All About FiOS

Reader Rob McAuley writes: I live in the NYC metro area, and there is currently a major advertising war going on between the local big cable company (Optimum Online) and Verizon. Both companies are aggressively rolling out internet service commercials, each stating that their service is better than the other guy and that each other one isn't fully fiber optic. Fiber optic... FiOS... cable... DSL... what's the difference? How much faster is this FiOS? And what's the truth behind all the finger pointing?

I won't get into the theories about what "Fios" might mean, but in a nutshell it stands for Fiber Optic Service. If you hear someone talk about fiber and FiOS, they're talking about the same thing, though they might be from different companies.

The idea behind FiOS is simple: It uses fiber optic lines to carry data to you via light pulses instead of electrical ones running on coaxial, twisted pair, or other traditional copper wiring. Fiber can carry more data than electrical wires, so FiOS's improved bandwidth makes it quite zippy. But hey, you might ask, what about all those old commercials from Sprint and the like, saying they were using fiber to carry my long-distance phone calls? Isn't that fiber used for Internet connections, too? Yes, in part, but FiOS means the fiber runs all the way to your house, giving you a high-speed optical connection from end to end. With the other services, you eventually have to drop down to slower telephone wiring (DSL) or cable lines.

The upshot? People seem to love it. There's no fiber service available where I live, but I know a few people who do have it and they unilaterally rave about the speeds that can climb as high as 30Mbps downstream (and 50Mbps in some regions). Compared to the 3Mbps or 6Mbps that are typical for DSL or cable, that's a substantial boost. Yes, you'll pay for it (Verizon's 30Mbps plan is $180 a month), but lower speed plans are much more affordable (15Mbps is $50 a month).

Finally, I checked out the claims of Optimum Online (NYC's other fiber provider) vs. Verizon and found them mostly to the same; the differences amount to little more than sales puffery. Both offer the same packages, but Optimum appears to have better pricing, especially at the 30Mbps level (which Optimum calls "BOOST"). However, coverage areas vary widely, and there's a good chance that only one will be able to serve your home, especially if it's an apartment building. Overall Optimum gets good reviews, though, so I'd try them first to take advantage of the better pricing. Wish I could offer hands-on experience with FiOS, but hopefully some commenters will chime in with their own experiences.