Dan Bricklin has a great story on his Verizon FIOS fiber-optic installation at his house, with lots of photos and detailed descriptions.
Here’s what to expect when the ice cream truck comes down your street.
I ordered the 15Mbps down/2Mbps up service which has a list price of $49.95 a month before the discount. (They also have 5/2 for $39.95 and 30/5 for $199.95.) Terms of service say they “do not permit customers to host any type of server, personal or commercial”.
They have information on a web site about this service, but some of it is obviously done by marketing people who oversimplify technology. The flash demo tells you it’s fast because light travels so quickly.
There is cable from the main office that goes to distribution boxes throughout the city. Each box can serve several blocks of homes. Here’s a normal street with the cable on the telephone/electric poles and a view of one of these distribution boxes with two types of splicing boxes on either side.
The distribution box is connected to the office on basically one set of fibers and then can distribute that service among the houses. From the distribution box there is a single set of fibers as a “home run” available to each house.
The cable with the orange “Fiber Optic Cable” covering is the one that goes down the block. The thinner cables plugged in are to houses. There are two connected here — I’m clearly not the first person on my block to have fiber.
Here’s what the inside of the Optical Network Terminal unit (ONT) looks like before most of the wires are connected.
The fiber cable comes up on the left with the cap removed (and dangling). Cable slack is stored in a housing behind the ONT (you want to have slack since you’d rather not cut or lengthen fiber cables). I have a close-up of the power connectors, too. The unit needs lots of connections into the house for power and backup power.
Inside you get two power units. The one on the left holds a normal rechargeable battery and some electronics to let them check it from a distance. The unit on the right is the power adapter and is plugged into a wall outlet
Once everything checked out, he hooked up the normal D-Link router they include in the deal. I had him use his laptop to set things up because I didn’t want to install their software.
Once that was all done, the installer cleaned up all the dropped wire insulation, empty boxes, etc., and we said goodbye sometime around 4 PM. I then connected my line to the router and plugged it into my laptop upstairs. Things work well. I downloaded a log file from the bricklin.com server and got a download at over 13Mb/second. I uploaded a 25MB podcast as a test and got 1.95Mb/second. Pretty good.
Verizon s FiOS (Fiber Internet Service) brings fiber directly to the home. For in-home distribution it uses twisted pair (for voice) and coax (for video). FiOS TV uses digital cable boxes rather than IP-TV. Fios Internet Service requires CAT5 or higher grade wiring. It will deliver 5 Mbps ($39/mo) to 30 Mbps ($199/mo). When installing Fios, Verizon tears out your twisted pair to eliminate all access to competitive landline providers.
SBC’s Project Lightspeed is using VDSL-2, to reach the overwhelming majority of their homes. They deliver fiber to the node, but twisted pair copper to the home. SBC will use Alcatel gear for the fiber backbone. It consists of IP routers, the 7750, the Ethernet switches, the 7450, the remote DSLAM, the 7330. Microsoft’s IPTV solution will be used for the settop box.
Will You Buy TV From Your Phone Company, asks DSL reports. More than one-third (37 percent) of existing satellite and cable television subs would if it were competitively priced, according to a new study in CED Magazine. Would you? Vote in DSL Report’s latest poll.
Related DailyWireless stories include; The Verizon/Yahoo DSL Deal: $14.95, SBC Picks IP-TV Settops, The Free Triple Play, VDSL-2 Ratified, IPTV: Is It Soup Yet?, IP-TV Settops, Legislators: Don’t Mess With SBC, DirecTV + WiMax?, Muni Wireless Laws, Duopoly Laws, Mobile TV Expands, Verizon Does Cellular TV, Video Search and Big Media Mobilizes.
[Thanks, Roger]
