OT Comcast vs. Verizon Fios

DRC Archive Lounge Lizard
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Sorry for the off topic thread, but surely you all must watch TV and use the internet in between having your hands in your aquariums.

So here’s the question: My Comcast triple play premier plan just jumped in price significantly after I concluded a 2 year lock-in. So, I’m looking into Verizon FiOS. Its kind of hard to compare the two, but it looks like I could save quite a bit moving to Verizon plus get faster internet. I’m comparing triple play plans (phone, internet, TV) for HD service with HBO, Showtime, etc. Has anyone else made this comparison and made the switch? And are you happy with your decision?

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I have had the opportunity to have both. I love my fios. The price difference is a little different in favor of fios when you add in everything you want but I tell you the internet is great. I love it. Everyone i know loves FIOS.

I play games and punish my fios and it still pleases me.

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I dunno be careful with verizon there customer service sucks.

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I made the switch and I am happy that I did. I think that FIOS is so much better then Comcast. Plus I noticed that when you call for service they try to give the best offer and I have saved some money from their assistance.

Tom

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I made the switch from Comcast to Verizon and have been super happy with the TV portion of FIOS…

The internet portion on the other hand I have been very displeased with. I have purchased the fastest level option and it has never compared to the speeds I was getting with Comcast. I have called multiple times and done multiple speedtests online and it says I am getting the speed I should but it does not seem as fast and I do a lot of surfing on the net.

I could understand new sites that I have never visited being a little slower the firsat time I visit, but I had visited one of my regular sites with Comcast in the morning before the FIOS install and then later in the day after the install and the load time was significantly longer. It has never gotten any better. I personally am thinking about switching back to Comcast as I surf the net more than I watch TV and watch more blu-ray dvdsa than I do television as well. So far on this thread I seem to be the only one against FIOS.

Just my :TWOCENTS

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This is a great topic! I am moving into a new townhouse soon and hear good things about verizon. My biggest problem is they don’t have the flyers games! I can’t live without watching them! So looks like I will be forced to get comcast, although I only need internet and TV, my cell phone is the only phone I’ll need.

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[quote=“DamnPepShrimp, post:6, topic:1264”]
My biggest problem is they don’t have the flyers games! I can’t live without watching them![/quote]

I have FIOS and I am able to watch the Flyer’s games. They have Comcast Sports Network on FIOS. It is channel 76 and 576 for high def and 77 for CSN Maryland-Area. Also there is Versus and NHL Network.

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never personally had verizon, but m mom and dad do. they seemed to have some issues with service, even on the install. i love comcast service, except the long waiting period on the phone to talk to someone. and have NEVER been let down by comcast speed. i feel, way faster than theirs, but figured it could just be a slower computer. BUT… noone touches verizon on wireless.
my :TWOCENTS

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I will weigh in a little. Im a little bias, but i will try to stay as objective as possible. I work for Comcast, have a related degree in the field, and will be getting my masters in telecommunications engineering hopefully sooner than later. With all that said, the difference is 99% marketing.

Someone mentioned something about customer service earlier and several people mentioned pricing. Thats what its all about. If your happy with your monthly bill and customer service stay with your provider. Prices are almost exactly the same without promotions, they are simply bundled in different ways to appeal to demographics which can make one seem cheaper than the other.

The funniest thing i reguarly get asked is “So, when are you guys getting fiber like verizon?” We have had fiber in New Castle County since 1996. The infrastructure we use is called FTTF(fiber to the feeder) as opposed to FTTH(fiber to the home) which is Verizon’s infrastructure. I dont want to bore anyone with technical details, but for all intents and purposes they are nearly identical as it relates to the consumer. The common “if more people have comcast you service is slower” is a half truth and something that effects verizon equally. Its a capacity issue that is directly related to the load balancing at our hubsites(phone central offices) and has little to do with our infrastructure. Also, speed tiers and the amount of throughput that a provider can offer to a customer is also directly affected by capacity. With that said, a startup company with 0 highspeed internet customers can offer larger speedtiers and more affordable rates. As their marketshare increases, so will the damand for bandwidth.

