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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 30, 2011 9:39:45 GMT -5
At the January town board meeting, the representatives from Verizon said that the actual start date would be pending, based on the approval of the franchise agreement by the PSC. Based on the PSC schedule, Verizon's plan was for a late Q1 startup. If you live in Bethlehem and have FiOS Internet now, you should be able to order FiOS TV sometime in March.
If you don't have access to FiOS Internet now, it will probably be some time before you can get FiOS TV. Verizon described a 5 year schedule to reach 100% coverage in the town of Bethlehem. They are currently at 65% coverage now.
With Verizon's FiOS TV rollouts in Buffalo, Syracuse, and downstate; you would hope that they have the deployment plan already worked out. The cable competition in Long Island is very competitive, with each cable co. offering all sorts of enticements to get people to sign a two year contract. I remember one of them offering a free HDTV if you signed a two year contract.
Someone at the meeting asked if Verizon could or would put out a specific timetable for FiOS deployment. They said that they would not because of the advantage it would provide the competition, in this case Time Warner. In other markets, the competition would target the area and try to sign customers to 2 year contracts.
If I managed resident service sales for TWC, I would be going through my records now and getting a list of TWC subscribers who had dropped RoadRunner. That will be the first wave of FiOS TV subscribers. I would do everything that I could get to get them to stay on TWC and sign back up for RR. I would also stick pins in the voodoo doll of the TWC executive who authorized the February rate increases. Between that and the two articles that the Times Union ran last week, Verizon could not have bought better publicity.
BTW, that town board meeting where the agreement Verizon was approved has been on the Public Access channel in Bethlehem. I don't know what the schedule is, I caught it by accident yesterday afternoon.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 26, 2011 11:13:55 GMT -5
If you live in an area that will be covered by FiOS TV, you wont need a tuning adapter at all, just the m-card.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 26, 2011 11:08:13 GMT -5
You are never going to be saving money if you have a TiVo. You are paying for the better user experience. If I switch to FiOS TV, I will deactivate my 2 Series TiVos and keep the TiVo HD active, as well as get the FiOS HD DVR.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 25, 2011 9:47:55 GMT -5
Some interesting statistics: Verizon added 182,000 new FiOS TV subscriptions in Q4. They have already reached 28% penetration in markets where FiOS TV was available. Since they are the new guys, that meant they are picking off the competition.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 21, 2011 16:27:23 GMT -5
I still don't know if I would switch from TWC to Verizon for TV service. I have a neighbor down the street that switched back to RoadRunner from FiOS. He had all sorts of performance problems due to a botched fiber run to his house. Customer service was so bad, he just bagged it and went back to TWC. I have had zero problems with FiOS Internet, but I would still hate to have to call their customer service.
If I do try FiOS, I will make sure that they do not do anything to the existing cabling that TWC has put in the house.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 18, 2011 20:26:43 GMT -5
Once the first town goes live with FiOS TV, my guess is that Verizon will focus it's energies on getting other town signed on. Guilderland will probably be one of the next ones to announce an agreement.
