Verizon's not wrong with saying that squirrels possibly ate through their wiring. Suprisingly that happens quite alot, and its not just squirrels but other vermin that will mess up all sorts of wiring up to and including other wiring in and outside of a building, and my favorite cars!

Your Verizon is probably DSL, not FIOS. My FIOS connection gives me 20/5 internet, quite a few more HD channels, and better image quality. I'm paying $115 a month for internet, HD cable, and Starz, HBO and Showtime while Comcast charged me $130 for slower internet and fewer, lower quality HD channels.

I havve heard of all of those things happening, bees in particular I have heard stories about. You can definitely believe the squirrel issue, though. I work for a telecom, and process payments to our vendors and contractors. You would not believe the thousands of dollars a month we regularly spend on fixing "squirrel damage" (and I did laugh myself nearly out of my chair the first time I had a $20,000.00 invoice come through that was billing for "squirrel damage").

My CDV works when the power up to about eight hours.

I live in rural CT which is "squirrel country." They're all over the place here and have been for much longer than I've been alive (which is uncomfortably close to 45 years). At no time have I ever heard of lines anywhere in this area chewed up by squirrels. Believe me, they aren't interested in phone wires. They're much more interested in acorns, or in our bird feeder (which, after long years of trial and error, we have finally erected sufficiently to baffle their attempts to pillage it).

Then again, our phone lines are provided by AT&T (which used to be SBC, which used to be SNET, which used to call itself SNETCO), rather than by Verizon. Maybe Verizon coats their cables with "essence of acorn" oil or something in order to attract squirrels, which AT&T/SBC/SNET/SNETCO never did?

The only rodent attack on the local utility infrastructure I've ever heard of, was when a squirrel climbed into an electrical substation in the next town and shorted it out accidentally. Apparently he'd been using it as a cache for his hoard of acorns, and went a little too far inside. But that was CL&P's equipment, not the phone company's.

No, I suspect if there are mysterious attacks on copper in Verizon country, it's not caused by squirrels with an appetite for cables, but thieves with their eyes on commodity prices (see [freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com]).

Nastiest picture of the stupid raccoon, who fried himself to death, next day in the paper, too.

if not then it seems more like VZ is getting a level playing field.

Plus---it's difficult to imagine anyone who believes that fiber to the home is not a superior connection type (versus coax and multi-pair copper) when it comes to potential services.

Maybe you should post the latest &/lb chart on some util poles so Bubba can figure out it's not worth the cost of gas and soiled overalls.

in my community that's how we got fios in the first place

we told verizon they wouldn't have to repair their copper lines, which were regulated up until the fiber install

course now verizon is selling it off to some no-name company....

Battery != usable service after a natural disaster. What does Verizon propose I do when power's out for 2 weeks? or 2 months even? (Ask anyone who went through Hurricane Andrew or Hurricane Ivan, 2 months without power is very much a concern.)

VoIP doesn't have to be the unreliable, low-budget, low-service crap Vonage and others push. Most new enterprise phone systems (PBXs) are VoIP. I've run enterprise-grade VoIP for 4 years now. Three hurricanes later, our VoIP PBX, microwave uplinks and fiber connections were the only things that were reliable. The local telco's POTS service was down for most of the area, despite the majority of the telco's infrastructure being underground. 2 weeks without POTS service for some businesses we work with. We provided two other firms with phone service until the ILEC got their stuff together and restored service. They've since switched over to VoIP. But again, HUGE difference between what we're running and Vonage.

Also, the FiOS installer told me our battery backup would last eight hours, so that makes three different things that people have heard from them (3, 8, 24 so far)

the real reason is that Verizon wants to get all of their customers off the copper due to the fact the copper was put into place using government money & they can't charge what they want when using that infrastructure.

One of the advantages of FIOS is that they can quickly reroute how the service gets to your house until they resolve the problem. If they chew thru a cable on A Street, they can bypass it by sending the signal down the wire on B Street. The only case where this doesn't help is if something happens to the cable coming directly to your home from the pole. In this respect, FIOS will be more reliable then copper based service.

If the power goes out, it has a battery backup. Sounds like you got major utility problems if the power keeps cutting out too. Although of course, the rep couldn't possibly know that your electric company sucks. To a certain extent, the rep was right. Yes it was a sales pitch, but there was a basis behind the statement.

Verizon is rolling out verizon digital voice, only available to Fios customers and it is VOIP.

REGULAR FIOS IS NOT VOIP. IT IS NOT INTERNET BASED.

//where the heck do these people come from?

Let's see, fiber optics operates by light and copper uses... electricity? uh...

@alfista: Were those squirrels driving a Comcast truck?

@MikeM_inMD: I think it depends on the battery backup unit you have. When you lose power, FiOS turns off your CATV and your Internet connection to conserve power. I ran once on about 36 hours standby time, or about 4 hours talk time before it goes into "Emergency Mode". When the battery reaches 20% capacity, it turns everything off and you need to press a button on the battery unit to manually turn on the service. If this is not enough, you can always connect the FiOS power unit to a UPS (which will also keep your TV and internet alive if you happen to have a laptop or your a UPS on your desktop.

Verizon has cut a deal with the squirrle cartels to munch through copper and coax cable lines to create a scare that will result in more FiOS sales.

RT
www.anon-tools.tk

All underground telephone copper or fiber lines have gel in them, or compressed air (about compressed air cable).

