Best Damn Tech Show, Period.

The past year has left me fairly disgruntled about the broadband opportunities here in West Philly. My particular neighborhood’s cable/internet used to be Road Runner (Time Warner). Sometime last year Comcast bought up the neighborhood. I don’t particularly care what’s happening behind the scenes though. I just know that my connection rarely hits advertised speeds. On top of that several times the connection has had issues and I get the feeling the broadband hardware installed in the neighborhood is from web 0.1 beta. Needless to say I’ve been paying attention to new broadband services available.

This is what led me to attend the Verizon block party for MyHome 2.0. Here’s the deal. Verizon is marketing their new FiOS with a show they call MyHome 2.0. Basically they pick a family and give them all new computers and TVs and network it all together in a ‘Pimp my Car’ style reality show. I’m no sucker for reality TV, but I couldn’t resist a chance to check out FiOS for myself. So off I went to learn about FiOS, get a speed comparison of my own, and maybe find one of those glowing vans.

I learned from Freddy FiOS (a Verizon tech) that what makes FiOS different from other home broadband providers is that they bring fiber optic cables direct to prem. ‘prem’ is an industry term for premesis (FiOS hates slow, hence the need for acronyms and shortened words). Yeah Comcast, Road Runner, and the like have fiber optic networks too, but their fiber optic cables go to a substation. From there copper goes out the homes. This means that all the homes connected to a substation are sharing the fiber optic goodness. That’s not the case with FiOS. FiOS was really fast. Here’s a screenshot I took when I ran a speakeasy speed test on the FiOS network. I was in Thornton, PA and ran the test to New York City.

That’s a whole lot faster than I get with my current cable provider and way faster than I thought it would be. But why all that bandwidth? The average user doesn’t need that much now do they? As it turns out, they do. FiOS bandwidth is not just for browsing the web and VOIP. Like cable providers, there are television signals shooting through those wires too. HDTV requires a lot more bandwidth. Many Comcast users wouldn’t notice the difference now, but when all the neighbors get HDTVs and start watching the HDTV channels, talking on VOIP phones, playing Xbox Live, surfing the web, and the like, the network will start to bottleneck. HDTV will show artifacts, the guide channel will take a long time to update, VOIP will sound crappy, and junior will have something other than the controller to blame for his corporal ranking on Halo 3. Home use of the internet far exceeds the bandwidth model of FiOS’s competition in the market. The internet isn’t just for browsers anymore and when every new toaster has a wifi connection, Verizon will be prepared.

Needless to say, like a good podcaster I didn’t leave with out my video camera. The video above shows what I got.

All in all it was a good event and I’ve determined that barring the graces of a T1 fairy or Comcast revamping their concept of a fiber optics network, I will be getting FiOS when it is available in my area. Rumors of FiOS coming to Philadelphia for late 2008 were heard, but nothing was said officially so take it as hearsay. I’ll keep a geek eye on Verizon progress in my area and in the mean time stay acquainted with all those download progress bars.

–Adam Plante

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 11:22 am and is filed under tech show. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.