Evan Hoffman's silly writings. » fios

Lotsa downtime.

evan — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:23:02 +0000

Lots of power outages lately. Not the greatest time to move my site. Good thing I don’t need 99.99%+ uptime. Or even 95%…

Website is moved.

evan — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:12:39 +0000

I left Bluehost. They raised the prices (which seems to fly counter to what one would expect in the hosting industry with Google Apps breathing down their necks), and I realized I didn’t need it anyway. My MX records go right to Google. Anyway, time to go to sleep.

Cablevision loses WABC (Channel 7)?

evan — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:34:51 +0000

Wow. Glad I left. I imagine this will be temporary (like the HGTV ordeal earlier this year).

On another note, I got my 3rd FiOS bill – still running a credit. That’s $43 for 3.5 months of great service. Good luck competing with that, Optimum.

2nd FiOS connectivity problem

evan — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:39:06 +0000

This is the second time this has happened: All the wifi devices in my house lose their connection to the FiOS router/access point (ActionTec MI424WR-GEN2). I checked my wired desktop and it wasn’t able to get an IP from the DHCP server (the router). The “Internet” light on the router was out. I unplugged the router and plugged it back in and it came back up fine. But this happened about a month ago too – I wonder if it’s a monthly thing? Either way, it’s annoying. Other than this, the internet service is phenomenal still.

Got my second FiOS bill

evan — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:21:18 +0000

So I got my second FiOS bill a couple of weeks ago. After the issue with my first bill was straightened out I ended up paying about $43 for the first 6 weeks of service. Well, my second bill was about $90, but applied a $180 credit on my account, so the bill showed -$91. So basically the first 3 months of service will end up costing me about $43. Even if it comes to $90/month for the remainder of the contract, this is such a huge savings that I don’t see how Cablevision could match it.

FiOS Ping Test

evan — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:07:14 +0000

Ran a ping test at pingtest.net today. Overall I can’t find fault with the FiOS service so far. Port 80 and 443 are open and I have them forwarded to my Linux box so I can actually run a webserver in my basement. I’m debating moving this domain over to my own linux box, since it’s super low traffic, but I probably won’t.

FiOS Ping Test for Nassau County, NY

Only (minor) problems with FiOS are:

With FiOS Digital Voice there doesn’t seem to be a “distinctive ring” option, which I had found handy with Cablevision.
The 10-digit dialing is annoying. It’s nice not to have to dial the “1″ before a long-distance number, but having to dial the 516 area code even for other 516 numbers is annoying. I know that’s how it is for everyone in NYC already though regardless of phone provider.

I’m waiting to see what my bill for month 2 will be. Lots of credits for month 1 so that will be extra low.

Got my first FiOS bill today…

evan — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:41:59 +0000

Not good. The rep I spoke with had said she’d intercept the first bill and apply all the credits up front. I guess being Christmas she couldn’t, so I got this first bill of $208.22.

This is WAY more than it should be, even without the credits applied. There’s a $40/month credit missing, and they’re charging me for HBO & Cinemax, which I was told was a free trial for 3 months. On the plus side, the taxes are lower than I expected. Attaching scans of the bill. If this doesn’t get resolved when I call on Monday I’ll be heading back to Cablevision, I guess. The whole point of this exercise was to save money.

FiOS bill page 1

FiOS bill page 3

Update: New bill amount after talking to the sales rep is $42.17. That’s better. We’ll see what the 2nd and 3rd bills are.

FiOS it is.

evan — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 06:33:47 +0000

Fios was installed today. Took longer than expected but I guess it went well. FiOS digital voice is pretty good, has one or two niceties that Optimum Voice didn’t (caller ID info in the emails it sends, for instance). The Motorola STBs are way better than the Scientific Atlanta (or whatever) that CV provides… I’m awestruck that when you hit the Channel + button, the channel actually changes.

Cablevision offered to woo me back again but since the service was already installed I said no thanks. They did say they’ll pay the termination fee for me to go back. Interesting… Anyway, Fios’s speeds are pretty good, I got as high as 26/20 on the 25/15 line. The Actiontec router is pretty nice too (model #MI424WR-GEN2).

FiOS speed test to Cablevision's server 2009-12-04

… or maybe I AM going with FiOS.

evan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:16:25 +0000

Well, this was unexpected. Verizon is really playing hardball with pricing. When I called this morning to cancel my install appointment, Verizon countered and they offered an extra $30/month discount. I asked for an extra STB for free (I figured all they can do is say no) and while the rep said she couldn’t do that, she did increase the credit to $40/month which would more than cover the cost of the 2nd box. So as of this moment, I’m on for FiOS tomorrow.

Ain’t competition great?

Oops… sorry FiOS, I’m sticking with Cablevision.

evan — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:36:42 +0000

Well that didn’t take long. I got a call this afternoon from the same Cablevision rep I spoke with to talk about cancelling after I signed up for FiOS. Apparently they received Verizon’s request to port my number over and learned I wasn’t kidding when I said I was going to move to FiOS. And good news! I can now qualify for the Optimum Triple Play again!

The price Cablevision offered today was better than the $123 or whatever they stated last time I spoke to them, but I brought up that Verizon is offering 25/15, and I was getting like 8/2 at home. To compensate they added in Boost, which they couldn’t give me for free, but they did lower the price to $9.95/month, and she was able to give me the DVR for free. I said forget about the 2nd cable box (since with CV I can just plug in to the existing coax for additional TVs if needed – with Verizon being all digital you need a STB for each TV) and the final price came to around $109.

FiOS would potentially have been cheaper after factoring all the credits and the gift cards, but with Cablevision I didn’t have to do anything – no “unknown.” I didn’t even have to do anything to get Boost – I thought I’d have to get a different cablemodem, but they just logged in remotely and flipped a switch and now I get 25+ mbps down.

Sure, I bet some things would be better with FiOS, but for the time being I’ll stick with Cablevision. I got a 12-month price lock, so I guess a year from now I’ll have to start shopping again. I was all set to switch too – I figured it would take a few months before Cablevision started trying to woo me back, but I’m glad they took the smarter approach and never let me leave. I got a nice savings and a great speed boost (no pun intended) out of the deal. I do kind of feel bad for the FiOS rep I’d been speaking with though, she was really nice and I had her on the phone for almost an hour when I signed up.

Optimum Boost speed test, 2009-12-02 from Long Island