I don't think FIOS fiber uses kevlar cable. Too expensive. FIOS users aren't paying for 99.999% reliability. 99.999% reliability fiber cable (SLA business grade) that goes to cell towers and businesses is independent and shares nothing except the pole and same manholes (different pipes though). The 99.999% fiber also uses these things so if a truck or tree knocks down the pole, the horseshoe will break (made from plastic) and release the slack cable, the fiber optic cable falls to the ground with the pole and the customer will maintain service. All the phone company has to do is replace the pole, then coil it back up onto the pole. FIOS doesn't do this.

No matter what, you can always escalate your problem to the state PSC for copper phone service. Who cares if its squirrels, the bogeyman, or terrorists, they are required to repair it each time in a timely manor.

The jel inside the cables does in fact taste bad to most animals ( because they they do in fact love chewing all cables, even coax ) but it doesn't always stop them.

Again, comparable to cable and landline/DSL, but expensive if all you want is a dialtone for your landline.

Fuck Verizon! Here in WV they are selling out to Frontier. When they got a HUGE rate increase a couple years back they agreed to upgrade a bunch of stuff & do more maintenance (a specific # of millions $$$ was outlined). They have drug their feet on this ever since even with a consumer/regulatory committee reviewing their progress regularly to hold their feet to the fire. They have done next to nothing on this and their trouble rate continues to suck. Rain = 3rd world phone service in WV. Now with the pending sale to Frontier, they have literaly stated that this prior agreement should not affect the sale. Take the money & run Verizon.

@Révolution: If you happen to live in a city where its offered. I live in a city of 30K where they project its 3-5 years out, 2-3 years ago.

Where I live the problem isn't squirrels; it's a gang of copper thieves that is climbing poles in the dead of night and stealing about 300 feet of aerial copper telco cable about once a month or so. Frontier Telephone has offeed rewards, the the perps are still out there and due to strike again soon.

Fortunately I have Time Warner Digital Phone, and they haven't resorted to stealing the HFC cabling... yet.

Maybe a cat and not a squirrel? Now, hear me out, please.

I know that a lot of Consumerist readers are cat lovers (sorry, me have allergies, so no cats for me), but a number of years ago my ex-sister-in-law called me because her computer wasn't booting up properly. Something about there being no keyboard. Well, there was a kb there. I saw it. She saw it. And I could see it was connected. However, once I got under the desk and traced the kb cord, well, imagine my surprise when I saw that the cord's insulation was missing and I could see the copper wire. It seems the cats liked to jump up at the cord and over time managed to scratch the insulation away. For all I know, one of them might have even bit it, but I don't think they really chewed on it, as that would have probably caused the actual kb to get yanked to the floor. The solution? Buy a new kb and keep the cats out of the room.

@Michael Belisle: Thank you for the link. It will give me more than just PEBKAC.

by switching to fiber, they are skirting all sorts of laws and protection regulations that exist with copper lines.

Although, I wonder if a reasonably sized solar panel would be enough to keep the phones operational-- at least for a short time each day?

FiOS phone service is $45 for unlimited.

The CSR should have shut his/her yaps when the first NO was uttered, and don't make excuses to keep phone lines from being repaired. They got in deep trouble in Florida with the union and the PUC over neglected copper runs. I think they got nailed for 1.5 millbills for it.

Did they call a sales line or a residential repair number?

What Verizon didn't mention is that (depending where you live) many of their cables are 20, 40, 50, or in some cases 80 years old. They are reluctant to repair their copper, because ultimately they'd like to phase it out and they'd much rather put their money into installing fiber than fixing old obsolete copper trunks.

Squirrels are a problem, but aging infrastructure and neglect is more of a problem. I think they still have lines in service that were installed by Alexander Graham Bell himself.

FiOS is awesome if you want high-speed computer service. If you just want a telephone dial-tone, copper is more than adequate.

Oh, the horror. Now I must go out and reason with the squirrels.

Wait, this is the same Verizon who wouldn't cut a tree branch laying on their line between poles, as their reasoning was it wasn't broken YET. (They eventually did cut the branch before bad things happened.)

Trust me, they even have tried special coatings to make the fiber taste bad. They still chew it.

2. All Verizon FIOS traffic is inherently digital; it also uses IP. Therefore, all FIOS voice traffic is voice over IP. There is nothing wrong with VOIP, except that you can't carry electricity over plastic/glass fiber and therefore there needs to be electricity along the whole chain.

Everyone relax, I don't work for VZ, but if any of you have ever used Fios you would know where I'm coming from, business-issues aside. The technology blows cable out of the water.

First, the FIOS ONT (think of the greay network interface box that your copper phone lines hook up into) is backed up with a battery. Depending on the battery, you should have between 6 and 24 hours of phone service. There is no VOIP box that lives in your house. Your home phone wiring plugs into the ONT, which routes the call over Verizon's network. It is NOT like vonage, magicjack, comcast voice, or anything similar. It WILL work if power is out.

Verizon WILL NOT fix your copper phone lines for you. It's just not worth it. VZ must allow competition over their copper, but they have a monopoly over the FIOS fiber. You can get the same exact phone service, with the same exact rates, with none of the broken downtime due to crappy copper if you switch to FIOS.

Or, you could be an annoying whiner and just bitch and moan about how Verizon is trying to rip you off. Pick your battles.

I agree. She specifically said she has power outages.. Sounds like a VZ plug if Ive heard one.

I hate VZ!

I smell a troll.

I'm not surprised to hear that fiber is no exception.

That said, yes, in a power failure you will have about 24 hours of battery to run your phones (and only your phones). But Fios is much more reliable than cable (VOIP) and the quality is better too (even better than POTS). Debbie should upgrade, since these days power outages are somewhat rare and everyone has cell phones anyway.