People have different experiences. One bad experience can make a lasting impression. The one thing i will say is if both services are installed correctly and the rates, or speed tiers provisioned to the account are comprable, the speeds experienced by the customer will be comprable. Neither service is superior. A network is only as strong as its weakest link, and unitl your set top box or computer begins to interface with fiber, your still relying on copper throughout your house. It makes very little difference that fiber comes 300 yards closer to your home, your still using copper. And for those that feel that verizon has better picture quality, it makes me laugh every time. Nothing is true digital. TV only uses a digital modulation scheme, but the carrier is still analog. Same thing with your modem. Its called a modem because it (modulates/demodulates) the signal is still analog, baseband, but analog. Most of the time competing internet and cable providers use the exact same vendors. Same switches, modulators, routers, etc etc.

Like i said before, if you like your service and your happy with your bill, stay where your at. The grass isnt greener on the other side. However, if you change to Comcast i will come out and sweep, balance, and optimize your node for you Saint:)

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I appreciate the insite, Shawn. I’ve been a reasonably satisfied Comcast customer for a long time and my issue at this point is pricing now that my initial 2 year commitment to the Premier HD bundle has expired. My bill jumped close to $50/month and that’s why I’m looking at options. It appears I can get a comparable triple play package with Verizon for about $50 less, in other words comparable to the pricing I had. It really strikes me as odd that they’ll offer promotional rates to new customers, but after you’ve completed your two year committment, you’re at a substantial cost disadvantage to a new customer. As a vendor, wouldn’t it be cheaper (and more profitable) to keep an existing customer where there is no install or de-install costs? No doubt Verizon employs the same strategy, which baffles me. I’d be happy to re-commit to another two years at the same pricing I had, but Comcast customer service told me they no longer offer two year commitments because so few customers could comply with them.

As far as bandwith, if I understand you correctly, speed is most directly impacted by how well the carrier is managing the traffic through its hubsites relative to the number of customers its serving at any one time through that hub. So, does that mean simply that Verizon’s claims of faster speeds than cable are just fluff, or is it simply based on the assumption that its managing fewer customers (i.e. less bandwith) than Comcast is?

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I’ve renewed my triple play twice. I think if you threaten to leave, they will reconsider.

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As far as bandwith, if I understand you correctly, speed is most directly impacted by how well the carrier is managing the traffic through its hubsites relative to the number of customers its serving at any one time through that hub. So, does that mean simply that Verizon's claims of faster speeds than cable are just fluff, or is it simply based on the assumption that its managing fewer customers (i.e. less bandwith) than Comcast is?

Not exactly. A hubsite, or central office, is just what it sounds like. Its a hub(center of wheel) in a star topology. Our system is set up with a headend and six hubsites that make up our system ring. Our headend which happens to be a master headend taps into our regional backbone to feed our system as well as other systems. From our headend we run fiber straight to our hubs, and from out hub we run fiber straight to a node. A node typically serves 500 “homes passed” and the physical size varies based on population density. From a node to your house is the only copper used in a HFC(hybrid fiber coaxial) network. We dont have any cascades(that i know of) longer than six actives. What this means for an average customer is that you are a lot closer to a fiber link than you may think. Although the infrastucture and physical medium do impact speed, they are only a very small factor as it relates to a suscriber. The largest, and most important, factor that determines the amount of speed we can offer customers are our UBR, or universal braodband routers. We now using something a little more sophisticated, but its essentially the same thing. Every node has a port on one of these routers. In many cases mutiple nodes are combined onto one port. There are ports for upstream traffic and downstream traffic. These essentially behave as a local gateway. If you do a trace route on your computer, you will see the name of your hubsite and ubr as your first hop. When a provider refers to load balancing at a local level, they are referring to balancing the number of nodes per port, and nodes per card on these routers. These routers are enormously expensive(over a million i belive) and play a large role in the amount of throughput we can offer each customer in a given area.

Luckily, there are a lot of new things happening and that will happen that will bring a lot of changes. One thing is the recent rollout of DOCSIS 3.0. Again, without getting to complicated, essentially we can offer more bandwidh with existing equipment. Do a google search for comcast extreme speed tiers, hopefully we will see it in our market soon.

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Ironically, i just plugged my address in to see what speed tiers are available at my address and it says that 50mb/s is available.