Once of the factors that pushed the Bethlehem/Verizon deal was that the Verizon representative, Sam Caldwell, is a local resident who really wanted to have FiOS TV service.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 17, 2011 14:06:20 GMT -5
That is insane, why would Verizon go through the process of negotiating at the village level, instead of at the town? Then again, it's Colonie, a two with two separate school districts.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 16, 2011 12:01:00 GMT -5
I'll try to remember to call the Town of Colonie on Tuesday to see what's going on. IF one can believe the TU article, it was "approved" sometime in Nov. of 2010, but I can't dig up any info on it other than that article. If they approved it, they didn't record that vote in their town board minutes. And it wasn't listed under their notices of public hearings. Scotia approved a cable franchise agreement with Verizon, but it hasn't been deployed yet. I think Bethlehem will be the first town around here to get FiOS TV.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 15, 2011 23:50:18 GMT -5
I would try calling again. If that fails, then escalate it up the food chain to Jeff Simmermon at TWC Headquarters. That's just doesn't make any sense. You can reach him at jeff.simmermon@twcable.com or @jefftwc.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 15, 2011 23:41:11 GMT -5
I see that Bethlehem has signed up with VZ for Fios TV (!!!!) Do we have any information about how using a TIVO will effect our bill in that we aren't paying for VZ's DVR. It will be very similar to how it works with TWC. You get a non-DVR STB as part of the subscription and you would be paying $3.99 a month for a M-Card. If you have any Series 2 based TiVos, they will be pretty much useless with FiOS TV (I don't count IR blasters as a real choice). FiOS Tv is 100% digital, TWC carries both analog and digital. I currently have 2 Series 2 TiVos and a TiVO HD. If I switch to FiOS TV, I'll get an M-Card for the HD and retire the Series 2 boxes. For less than what I pay TiVo for both of the Series 2, I can get the multi-room DVR and some STB's from FiOS.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 15, 2011 23:32:18 GMT -5
Thanks Chris. What's weird, is that the FIOS website does not list digital voice as being available in my area, and their support forums stated that it's no longer offered in NY period. I was told by an online Sales Agent and also from Joe Ambeault, the Director of Product Management for FiOS TV (via his Twitter account) that Digital Voice would be offered. I did see some posts on DSLReports that indicated that ordered FDV can be problematic in some locations. The availability could change when they start up FiOS TV here. As far as I can tell, Bethlehem will be the first service area to go up on FiOS TV in this area code.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 14, 2011 21:15:59 GMT -5
Might be sooner than you think. According to this article posted in the Times Union back in October: A public hearing is going to be held next month.
The franchise would pave the way for Verizon to offer its FiOS TV product that would compete with Time Warner Cable.
The Village of Scotia was the first local municipality to approve FiOS TV, and Verizon is also in various stages of talks with the towns of Colonie, Guilderland and Bethlehem.
The state Public Service Commission must also approve any franchises awarded by municipalities. It would make sense that Verizon would want to cover as much of this area as possible. The more subscribers, the greater the economies of scale for them.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 14, 2011 11:06:14 GMT -5
The minimum of 20 units per mile is actually pretty low. The counsel for Verizon said that there was only one other town with a lower number. The NYS requirement is 30, the reason we got 20 was because a previous town board was able to get TWC to agreed to 20 and Verizon needed to match it to get the Franchise Agreement.
If you move out to a densely populated part of town, you need to have lowered expectations of what services will be made available to you from other companies. That being said, the town board will be looking into seeing what grants would be available to susbsidize cable installation costs or to provide wireless broadband Internet.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 14, 2011 9:43:28 GMT -5
...Verizon is planning to begin laying cables in the ground within the first quarter of the year to expand its FiOS fiber optic system to reach all residents, according to Town Supervisor Sam Messina. He approved the deal following a public hearing Wednesday night.... Where it says "all residents", substitute "all residents that live on the streets that meet the minimum resident home density of 20 units per mile." In other words, if you live on a road like Mahar Road in Slingerlands, you are not getting FiOS. From section 3.1.1 of the agreement: 3.1.1 Density Requirement: Franchisee shall make Cable Services available to residential dwelling units in all areas of the Service Area where the average density is equal to or greater than twenty (20) occupied residential units per mile as measured in strand footage from the nearest technically feasible point in the active FTTP Network trunk or feeder line. Should, through new construction, an area within the Service Area meet the density requirements after the time stated for providing Cable Service as set forth in Subsection 3.1, Franchisee shall provide Cable Service to such area within twelve (12) months of receiving notice from the LFA that the density requirements have been met.
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Post by Chris Miller on Jan 13, 2011 18:30:47 GMT -5
The town may changed the URL or I just copied it wrong. I updated my previous post to contain the correct link.
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