Whoa: Verizon to bring FiOS to Boston

Only your landline. Everything else remains the same.

Competition is certainly better than no competition but after waiting SOOOO long and serious talk about a community fiber network, it's somewhat disappointing to see Boston partner with Verizon. Are they as bad as Comcast, definitely not...but they're far from great. Ask anyone in NYC (which was "guaranteed" to have 100% FiOS coverage by 2014, per their city's deal with Verizon how that's working out.

If the citywide network build-out only costs $300m, I'm shocked the city didn't want to go the community internet route. The only thing that Verizon gives you is the ability to have TV service, but something tells me that by 2030 (about 8 years after this build-out is expected to be complete) we'll all be watching TV over the internet (a la Netflix) anyway...

That is not true. Verizon FiOS intalls a box that then sends the fiber optic signal through your existing wiring.

I know that they will yank out your copper phone line, and won't let you switch back to copper (DSL) from fiber, but I'm pretty sure that doing any harm to Comcast or RCN lines would be a crime.

FIOS requires a special translator box that converts the fiber optic signal to what we know as Ethernet, like what is available on cable internet systems. This means that wheer the fiber line comes in to the house you will need space for that converter box. The box has to be plugged in and have power 24/7. That box then supplies a cable line to your TV(s) and to a router for Internet, usually wireless.

The converter box has a back-up battery so if the power goes out you will still have power to your system but that lasts only for as long as the drain you place on it. They claim up to 5-6 hours but that assumes you won't try to use the internet or TV and only have it on stand by for telephone needs.

Verizon's policy is to remove copper wire when the fiber line is put in unless you put up a super stink.

Your best bet is to convert your copper wire line sot a low-cost service such as local dialing only and then contract FIOS under another name. that way you always have the copper as a back-up.

The copper wire system is powered at Verizon on low-voltage DC and even if FIOS goes out the copper wire would offer back up for incoming calls and emergency calls were the FIOS battery to go dead after an extended power outage.

Of course if a power outage were extensive and wide nothing would work anyway.

If you have a cell phone and a back-up battery pack you can do just as well I guess.

So if you have a copper wire service now that works, start researching on the net to see how other people managed to keep it run into the house when FIOS was also brought in. You may want it.

By the way the back-up batteries are wet cells much like what you have in an automobile and they will wear out after a few years and have to be replaced. There are longer-lasting types out there but like any monopoly, Verizon will not support them.

The whole issue with menino was to get Verizon to give public access to communities much like Comcast and RCN does. But also Verizon wanted to be exempt from other things that cable systems have been held to at both the city and state level.

Dedham has fios, so one would assume the would continue off of their existing structure through Westie then Rozie.

you're not missing much by not having fios tv. my mom has it out in the 'burbs and it is awful. the on demand features are crappy, and the navigation is terrible. it takes about a minute to get the channel guide to load, changing pages in it takes forever, the dvr is not intuitive and they are constantly dropping channels or reshuffling the channel numbers.

Back in 2011, I moved into an apartment on Commonwealth Ave in Allston. The apartment wasn't listed on either Comcast's or Verizon's site as offering services, even though the other apartments in the building were. It turned out to be a Comcast building, and the internet was so slow as to be unusable (I couldn't load this site because it would time out before it loaded.)

I just went to the VOTE site to see if I could cast a vote for my old building, and lo and behold, five years later, all of the apartments except my old one are appearing on Verizon's list. Verizon says the apartment doesn't exist. So apartments B-26 and 28-30 exist, but not poor apartment 27.

Of course.

I've asked netBlazr constantly on whether they cover West Roxbury. The answer has always been "not yet", and when pressed they give the reason that I think probably also applies to Starry Internet: there's not yet a clear landmark high enough to give line-of-sight to the neighborhood.

Our only hope is cable or fiber either under-the-ground or on utility posts. Sadly Earthlink doesn't handle my particular block in WRox, so that leaves Comcast, RCN, and now Verizon FiOS.