What is up with FiOS in Oakmont?

If like me you are a heavy Internet user you undoubtedly already have broad band or high speed network access. I gave up on dial up a long time ago and never looked back. I seem to always be repeating the words of Maverick and Goose from the movie Top Gun though.

"I feel the need. The need for speed!"

So when Verizon started advertising FiOS their network that brings high speed to the "final mile" from the telephone companies central office to your home by way of a fiber optic cable I was excited at the prospect. Up until now that has been the bottle neck that has prohibited really high speed data to your computer. There is only so much you can squeeze out of a pair of copper wires especially when they were never engineered to carry data from the very beginning.

I got on Verizon's web site and said "Sign me up!". After entering my information I was informed that FiOS was not yet available in my area, but there is good news! I can get "high speed" Internet from Verizon in the form of DSL. I already know this because I have Verizon DSL installed at my home. So every time Verizon runs an add on television or radio for FiOS I call the number included in the add and say "Sign me up!". When I call I get the very same answer I got from the web site. So I ask them to tell me when FiOS will be available in my neighborhood? As far as I can get up the food chain with the call taker no one has any idea when I will be able to buy this service.

Now you would think that if you have something to sell and the buying public is clamoring for it you would do all you could to get the goods and or services out to them. Increasing your sales, income and profits. I thought that was what business was all about. I have watched as friends tell me that their community has FiOS available all around me. Aspinwall, Fox Chapel, Penn Hills, Monroeville all have the option to buy FiOS from Verizon and in some cases other third party vendors. So what seems to be the problem in Oakmont?

I recently discovered that I am apparently not the only one asking this question. If you navigate over to Oakmont's official web site you will find a message from the borough saying that they are not the reason that Oakmont residents can not get FiOS.

They say that Verizon has not yet provided them with a contract to provide this service to the community and that they, Verizon, will notify them when they are ready to do so. Now here is my question, does Oakmont have a contract with Verizon to provide telephone service? I seriously doubt it. I remember when Comcast cable came to Oakmont decades ago when the cable industry was in its infancy and there was much ado about who was going to provide television by cable in the town. At that time there were companies competing for contracts with many of the 131 individual municipalities that exist in Allegheny County. At that time I thought the the local government should have kept their noses out of it and let the cable companies bargain with the other utilities for access to their infrastructure in order to install their cables and run their business. That however is a subject for another rant.

I don't know if I mentioned it or not but I work for the information systems department of a fortune 500 company and have been tinkering with computers at home since the late 1970s. This is part of my frustration because I can see no technical reason that FiOS should not be available in our town. As I said before I have DSL which Verizon offers with different levels of speed with the higher data rates costing more money. When I subscribed to DSL I asked for the highest speed that they offer and was told that the highest rate was not available in my area but I could get the next level down. This got my knickers in a twist because once again I know that the main factor affecting how fast your DSL line can be is the distance between your home and the phone companies central office. It just so happens that from my house to the central office on Oakmont while I couldn't throw a rock and hit it, I could just about shoot an arrow from a good bow and hit their building. I'm that close. So again I see no technical reason that I should not be able to get the highest speed they offer in DSL service. It is all very frustrating to me as I am sure it is to others.

So what is to be done about this little dilemma? I have a two pronged approach. I am going to give Verizon one last chance to keep my business. I intend to call the business office and make a pest of myself until someone answers my question about when FiOS will be available in Oakmont. If no one can answer that question then they better be prepared to give me a reasonable explanation of why they can't answer it.

I also plan to attend next months Oakmont council meeting and ask about why the borough needs a contract with Verizon in order for them to provide a service that I am already getting in a slower form. The same copper wires that provide me with dial tone and voice service along with Internet access will be replaced by a cable with a thin piece of glass in the center of it that from the outside is indistinguishable from the current drop line that comes from the utility pole to my house. It just so happens that this new technology has so much signal bandwidth available that if I wanted it that piece of glass could also bring all of my television signals in also. I choose not to exercise that option because I get my television signals from Direct TV via a satellite.

The second prong of my approach is that if I can't get any satisfaction from Verizon I intend to vote with my wallet and dump them going to their competitor Comcast and get my Internet access from the cable company. While not as good as FiOS cable offers much higher data rates than DSL. The down side is that I have heard a great number of horror stories about resolving problems with Comcast even from the technical types that know their way around a computer and networking equipment. They also seem to always be looking for a way to squeeze the very last penny they can out of the customer base many times raising the ire of their customers in the process. The fact remains though that they are willing to sell me what I am looking to purchase at this time.

More tomorrow with a link to another story that may explain some of our frustration and the lack of availability of FiOS Min Oakmont.