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[quote=“logans_daddy, post:9, topic:1264”]
However, if you change to Comcast i will come out and sweep, balance, and optimize your node for you Saint:)[/quote]

Will work for frags right :wink:

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+1 to what Shawn said, although I am a bit biased as well…

For the web surfing everyone here is doing you won’t notice much of a difference between the two. The big gain I personally would use FiOS for is pushing data OUT from my home PC (hosting web, ftp, ect.) for customers and partners. FiOS has greater up speeds. For web surfing ect. that HARDLY matters, what you are worried about is DOWN speeds, which for all concerned is about the same.
I have no clue on TV cause I don’t really watch it!

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[quote=“icy1155, post:14, topic:1264”]

[quote=“logans_daddy, post:9, topic:1264”]
However, if you change to Comcast i will come out and sweep, balance, and optimize your node for you Saint:)[/quote]

Will work for frags right ;)[/quote]

Icy is not too far from me. I can do frags as well. I got Comcast but my internet is CRAP. Very slow most of the time and have to reset it all the time because it lost the signal? I am dump when come to internet and the computer, so I couldn’t go into details as to what happening with my internet. All I know is that it is slow and the router I rent from them. I have considered switching to FIOS but they don’t have it in my area yet.

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Ill take care of you and Bellamy as soon as you guys move above the canal! As far as speed issues go, 99% of the time speed issues are related to customer equipment. There are a lot of things to check for, the first thing i would do is look at your transmit levels. Regardless of the manufacture, you should be able to enter 192.168.100.1 into your browser address bar and view your transmit levels. Where to find them will vary, but usually its labled as downstream or upstream power or Tx and Rx power. “Ideally” you downstream or Tx should be between -10 and +10 dBmV. The closer to 0 the better, but if your within this range your golden. Your Rx should be between 35dBmV and 50dBmV ideally. There are a lot of factors that will determine your upstream transmit power, but most modems transmit in the 40’s. If one of the levels are way out of whack i would set up a service call. Bad levels would cause your modem to lose synch and could be responsbile for you having to reset your modem. 99% of your lights will flash when you lose synch, but sometimes you can physically stay connected but experience timeouts between your modem and the cadent. If everything is good, my guess would be the router(public enemy number one) or PC issues.

The upload issue that Ian talked about is kind of a dirty word with comcast. I dont even want to bring up the topics of comcast, fcc, and net neutrality but suffice it to say i would guess that the majority of people that are concerned with upload speed tiers are not the kinds of subscribers that comcast holds in high regards. Myself included. With that said, comcast does offer symmetrical speed tiers, but as far as i know the are typically marketed as business class tiers.

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I dont know, i just switched from dial up last month to comcast and i think its great. I bought a linksys wireless router and usb adapter from radio shack, and after several hours with tech support lining it up, it seems to work great. i figure my 2004 E-machine is the weakest link now. the router, at 54mbps, runs faster than the cable. But don’t recall anyone optomizing my node. they did install a new ground on the cable feed outside though. sometimes in rain storms the cable tv would fuzz out.

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Here’s mine. Never knew to look there. I have had Comcast high speed for 6 years at my present house and 2 years at my old house. I have the original modem and have never had a big problem. I do have to seset the modem when I notice some sluggishness but the modem is old

192.168.100.1.JPG
192.168.100.1.JPG700×471 42.6 KB

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[quote=“Adictedtoswf, post:16, topic:1264”]
Very slow most of the time and have to reset it all the time because it lost the signal? [/quote]

I am not going to even TRY to pretend to know as much about this as Shawn - I bow down to his mastery - of course I just got the “Y” key embedded in my forhead when I passed out reading his technical explanation lOl

Anyway - I learned long ago that the cable modem is VERY sensitive to signal strength, much more so then your TV is - so the number of times a wire is split before it gets to your modem plays a very large factor in connectivity and “dropped signals”. I had considerable problems, and after a few calls to Comcast and a few visits by their service techs - they replaced all of the splitters in my house with “zero loss” splitters (not really zero loss but considerably less loss then standard radio Shack variety) - still had a problem. They came back out and replaced almost all of the coax cable, still had some issues. So Comcast came back out and ran a dedicated line from my box out front directly to my modem.

I have not lost a signal in over 3 years now.