Verizon FIOS

As most of you know the Howard County Council approved Verizon's application to provide television service in the County.

Shortly after the approval process I saw Verizon trucks all over Ellicott City and my neighborhood. Since then I have been going to the www.verizonfios.com website to see when the service would be available. Today I checked and finally it was available.

What is FIOS - well I am not going into a lot of detail as to what FIOS is except to say that Verizon pulls fiber directly to your house (FTTP) , runs CAT5 to your computer, installs a wireless router, hooks up your TV, and puts your telephone service on the fiber (IP) - no installation charges if you sign up for 1 year.

The benefits of fiber for Verizon are enormous, but to the consumer they are pretty good too.

Of course being interested in the service I promptly called Verizon got all the information I needed, found out how much I could save over Comcast, and ordered the service. They gave me in install date of 4-26-2006. Very reasonable date I thought to myself.

About an hour later my wife called me to tell me that Verizon was pulling fiber up to the house already. They got done pulling the fiber this afternoon and wanted to know if they could come back tomorrow for about 4 hours to finish the job and turn up the service.

Talk about service.

I got the 15mbps/2mbps data service and the basic cable service (about 50 more channels than Comcast basic plus, and we get 40 some music channels - compare VZ' $40 charge to Comcast's basic digital service charge of $64 [basic cable is $50 plus]), add my telephone service and it is all for about $133.00 per month.

Now my neighbor saw the trucks in my driveway, asked a lot of questions, called Verizon and switched his phone service, internet connection, and cable TV to Verizon. One of the techs working at my house went over to his house and started pulling fiber right then and there. My neighbor told me he was saving close $50.00 per month.

Now my other neighbors have been calling and want to come over and see the television service when it is up and running so they can judge how well it works. I should get a commission!