My mom lives in Manhattan. Verizon just installed its FIOS Internet, TV, and telephone service in her building. Last Friday she got it installed in her apartment. The installers arrived at 9:20am. They finished at 8:15pm. For those of you a bit math challenged, that’s 10 hours and 55 minutes. Or one could just say it’s a long F’ing time.
I love FIOS, or I guess I should say I love the *idea* of FIOS since I don’t have it yet and I haven’t been over to her apartment to check it out. But anything like 11 hours per install in Manhattan is a killer to the bottom line, which has me concerned. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a killer to Verizon’s potential rate of installs, which delays my ability to ditch Time Warner. I certainly hope it’s not the norm.
And so the question of the day is for FIOS customers. For those of you specifically in Manhattan, and then in other urban areas, and then in suburban areas, how long has your FIOS install taken?
11 comments:
Strangely consumer/home fiber optical data communication is a new thing for US market.
Here in Italy, since we had no "cable market", we jumped from 56k PSTN to DSL/fiber optics.
(ISDN never really grew up at a consumer level)
Even if here in Italy there is no commercial competition (a couple of companies are in the fiber market, all the others sell high speed DSLs), a government authority was established in order to control prices and defend consumers.
So at the end there is no real difference between DSLs and fiber home broadband connections.
Verizon pricing looks aligned to ours (with current euro/dollar exchange rate, so it's maybe a bit high actually).
Hank, I live in PA....it took good 1/2 a day to install FIOS service in my house
Is your mother happy with the installed FIOS service. That is the real question. Because the service is new to Manhattan, there is probably a learning curve for the installers.Each apt. building has its own unique issues when installing FIOS. Also the customer has to be trained on using the remote.I would say the usual urban FIOS install takes 6 hrs.In apartment buildings it is a different animal.
My mom seems to like it quite a bit. She is very excited, and the time did not bother her at all. I was just surprised by the duration.
about 2 hours in VA
I had FIOS installed last year, and (as I recall) it took about 2-3 hours in my suburban, single-family house. Our neighborhood is old enough to have all services run above ground from utility poles, so we didn't have to deal with any trench-digging. The tech just wound the fiber around the copper phone line, drilled another hole through the outside wall and mounted the terminal next to my breaker box.
I have had a few bumps. The tech forgot to give us a backup battery, causing a periodic beep, and I just today got a replacement router for the one that fritzed out over the weekend. But overall I'm very happy with the speed and quality of the connection.
I am living the worlds longest FIOS install ever. After them not showing up for two previous appoinments without calling by the way witch is totally unaceptable... Yesterday after a 16 1/2 hour install, Thats RIGHT 16 1/2 hours the tech was unable to activate the service because the main server at verizon was taken offline for a upgrade.
He promices he will be back Sunday morning to activate everything but I am not holding my breath... I hope there product is exceptional because there customer service is worse than comcast and I didn't think that was possable.
About four and a half hours up here in Mount Kisco, NY ... but nearly an hour of that was me wasting the installer's time by trying to get the Verizon router behind my firewall (eventually we gave up and I successfully did that later on my own time) and almost another hour was three Verizon techs taking a "union break" in my driveway.
Give it some time; FIOS is still a fairly new technology. Remember when a DSL install took all day and had a six week lead time? Also keep in mind that they're installing three different services. In a couple of years they'll have it down to an hour or two (assuming all of the inside wiring to your phones, computers, and televisions is already in place, of course) and they'll also have enough market share to be comfortable with installing it and walking away instead of teaching you how to use the whole system.
I had a bad experience with Verizon in setting up an internet connection (verizon fios) where I missed two days of work. The technician was supposed to come to my house but never showed up. I called verizon to cancel - they told me they would send me a bill which includes a termination fee and I told them to shove it where the sun don't shine. I missed two days of work without pay and never had my verizon fios account activated. Verizon SUCKS!
The installation of FIOS in my 32-floor building on the Upper Westside of Manhattan has been going on for more than 3 months now (The building's management posted a notice when the installation started, stating that it would take 3 weeks -- don't know if they were misinformed or chose to lie to the tenants).
For some reason the installation has required drilling through each of the concrete floors multiple times (the drilling is loud enough that it is impossible to have a phone conversation when they are drilling as far as 8-10 floors away). A different set of workmen from a different company comes in nearly every time the noise starts up again. Management was not even aware that the latest work crew was in the building...
Obviously, the landlord (who lives in Massachusetts) is receiving some sort of financial compensation for allowing Verizon to make this installation in such a large building -- of course the tenants who have been subjected to noise and disruption won't ever be compensated in any way...
I would like to dump my bad Time Warner service but am starting to believe that I will stick with their nonsense over Verizon's inconsiderate treatment of potential customers.
We got back from a trip out of town to find that FIOS had been installed in our condo complex. For some reason, the install contractor dug up all of our landscaping in our tiny back yard, screwed up the concreteslab that holds our patio pavers together, nicked the auto sprinkler lines in 3 different places, and left a big'ol ugly box half way up the back of the condo. Oooohhh, no... it will not be staying there, and frankly I don't care what the increased download speeds are because I always use my laptop wirelessly. Just wasted a day cleaning up after them!
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