I got a letter from Verizon, they’re replacing copper telephone wires and moving phone service to the new fiber network. They want me to make an appointment to have a technician come and do this. (There will be no charge, no changes, we’ll keep same voice service at same price.) I am just wondering what is involved when this technician shows up at my house. What is it he’s going to actually do? I talked to someone at the appointment number (which I googled and can’t find anything on it) and she was vague, said only it would take a ‘couple of hours’.
I am really ignorant about all this. I’d like to know: did Verizon come to your house to replace telephone wires and move phone service to fiber network? What did it entail, and did you notice any change in anything?
If it’s like what they did when FIOS came to my neighborhood, they run the fiber cable up to the side of your house and install an ONT (optical network terminal), which translates the fiber to copper at your house, then connects the box to the existing copper phone line into your house.
Count yourself as one of the lucky ones. FiOS is, hands down, the best Internet connection type you could have. Cable TV is not too shabby either, it has been far better than cable for me. Cheaper too.
Now, we aren’t signing up for anything since this is being done, are we? We have Roadrunner for the internet, Verizon landline, and Time Warner cable. (yes, we pay separately for everything, but I have no say in it, that’s just the way we do it.).
As I understand, this is simply a thing they’re doing to replace the old copper wire system. Nothing else should change, correct?
The are replacing the old copper, but only up to the house. While it’s possible to have fiber instead of copper inside the house, you would have to replace the phone units, too. It’s much easier to have a conversion done at the interface between the inside and outside of the house.
Putting fiber inside the house doesn’t provide a great leap forward for a typical household; copper works just fine for short distances, and if it’s already in place, why change it?
Right. They are replacing their infrastructure–you are not getting FiOS.
It is possible they will use the same infrastructure to deliver FiOS but I don’t know. We had Verizon landline service, and they installed the FiOS infrastructure in our neighborhood. That had no effect on our phone service at all, they didn’t even notify us they were doing it. So they may have run copper in parallel with fiber for different types of service. In your case, maybe they are replacing the copper and providing a single infrastructure for both.
For FiOS installation they had to install equipment inside the house that required house power. For your conversion I don’t know what they’ll need to do.
That close up picture doesn’t really give you a sense of the size of the ONT box. When I got mine installed it’s quite a bit larger than the old POTS network interface (which is little more than a regular modular phone jack box). The ONT is roughly the size of a circuit-breaker box, so they’ll probably want to install it in a as non-visible place as possible (i.e. in a closet or in the basement).
I highly, ***highly ***recommend you consider replacing Roadrunner internet and Time Warner cable (which are the same company by the way) with FiOS TV & internet service. As others said it is hands down the best system available. My internet service ran at a constant 20+ Mbps (that’s fast) and all the high-def channels were near Blu-ray quality with little to no digital artifacts! I had to move and now have Optimum cablevision, phone & internet and while it’s certainly adequate it’s noticeably inferior to FiOS (and costs the same!)
One thing that may change is phone service during an extended power outage (several hours).
The old phones (those that you don’t plug into an electrical outlet) received their power from the copper wires coming to your house. Glass can’t carry electricity. So they’ll put a battery in your basement to power your phones during power outages. As I found out during a 68 hour power outage last fall, the battery only lasts about 6 hours.
However, even though my entire town was without power, once I plugged the battery, wifi, and computer into a generator, I was off and running with phone service and internet. (I get my TV OTA only)
My status is the same and I can’t wait to get rid of Time Warner. If there is any improvement over their crappy system I’m the first one to sign on. (During the debate last night the digital picture was breaking up enough to make it unwatchable.) My building is suppose to get it soon and I can’t wait. Supposedly, the building has the fiber connection. All they have to do is connect the apartments.
Yes. There are replacing their copper wire on the poles and up to your house. Then, as mentioned, they install an ‘ONT’ outside your house and a battery backup inside (meaning you have to be there to give them access). Typically they do this where your exisiting ‘NID’ (connects copper on pole to copper in house) is located - so they can easily connect the copper in the house to the ‘ONT’.
The ‘ONT’ also has a coax output that they can connect to your house coax wiring instead of the Time Warner coax - making it very simple to connect TV and Internet.
I don’t know about Verizon, but my company (Charter) considers battery backup to be an option not worth mentioning to the customer. I was able to coax some acceptable model numbers of battery-backed modems out of them, but they made it plain to me that if I used one of those, they would not supply, support, nor replace one under any circumstances.
So, since I consider Charter’s advice to be worthless, I bought one, with spare batteries, and I’m glad I did. I had phone service when my neighbors didn’t.
