Cable vs. DSL vs. Fiber Optic

[wintersquall]

FiOs is great tech wise, but the Customer Service from Verizon is motherfucking Horrible

Holy Shit!, it takes atleast 20+ minutes just to talk to someone (after you go through the 15min automated voice, who wants you to pronounce things so clearly, any background noise, it fucks it up)

I have RoadRunner from Time Warner, they have good speeds, good prices (if you take their triple play deal, cable/internet/phone)
Customer Service is decent and you can have an operator on the phone within 5-7 minutes, 24 hours a day

My cousin who has FiOs in Long Island, has good speeds overall, but my goodness, good luck trying to refute your bill, or make changes, it takes an eternity just to get to a f'n operator, + they arent even 24/7, I called @ 5pm in the evening, it took me till 5:45pm to speak to someone (no exageration), then they put me on hold, lost the call, recalled, automated voice said Office hours till 6pm WTF?

Just try to see what you want overall, cause sometime you may get a better speed, but also you might get the worst service possible

Verizon USED to be my cell phone company, they no longer are for just this reason.

i'll look into it but i'd probably stick with comcast if they're this bad, the hours on the phone would be more than offset by slightly slower load times.

[Tajin]

+1 err... Fiber

[AlexRuzhyo]

Verizon has a horrible Tech Support and Billing service. No one communicates with each other, and every operator will tell you different shit. Getting any reliable information or service activation is a complete bitch. Their Fiber optics better be worth it. XD

[octopus]

Go for fiber.

I have Verizon Fios, and it's awesome. Connection is constant - no random d/c in FFXI. I bittorrent, newsgroups (they have teh binariezzzzzzz), and it's cool :D

I wish FiosTV have more HD channels, but the picture quality is great.

[Viq]

After spending my 45 minutes lunch break trying to talk to an actual person at Verizon, I'm thinking it might not be worth dealing with their customer service. I'll try again after work.

[Mizango]

After spending my 45 minutes lunch break trying to talk to an actual person at Verizon, I'm thinking it might not be worth dealing with their customer service. I'll try again after work.

Sadly that is the case a lot of times, but if you can get this issue resolved then I would definitely go Fiber. This is a really good dilemma to be mired in to be honest lol.

[Jefe]

I was thinking of getting Fios too since my DSL contract is about to expire. That and AT&T wants to charge me $25 + tax for a 1.5 mbps line. Shit's almost as expensive as Fios (1 month free $35 for next 6 months). So I might give it a try, and hopefully their customer service isn't as horrible as some of you describe ;x

[Amastacia]

Short term: Fiber is hard to beat.

Note to buyer: Don't believe all the marketing hype. Fiber to the home is massively oversubscribed just like cable, so even if you go for the premium 15/15 FiOS service, you're not necessarily guaranteed anywhere near 15Mbps, especially near peak hours.

Note #2: There may be bottlenecks on the other end, so a hueg pipe doesn't guarantee high throughput. If you've got 15Mbps down, and the server has 2Mbps up, guess what speed you get.

Note #3: They don't make a lot of noise about it, but fiber providers use a lot of the same mechanisms as cable providers, the services aren't as different as you'd think.

Long term: Cable, in the coming years, will continue to get faster and more competitive (DOCSIS 3.0). I doubt fiber will make the other options go away, because it's not as "ubar superiorz" as people seem to think. In the long run, cable providers themselves may migrate to fiber (that's a ways out though).

For now, fiber is a superior choice, but that may not last. It might be smarter in the coming years to make decisions more based on the carrier than the physical medium. Once DOCSIS 3.0 gains more widespread penetration, the speed race will balance out a lot and fiber will be on much more even footing.

tl;dr version: Buy FiOS for now, but don't think it'll be god forever.

[Viq]

I'd still like to talk to someone at Verizon later today, but I just had a chat with a Cox rep. I can get a 20Mbit cable line from them for less per month than Verizon is charging for FiOS. What are the differences in speed between FiOS and a 20Mbit cable line? I'm in an averagely populated area.

EDIT: Typos. Also, sorry for all the dumb questions. I'm just trying to narrow down my search with some non-biased info.

[Cephius]

I'd still like to talk to someone at Verizon later today, but I just had a chat with a Cox rep. I can get a 20Mbit cable line from them for less per month than Verizon is charging for FiOS. What are the differences in speed between FiOS and a 20Mbit cable line? I'm in an averagely populated area.

EDIT: Typos. Also, sorry for all the dumb questions. I'm just trying to narrow down my search with some non-biased info.

If you can get 20mbit cable for less than verizon, go for it. Just make sure its 20down/20up like FiOS is, and they're not trying to screw you on your upload speeds. If its truly the same and you can get it for less, by all means. Cable is prone to more bandwidth sharing during primetime, but unless you're in a huge metropolitan area it shouldn't be a big enough issue to go for a higher priced service instead.