OT - Verizon Fios Strike - Monmouth County

[Rutgers1]

Comcast is horrid. I had them in Jersey City. I lost internet service for several days. They couldn't decide whether they needed to be inside or outside to fix the problem, and then refused to credit my account for no service and tried to say it was an "inside" problem after I had a guy outside my building repairing wires. My rates also about tripled over a three year period.

I think I had to call Fios support once- they wouldn't take my credit card at first, when I moved a couple of blocks within JC.

I would not leave Fios unless I was forced.

I've moved around alot and have had almost every cable provider in the area (TW, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon). Comcast was by far the worst. Cablevision and TW also stunk. I told my wife when we were house hunting that no FIOS service would be a dealbreaker. Best service out there.

 

[fischy5000]

Dont know if you can get Comcast to wipe out the installation fees and then also not sure if there are minimum month/yr requirements, but could you just get comcast for 1 month (or until VZ works out their situation) and then just cancel/switch at that point? so you have no missed service or overlap. I havent had an account in my name or really dealt with this in ages so not sure of the latest fine print for starting/stopping a plan.

 

[Leonard23]

Was forced into Optimum when I moved to Hoboken a couple years ago. Had Fios in NYC, before that had RCN and TWC. I was extremely annoyed I couldn't have Fios anymore but Optimum has actually been much better than I expected. Is Fios still using the hard drive for its DVR? I hated that I would only get about 20 hours of HD on that so I was always managing the capacity. Optimum allows probably 100 hours, maybe more as I've never had an issue.

I think FIOS has a quantum service you have to pay for that stores your programs remotely but I have the multi room dvr that stores it locally on a hard drive. I had an older version of the multi room that probably had somewhere around the 20 hours you mentioned but recently switched it out to a newer version multi room dvr and that probably stores around 100 hours of HD programming. It still only allows recording of 2 programs simultaneously (think quantum allows 6, maybe more even) but the hard drive capacity is much larger.

Fios quantum allows you to record up to 6 or 12 shows simultaneously with 100 to 200 hours of HD storage.

 

[ruhudsonfan]

I had FIOS and then switched to Optimum over customer service issues. I live in Northwestern Monmouth.

Long story short.

I don't notice any difference in internet speed.

Optimum's DVR is superior to what I had with FIOS.

FIOS' TV guide is better.

FIOS never went down once in 3 years (other than Sandy). Optimum has gone out once in about a year.

I like NJ 12 news and MSG varisty, both of which are on Optimum.

Overall, I thought I would really miss FIOS and if I'm being honest, they are probably pretty even.

Optimum also has a metric shit ton of hotspots that you can use.

 

[gmay8]

I had Optimum when I was living in Hoboken and would gladly stick with them if they were offered in my new town in Monmouth County... but my only options are Fios and Comcast. I agree, I never had too many issues with Optimum and I liked MSG Varsity and News 12.

 

[DT Hawxhurst]

Can you pause/rewind live TV with Comcast like you can with Fios?

 

[saran]

I had FIOS and then switched to Optimum over customer service issues. I live in Northwestern Monmouth.

Long story short.

I don't notice any difference in internet speed.

.

You won't unless you download torrents or something like that. The "speed" thing is a bit overrated for most people because remote servers that send you info/data etc are usually set up to only allow a limited amount of resources to each request. You can have the fattest pipe available and your news pages wont seem to come any faster. Its like driving a Ferrari in Manhattan. Just because you can do 160 mph doesn't mean you'll be able to (now if you download a 3 gb movie from a torrent it will just zip right down in a few minutes vs the few days/weeks it could take on AOL back in the day).

Recently Netflix was in news for specifically throttling Verizon users. For a few years Netflix was blaming Verizon for the throttling

Netflix: We're the ones throttling video speeds on AT&T and Verizon
http://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-admits-throttling-video-speeds-on-at-t-verizon/

 

[saran]

The strikebreakers are a little backlogged right now.

My Verizon peeps showed up a day late. I had a cute installerette who was a Verizon accountant that was sent up from Georgia. Her and some other guy were watching installation videos out in the truck lol. It took them 7 hours to run wires and set things up.