Washington DC to get FIOS?

/ Uncategorized / By / Dish Network, Tivo, Verizon FiOS

My city peeps might soon have the option of getting Internet + TV through Verizon’s fiber optic service. I recently wrote about my switch to FiOS. Here’s a mini followup.

Things I like – the cost

I Received our first full month’s bill for Fios service, total was $115 dollars for phone, internet, and TV service. This includes a $10 bundle discount, and about $14 dollars in taxes, fees, and other charges not usually disclosed. My last DSL+Phone service bill from Verizon was $98 alone. Coupled with a Dish bill that used to run close to $89, I’ll now be saving $72 per month for the next 2 years.

The savings will pay for my TivoHD (Hardware + Lifetime service) in just over 8.3 months, not taking into account the time-value of money which won’t make a huge difference when we’re talking about less than a year time-frame. For comparison, I could put the $72 monthly savings into an account bearing a paltry 3.5% and at the end of 12 months, I’ll have accrued $880.

Things I don’t like

  1. The Actiontec router – its serviceable enough, but its clearly not meant to be easy to tinker with and it has an annoying way of obfuscating the pasword as you type it in. After being on for just over 2 months, DNS started failing, which was "fixed" by rebooting the router. This is what lead me to switch to OpenDNS below.
  2. Verizon’s habit of routing failed DNS queries to their "helpful" did-you-mean page, which has ads they run. I switched to OpenDNS but they do the same thing.
  3. The on-screen guide on the non-tivo HD STB is a big FAIL. There’s no way to remove channels that you do not receive, the layout is hard to navigate, and the program descriptions are often out of date, or just generic descriptions of the show in question. Tivo’s guide is markedly better and this is the one thing that annoys Staci the most.

The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » FiOS coming soon to DC?

Adding FiOS to the mix will bring the benefits of greater competition to D.C. subscribers. In northern Virginia, a fierce rivalry between Verizon and Comcast has pushed prices downward, even for consumers whose residences have yet to be “lit.”