On Sep 15, 9:02 am, George wrote:
wrote:

You can address that but adding your own UPS.

It's not clear to me that you can add a UPS with FIOS. You can do it
with with some of the cable VOIP solutions, where they essentially
give you a kit that has the VOIP hardware and you just plug it in to
AC and coonect to the cable. With FIOS, where is the box located
that converts the traditional phone signal into VOIP? If it's in
some box under Verizon's control, then you may not be able to hook a
UPS to it. Anyone know what Verizon's position is on what happens
when the AC goes out in your neighborhood?

You simply unplug it from the wall outlet and plug it into the UPS.

Well, I did a little research and while it does appear that you can
indeed just plug the FIOS eqpt into a UPS, what I found raises new
issues. A battery backup unit and a power supply have to be located
inside the house to power the FIOS termination box on the outside of
the house. Additionally, the guy in this article who had it
installed said that per Verizon the power supply can't be plugged into
a power strip, it has to go directly into a wall outlet. So, I don't
know what their official position is on plugging it into a UPS would
be. Certainly you could do it after they left. However, how about
if you don't have an outlet at all that is convenient to where the
service needs to enter the house? It does raise more installation
issues.

The point is some folks may have good reason to not go through all
this.

http://www.bricklin.com/fiosinstall.htm







Plus, a UPS is just another level of complexity and eqpt to worry
about. Like, do you think grandma wants to deal with it?

It isn't much more involved than plugging in a toaster and besides thats
what the grandkids are for.

Except that in this case, the "toaster" may be in a crawl space or God
knows where. And what if there is no convenient AC outlet? Who
pays to get that installed?




As I said if it doesn't happen people will be wondering why their
"basic" comcast bill is $250.00/month.



Nonsense. That didn;t happen 30 years ago, when cable were the only
act in town, other than OTA. Don't get me wrong. More competition
in this case is good. But to claim the sky is falling and cable is
going to cost $250 a month unless we force people into fiber from the
phone company is silly. Ever here of Direct TV and Dish?







The phone company pretty
much has to do what they are doing and it is a good thing. If they don't
build out fiber and add services the cable companies will take their
core business away because they can offer VoIP over their existing cable
system.

The current penetration rate of cable companies taking away landline
phone business is very modest. I get solicited constantly to go with
Cablevision's VOIP and ditch Verizon landline. I tell them no,
because for me, it only amounts to maybe $10 a month. And there are
the dirty little secrets they don't tell you about:

1 - They give you a VOIP box that you get to install yourself. Well,
guess what? It's designed to just plug a phone into it, not to be
installed to connect to the existing phone wiring in your house.
That's fine if you just have a cordless phone. But how about if you
have a TIVO, a fax machine, and an alarm system that dials out, all of
which are distributed around the house. Do I want to figure out
how to intercept the incoming phone lines, turn it off, connect in the
Cablevision box, make sure it works correctly with the alarm system,
etc? I had a friend that tried to do it, wound up with hum on the
line.

2 - I haven't checked recently, but when I did a couple years ago,
alarm companies like ADT would not support service via VOIP

3 - Call quality issues. On the existing landline phone system, once
a call is setup, you have a guaranteed timeslot that get filled with a
voice A/D conversion at an 8khz rate and delivered exactly at that
rate and in order to the other end. With VOIP, the voice samples
get sent and routed like any other internet packet. Meaning there is
no guaranteed delivery time, which can lead to voice qualtiy issues.
That has gotten better in recent years, but I don't know anyone that
would argue that the call reliability or voice quality are as good as
landline.


The whole thing is also being driven by the other side of the
equation. That being that the phone company wants the $130 a month
part of the bill for cable and internet more than they want the $40
bill for phone service.




Consider what sort of (non) competitive situation it would be if cable
companies were the only providers.- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -