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I've seen mice eat through fiber where I work.
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@ngoandy: Mice (and I would guess squirrels) will chew on almost anything, even if it ends up killing them (we had to spray some of our electrical cables in the theater department in High School to deter them).
I'm not surprised to hear that fiber is no exception.
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it is fact that fiber lines are protected by a layer of kevlar. that squirrel will not cut that line even if it wanted to. FIOS is a definite upgraded, you get your private line so downloading all day wont affect the connection speed of your neighbors.
@morlo:
lol sorry forgot about that one, thanks. i also heard fiber lines have some special layer of jello or something like that.
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.
@Firesoul1: The \"kevlar\" that you speak of is closer to a fiberglas and it's purpose is to protect the optical glass from breaking. It is more of a strain relief than anything that will keep a squirrel from eating into it. Take my word for this, as I not only work with the copper and fiber optic cables but have had a squirrel in my fireplace that ate through the metal on my fireplace screen... which is a LOT heavier than anything up on poles.
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.
I know it's fun to bash companies, but at least do a little research before you bash.
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.
@SarupraniButeo: \"It is NOT like vonage, magicjack, comcast voice, or anything similar. It WILL work if power is out.\"
My CDV works when the power up to about eight hours.
I just wanted to chime in and say yes the is kinda correct, squirrels do LOVE to chew cable and teleco lines. If you ever all of a sudden start getting a fuzzy cable pic or the Internet starts to act weird it's most likely a squirrel that chewed on either the drop to your house or the hard line on the poles. This isn't so much a problem if your lines are underground but when you live in the city that isn't really a option.
@Michael Ortega: Rodents are an issue when it comes to gnawing through PVC jackets, but they have made advancements in making them unpalatable to them.
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?
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@Michael Ortega: When I was in college we had a raccoon chew through a in-ground power line and shut off power to close to 50,000 people for several hours. (It being college, people immediately began setting furniture on fire on the quad.)
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@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): We never set anything on fire when we lost power at my college. I feel all left out now. :D I did learn to play RISK during a power outage freshman year though.
@Nicole: :D We'd had short power outages all winter because the utility was having problems, and then we had an actual explosion at the backup power plant on campus (an old, coal-fired one) that took out power to the campus by blowing the transformers the city power came in on. So when the power went out to 50,000 people right before finals on one of the first nights it was warm ... I think people just had a lot of pent-up crazy after a long winter, and nothing left to do during power outages after so many of them!
Nastiest picture of the stupid raccoon, who fried himself to death, next day in the paper, too.
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The price of copper is up, and the Squirrels are is a recession and all it takes is 1 bad squirrel to give all squirrels a bad name...
1. Verizon will eventually phase out all the copper in your neighborhood. They encourage people to do so because copper is expensive and is now inefficient for data transfer compared to fiber.
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.
FIOS IS NOT VOIP.
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?
@☠Grяrяrяrяrя sings the doom song now!: That's EXPENSIVE for phone service! There's plenty of providers out there < $20/mo for consumer-grade VoIP service. You can get commercial/carrier-grade VoIP service for $30/mo/channel including LD.
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@R3PUBLIC0N: I wish they'd hurry up phasing out the copper in my area, and start offering real internet. Maybe I should start coating the wires with peanut butter...
Just as a point: aerial fiber lines are loved by squirrels the same as copper. There is usually no special protection for aerial fiber. Armored fiber is available, but it still wont protect from trees falling or car vs pole accidents.
Trust me, they even have tried special coatings to make the fiber taste bad. They still chew it.
You can get FiOS. When they install Fios, they also install an 8 hour backup battery for the phone. Go for it. Fios owns.
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@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.
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What about those of us with Verizon who cannot yet get FIOS? (They stopped right up the street.)
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.)
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Come on, Debbie...you don't want those crappy boring old copper phone lines for $30 a month when you can have shiny-new super-duper whiz-bang FiOS for $120 a month! Come on, be a sport!
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.
@David Bixenspan: That's cheap for phone service if they'll just hook you up with that an nothing else. I suspect, however, that you have to buy data service too, which would push it up into the $100/mo range.
Again, comparable to cable and landline/DSL, but expensive if all you want is a dialtone for your landline.
@☠Grяrяrяrяrя sings the doom song now!: It's not comparable to cable. I have Comcast, and for about the same price (Fios is more, actually) I get 12 Mbps while Verizon gives me 1 Mbps.
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.
everyone knows squirrels prefer cable company coax wires over verizons phone wire.
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@pianos101: Ah, I see a passing mention of \"standard\" FiOS voice in the fine print. After searching some more, it sort of sounds like POTS over FiOS is on its way out. I'm convinced that VoIP is the future.
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I have FIOS via AT&T because I want the higher Internet speeds, but I'd hate to see the old copper phone lines go extinct; the battery backup seems like such a shoddy stopgap measure.
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?
it may not be \"voip\" the fancy marketing word, but no matter what you do every single thing leaving your house over that piece of fiber is indeed \"IP\"
by switching to fiber, they are skirting all sorts of laws and protection regulations that exist with copper lines.
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@TheDude06: Do those same laws apply to cable providers of the same services (no sarcasm here, i'm just asking)
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.
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This problem of squirrels getting out of hand would never have gotten this far had we only allowed cats to attend Sniper's School as the gods intended.
Damn dog lobbyists and their cat-sniping, kitten-hating ways...
Verizon blamed a 37 hour business-class FiOS outage I suffered on squirrels. The also promised to take the copper down during installation, but didn't, and now say that it is their policy to leave it in case I ever want to go to copper. If I hadn't suffered the outage, I would think they left it behind for the squirrels.
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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.
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.
@boomerang86: Do these thieves know the price of scrap copper (and all scrap metals really) has plummeted?
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.
While I may not believe squirells, I would believe insects as I know Fire Ants LOVE to get into electrical boxes and usually end up shorting them out. I have also heard that bees swarming will sometimes seek out an electrical box or light, as the \"hum\" is sometimes inviting.
@TheStateOnDVD!_GitEmSteveDave:
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\").
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.
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According to Outwitting Squirrels: 101, Teflon is a good (and hilarious) solution to many squirrel problems... perhaps someone should reference Verizon to this book.
Makes pretty good sense to me it does!
RT
www.anon-tools.tk
I'm sorry, but I f*cking hate Verizon. So much that I actually decided to comment on this article. I've had them for more than 3 years because they are the only service provider in my area, and they have HORRENDOUS service. My internet breaks every 3/4 days for hours at a time, and I've already confirmed 2 times it's a problem on their end - yet, when I call in, the Indian customer service rep will tell me to restart my modem for 2 hours straight. And they call me every month and tell me to get FIOS, after all this CRAP.
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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.
I chuckled at the part that said fiber optics requires electricity vs copper, which apparently doesn't?
Let's see, fiber optics operates by light and copper uses... electricity? uh...
First of all, the OP is clueless. FIOS isn't VOIP. FIOS isn't internet based. It makes me question the rest of what she said. But let's give her the benefit of the doubt for a moment.
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.
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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.
Actually I have seen this some in field work for another provider (not Verizon). Previously, old cables (both copper and older fiber) were lubricated before being put into its insulation with peanut oil. As the line ages the insulation cracks slightly, which allows some of the peanut oil to either leak out or at least let out the smell of it. This attracts squirrels thinking there is a nut in there and they will chew through it. If I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes I wouldn't believe it. However new fiber (newer than 15 years old) uses an odorless, flavorless lubricant as to not attract squirrels. There is merit to this and probably the new FiOS lines woudln't attract squirrels, though an improper way to upsell because it is so illogical without lengthy explanation or seeing this first hand.
people come on
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....
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Squirrels? Eating copper wires coated with plastic and/or rubber installation??? Are they serious?
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]).
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!
Again, the problem is easily solved by NOT USING VERIZON!
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I think I just need to point out that Fios phone service is NOT internet based and is NOT VOIP, like you would get from the cable company. Fios phone runs on regular old copper wire in your house, but is just transferred to fiber between your house and the Verizon office.
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.
@pianos101: Fios' voice channel is VoIP for all practical purposes. And the battery they give you is worthless. They claim 8 hrs but that's when the battery is brand new. Verizon's subs like to install these batteries into unconditioned spaces where the battery life is substantially reduced. I'd be surprised if you got 1 hr out of that battery by the 3rd year. Living in hurricane country, cable TV is usually the first to go (including their phone & internet services), power next, then usually telco.
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.
@pianos101: Voice delivered via FIOS can be either VOIP or Tradition TDM. It all depends on the configuation back in the CO. In some configurations the line will be resident in a class 5 digital switch. In other configures the line would go to VOIP switch that is connected to the PSTN via high speed trunking. The service from both are identical from a user stand point, with full E911 support. As other have stated the ont has a battery backup, as far as how long that really depends on the make and manufacturer of said ont. But I do believe it is up to 8 hours.
@pianos101: When I got FIOS installed, I was told that the battery was good for THREE hours, not 24.
@pianos101: Fios is all on fiber.
@pianos101: Clearly you have never lived in a part of America where power outages are a normal part of any real thunderstorm. I feel for ya, Debbie.
@pianos101: Are you trying to get a promotion at Verizon?
I smell a troll.
@pianos101: I guess you missed the part where she says that \"we lose power regularly where we live\"
@pianos101: FIOS Digital Voice sure sounds like VoIP. How else would they run voice over FIOS if not by VoIP? There's nothing wrong with VoIP.