv is comcast analog right now.  I fail to see why I should
have to pay to rent a box to decode the signal that i have to pay for
again from the cable provider.  VZ doesn't offer an analog solution,
requiring a rental charge per box.  If it wasn't for the other
inhabitants of the house, I wouldn't bother with tv at all.

VZ is trying to keep me as a customer and offers $10-30/mo in discounts
if I sign up for fios tv, fios 'net, and local/long distance phone to
the tune of $99-129/mo depending on package selection.

In summary,  fios is still fast enough and low latency.  The phone
service has been great as well.  You get what you pay for, premium
services at premium pricing.

-- 
Andrew