My family and I have been concerned about the Verizon FIOS bills and the dire straights the family get in when a Verizon bill is not paid. It takes minimally two hours to pay Verizon over the phone and a second call later in the day to get the phone, cable and Internet restored. It is a battle royale.
After the latest episode with Verizon, my wife an I decided we needed to return to Bright House. We found that for an additional $15 per month we could get Bright House Lightening which is supposed to be twice as fast as Verizon FIOS. We will look at some actual stats on a home network a little bit later.
While talking to Bright House we found we could get rid of two of the settop boxes because still has 80 channels of analogue service that can be directly connected to the old style TVs. This saved about $10 month.
Regardless, the two phone lines from Bright House are still cheaper than a single PSTN line from Verizon because of the historic taxes and fees on PSTN phone lines.
The downside to replacing a PSTN phone line with one that runs over VOIP is that you need a UPS to provide power to the home phone when you lose power in your home. The phone company provides power for a PSTN line so it stays up during power outages.
The consumer, however, will have to replace the backup battery to the VOIP phone device every year at their expense. How do the two systems compare. The graphics compare the two systems:
Bright House Lightening results
Verizon FIOS results
Bright House claims Lightening is twice as fast as Verizon. This is true for the upload speed when you are fetching a web page or sending email. The two services are closer in download speeds such as when you are downloading a web page, file or email.
Bright House in my opinion has better customer support and tech support than Verizon. When you pay your bill, the service is on very quickly if you missed a bill.
The customer support and tech support people are also very friendly and helpful. The Bright House installer did not leave information on setting up an email account. I called a Bright House tech and got the email account up in minutes and linked it to my gmail account.I would expect the average user to save anywhere from $50 to $100 a month on their cable bill by switching to Bright House.
Verizon has an excellent but pricey service. Every TV will require a settop box and you have to request that any new settop boxes after installation be delivered and returned by UPS. The customer service appears to be overly centralized, impersonal and out of state. Verizon is an old AT&T local exchange carrier and it still has some rough edges because of it size.
Rightardia's recommendation is Bright House. It is faster, more convenient and offers better customer service than Verizon. You will also save money on you monthly cable bill.
Update: I verified that Bright House cable box supports a the standard 480p and 720p resolution. I was also able to get a 1080i resolution that was not available from the older Verizon FIOS settop box.
In the past I was able to get 1080i output from my Blu-Ray DVD player, but not the Verizon settop box. The difference between the standard analogue output of 480p and 720p is not that noticeable, but there is a big difference between 480p and 1080i output. The better LCD monitors, of course, also support 1080p.
Update: I verified that Bright House cable box supports a the standard 480p and 720p resolution. I was also able to get a 1080i resolution that was not available from the older Verizon FIOS settop box.
In the past I was able to get 1080i output from my Blu-Ray DVD player, but not the Verizon settop box. The difference between the standard analogue output of 480p and 720p is not that noticeable, but there is a big difference between 480p and 1080i output. The better LCD monitors, of course, also support 1080p.
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7 comments:
I work for Brighthouse and your Lightning service should run up to 40 Mbps. Your speed test seems way too slow for the Lightning service. I'm running standard service and max out near 10 Mbps wireless through my personal router. Check the website www.speedtest.cfl.rr.com (not sure what it may be in your area, I'm in Melbourne, FL) for another opinion of your speed. Thanks.
WOW your speed test you did seems like you have Dial UP! waaaay to slow for bright house or Fios! your doing something wrong.
I agree with the other comments but I would like to add a couple of key factors that maybe missing. First when you talked about missing a payment, did you mean missing more than 1 payment. I have Verizon fios service and shame to admit, I missed a payment before and my services were not suspended, which tells me that apparently you missed at least 2 or more payments in order to have you service turned off. The second point is: when you completed your speed test, what speed were you comparing, the one thing that I like Verizon file is that they tell you your upload and download speeds where brighthouse gives a name for it butyou really don't know what you should be getting. Verizon has the capacity to run your internet as high has 150 mbps. I currently run a 35/35 speed which I believe is the best in the market. You have a true statement about the set top boxes however, I have just learned that all cable providers will have to utilize set top boxes because of the digital conversion. I do agree that brighthouse is cheeper but I do not agree that you can compare the picture quality or the internet speed. As far as the phone service, the fees are more however, I feel better knowing that if I loose power I still have phone service and I also feel better knowing that I loose internet, I still have phone service.
No, we never missed more than one payment. The billing people in Verizon were tough to deal with.
I suspect the Brighthouse router had a firmware problem because my speedtests now hit the advertised Lightening speeds. A Brighthouse tech also replaced a splitter in the attic.
Verizon FIOS is just too pricey and the company continues to play games with billing.
I once worked for ATT as a WAN tech and understand the technical issue issues. I went back to BrightHouse more than a year ago and will never experiment with Verizon again.
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