Well I decided that I would take a few minutes and tell everyone about my broadband history and my glorious journey to Verizon's new FiOS service. For the purposes of this article, my old provider (Optimum Online) will be referred to as OOL.
I was first able to get broadband in December of 2000. We went down to the WIZ and got the modem, self install kit and all the coax i needed to install my OOL service. Came home and hooked everything up and I was cruising at lightning speeds of 10mbit down and 1mbit up. I got to love this connection so much that I began to leverage the bandwidth provided very nicely. All was well untill one gloomy night on December 3, 2002. I was sending a video I had made to a friend of mine, and it was uploading happily at 110 KB/s when suddenly my cable modem reset itself. I thought, OK well let's resume the upload. Upon resume, the upload was maxing out at 17 KB/s, something isn't right here. I called tech support and they told me that I would get a call back from their special QoS team. 2 hours later I get a call and the rep explains to me that I was capped for "abusing" my connection. I asked the rep why I never had any problems the past 2 years and he said it was a new policy to alleviate network congestion. So basically he was telling me "we know our network is oversold, doesn't have the capacity to provide the speeds we offer and we just don't feel like upgrading it". So he made me agree to the TOS and he then restored my upload to the full potential. In the span between that day and August of 2004 I was capped another 5 times for uploading. Now these files I was uploading were not all that big and in my book really wouldn't be "abuse". When I was capped at the end of August 2004 I went through the motions same as I did 5 times before that except this time was different. I got a call back from the "Security" department and they informed me that my service would be suspended for a week for abuse. ORLY? So I was essentially on dialup for a week. Got a Verizon DSL sub to do my uploading and all was good.
In November of 2005 OOL upgraded speeds to 15/2 and made a new "BOOST" tier available that was 30/2. So I signed up for boost on the promise from the sales department that the upload capping was over. I was happily doing my thing and one day the connection slowed to a grinding halt. CAPPED! So this time I just decided to trade in the modem which effectively lifted the cap on the modem. So for a while I was very careful about uploads and made sure I didn't trigger this unknown and ever changing limit imposed by the OOL scumbags.
Just a few weeks ago I found out that Verizon had lit the fiber in my area for FiOS. Well that's all I needed to hear, I went on the website, ordered the 50/5 tier and scheduled an install for 9/11 (and no I'm not supersticious if you're wondering). The installer came on the 11th and was very professional. We had the service installed within 3 hours and everything looked good (Internet and 2 phone lines on the FiOS). Verizon provided the ONT, the Battery Backup and an awesome router all free of charge. Now it was time to go inside and do a speed test. Well I'll let the results speak for themselves:
Last Result:
Download Speed: 50278 kbps (6284.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4486 kbps (560.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
As soon as I saw that I was ecstatic. The installer left me with a welcome pack which explained the service and how to do all account setup etc..
Can anyone say GOODBYE OOL? I cancelled service with them last night, and man was the sales rep trying to make a pitch. I finally had to tell the lady look, I don't want your cap happy service, I'm cancelling, OK?
Well that's my story, if you can get FiOS I suggest you do. And if you have OOL, well try to find another provider any way you can, because noone should have to wonder if using their connection will result in a cap for so called "abuse".