New to FIOS as of 3/9/07 - Not so smooth install

[funhouse69]

Hey everyone I'm new to the site but checked out a lot of info on it before getting my FIOS install last week. First of all the FIOS Qualification website still states that I can't get the service at my house. If I wouldn't have called I would have never been able to get it. That said, the order process went very smooth and since I can't get FIOS TV as of yet I informed the person that I had Direct TV he said that he can combine my bills and save some $. I ended up ordering FIOS Internet and Phone, I also bundled in to my bill my Cell Phone and Direct TV bills - hopefully that will go smooth. Since I was porting my number from someone else they told me they needed 10 days so I made the appointment for the first day possible.

Not withstanding the smooth ordering process the install was a little different. Since I was getting only Internet and Phone they quoted me about a 4 hour install. A few days before my appointment I noticed that Verizon pre-ran the Fiber from one of their boxes on the pole and left it looped up waiting to be run across the street to my house.

On the day of the install the tech showed up at about 9:30am I showed him everything he needed to see, where things were going and everything. Basically I made it very easy for him to do since I'm a network engineer I pre-ran everything in to my basement for him. All he has to do is bring the connections in from the Terminal outside.

The tech quoted the 4 hours but said that since I had already done a lot of the work for him he would probably be done in only a few. Well let me tell you he was still there over 9 hours later and didn't run things the way that we talked about / agreed upon.

The tech said that he had an issue with the fiber where he wasn't getting a signal on his light meter which set him back a while but resolved by replacing an adapter in the Terminal. After this he took a lunch for about an hour then when he came back he moved inside to mount / connect the power supply and the UPS.

When all was said and done he ended up running coax from the Outside Terminal to the modem when we specifically talked about using Ethernet (which is what I pre-ran so I could locate the modem where I needed it). When I pointed this out he pretty much said that was all that he was going to run and it was "Better".

After everything was set up the tech was unable to access any of the websites he needed to which I assume is used for setting things up for me like an e-mail address / my account. I'm only guessing here as he said it was all in the books that he left and I haven't been able to find anything or log in to anything.

I will say that the speed of the Internet connection is great coming in but not so good going out. I signed up for their 20mb / 5mb service. Based on a few tests I've run the best I've seen is a little over 20mb down but no more then 2mb up which to me is a pretty significant difference from the quoted speed.

My final thing is that since I switched my phone over I wasn't aware of how to use / access my new voice mail. I looked online, got my local access # called in to set it up and it asks me for a starter password which I found out after calling that it is either my 10 digit phone # or the last 4 of the phone # well neither of them worked. I found a link on the Verizon Website that said that I could reset my password. I tried that and it told me that my phone # was invalid / not a Verizon Phone # so I called Tech Support. After waiting on hold for about 10 - 15 minutes the person that I spoke to said that he would be able to help me and walked me through it but had the same issues even when he tried it. From there it went down hill as he said that one of their computer systems had crashed and because of that he wasn't able to do anything for me until he can access that system so I would have to call back later.

So now 3 days later I have my Phone and Internet Service through FIOS and god know how many voicemails waiting for me that I can't access. Hopefully I will be able to get this resolved sometime today.

[FiOS Tech Support]

Funhouse69, I do apologize about that. And do answer some questions for you. 1) The reason for the coax install is because there has been a lot of people complaining about more wires being ran into the customers house. The reason for the coax is because there is already that in the house and we can run it directly from the ONT to a splitter, no CAT5 needed. Once the order is placed and provisioned then your ONT is set to get data from the MoCA port, which is the coax. In order to run CAT5 the tech needs to call in to us and we can then change it on the back end to allow it to operate over CAT5. He probably didnt want to do this as because most techs are lazy. As far as the vcmail goes, most likely there has not been a voicemail box built. I have seen a lot of the times is something will happen during provisioning and the voicemail box does not get built. All you need to do is call tech support, (hopefully you get me) but I doubt that will happen and tell them that you have vcmail but it doesnt look like the vcmail box is built. Its a few clicks to get a vcmail box built but most likely you will get someone that is going to create a ticket to get your mailbox built. As far as the speeds go, use speakeasy.net/speedtest and select a location closest to you. I have pretty good luck w/ my 20/5, usually right up there about 4.5 upload. Let me know if you have any more questions or concerns and I'll be more than happy to help you out with them

Thanks
Josh

Verizon Fiber Customer Support Analyst
Verizon FiOS

[funhouse69]

Josh - Thanks for the timely reply and the information, I did want to comment on your response to my e-mail. As I believe I mentioned originally when I showed the Tech around we talked about how he would connect their router to the ONT and I asked him if he could do Ethernet which he said that would be no problem. With that said if he would have taken a short cut and used an existing coax cable then that would have been one thing but he didn't, he ran a brand new coax cable and even drilled another hole in my house to get it in the basement when he would have been able to use an existing hole to get the Ethernet installed. This is why I called him out on this and he said that "Coax was best" I said ok then why didn't you tell me that in the first place.

As for the voicemail I called again this afternoon and spoke to someone that again attempted to help me but said that from what he can see my service hasn't gone through billing as of yet which is why my voicemail isn't set up properly? Ok I might but that but when I pick up my phone I get the stutter dialtone which to me means that I have voicemail(s) waiting for me that I haven't been able to access for 3 days now and apparently have to wait until sometime tomorrow before I might be able to access. He was however able to point me to the site to set up my online account to get me an e-mail address and install all of the FIOS "Extras" on my system. So part of my problems resolved.

Finally the speed I've tested several times through several different sites but Speakeasy is the one that I think is the best to judge by and out of say 10 tests at different times of day / night I haven't seen more than 20Mb down and 2.2Mb up which is significantly less than the 20 / 5 I should be getting. I would be thrilled with a 4.5Mb / Sec upload result. This is from the "New York" test server which is the closest one to me. The rest result in a significantly slower result which I know is to be somewhat expected. Oh I should probable point out that this was tested with a very high-end system and not a old system which if I get 20 down shouldn't matter but thought I would mention it anyway.

Hopefully after tomorrow I will be fully up and running voicemail wise. Do you think that I should make a call on the upload speed?

I have a final question if you don't mind. I've seen people comment on the Verizon DNS Servers being somewhat slow which I have to agree on. Does it make sense to use Open DNS which has been suggested by several people to speed up their browsing. I know that this won't make the site itself download fast only the name resolution but it does give the appearance of a quicker download.

Thanks again.