(1 Update - see below)
Our household Internet Access has been very nice of late. We've had Verizon FIOS for several months now. I opted for the 15 Mbps Symmetric (which, is not as fast as you'd think - the web largely isn't geared for user access that fast, except downloading big video files). My daughter makes good use of this, renting and buying movies from iTunes. I have to admit, it makes watching online video painless - whenever I check out movie trailers, I usually opt for the HDTV versions - it's just amazing.
FIOS is really nice... when it's working. But we're now experiencing our second major outage within a week. The first last Thursday and Friday was apparently a local fiber cut. I stumbled upon the scene on the way home from work - it required four of the big trucks, one of which was the splicing truck, and at least a dozen repair guys. That took out both our phone service and Internet service.
This outage is apparently confined to the Internet side of things - the phone is working just fine. I called it into Verizon's repair number and wasn't even graced with a human voice this time - I couldn't get any further than the robot despite requesting a live person several times. So we wait... such is life dealing with a monopoly. It's telling that Verizon Communications is about to launch their video services over FIOS and they continue to have problems like this; they're not ready to offer reliable phone service via fiber... let alone video. But they'll learn that the hard way in the marketplace. I don't think I'll bite and continue using satellite and TiVo for what video I do watch. But for all their failings, at least Verizon Communications isn't Comcast - dealing with them is absolute, pure unadulterated hell.
But... despite the outages, our household isn't dead in the water for our communications, before, or now. For phone we could use our mobile phones, and we're on the Internet thanks to the Sprint Broadband Card, and my wife's Mac.
Here's how it worked for us.
- When I determined that Internet was going to be out for at least the night, I went down to the basement and turned off the FIOS router. Among other things, it's the DHCP server for the household.
- I hooked up the Sprint Broadband Card (it's USB) to my wife's Mac and activated it, so her Mac was back on the Internet (slow DSL speeds, but she's doing her triple Master's degree online in the evenings, so offline isn't acceptable to her).
- I turned on the Mac's built-in Internet sharing. It turns on a DHCP server and shares the Internet access onto the household Ethernet, which also provides the Wi-Fi.
- We had to restart the computers to get a new DHCP address from the Mac (me, I just renewed DHCP leases on my computers and they were good to go).
I have reliable Internet access because I have diversity of connectivity.
But that was hardly my idea - it was described first, very eloquently... presciently... by David Isenberg in Smart Letter #73 - Buy as Many Nines as You Need... in 2002! I've met Isenberg a number of times, and every single time, it's a humbling learning encounter. If you ever get a chance to spend some time with him, I recommend it highly.
Broadband Wireless Internet Access is an ideal way to "buy enough Nines" to insure that your business, or household, stays connected. The main reason is that it's truly independent of the outages that are likeliest to affect your wireline communications (absent a regional catastrophe like an earthquake or hurricane).
One of the best examples of a vendor who can cleanly implement BWIA as one of your "Nines" is Junxion. They make an elegant box that takes all the sting out of using a wireless telephony Broadband Internet Access card as an enterprise-grade backup Internet link. Unfortunately, they've been bought out by Sierra Wireless, and while it looks like Sierra Wireless will support the existing product and customer base, their future is uncertain for new deployments. But how the Junxion box worked was simplicity itself. Plug it inline with your existing Broadband Internet Access (once it transitioned to an Ethernet cable) and plug your network into the Junxion box. If the primary Internet Access went out, the Junxion box took over. Pricey if used for more than a day or so given the transfer limits now in place, but it gives you a grace period to get the main Internet Access fixed without the company sitting around fidgeting without email, web access, ecommerce, etc.
Another is Towerstream. I've heard (and retold...) some funny stories about Towerstream over the years about how fast they can respond to customer requests and how that kind of response makes their competition look like sputtering buffoons.
OK, just one Towerstream story, that I heard from a pretty happy Towerstream customer at a conference. Customer has an outage on his T-1 line and finally gets the repair center on (mobile) phone. Repair center says it's not their issue and points finges at the carrier responsible for the line that they're reselling. Customer gets the runaround for hours and eventually, in pure desperation, calls Towerstream. Salesperson at Towerstream senses a real sales coup if they can scramble an install, so the Towerstream installer is there bright and early the next morning and has the customer back on the Internet (with good enough QOS to do VOIP) within a couple of hours. The customer hears nothing from his wireline provider all the next day, a Friday. He finally gets a call back... on MONDAY... saying that they "think they've found the problem and they'll have it fixed soon." You can guess the rest of the story. Suffice it to say, Towerstream is very, very real. They're one of those rare companies that just does what they claim to do, and best of all, know very clearly what business they're really in - they're just a bitpipe to the Internet, and they focus on being the best, most cost-effective, most reliable bitpipe to the Internet that they can possibly be. Their customers love 'em for that... all the way up to Gigabit per second "loving 'em".
Clearwire could have been, and might eventually be, a good alternative "Nine". At least they're on that critial independent, alternative infrastructure - mostly point-to-point wireless backhaul. But, based on my experiences as an ordinary customer, I can't recommend them. For one thing, they've adopted the Comcast mentality of "service with a snarl" and I've heard some real horror stories about Clearwire customers needing to discontinue service and Clearwire being incredibly unpleasant about it. Another issue is that Clearwire... or their commission-ravenous agents, will simply lie to whatever lengths it takes to get you as a customer.
Update: FIOS Internet Access came back on for us about Noon the day after the above post was written, making this FIOS outage about 18 hours.
My wife wrangled with Verizon Repair Service / Tech Support and she had the FIOS Router's web page up on her computer, so so she could tell the Verizon reps with total certainty that our FIOS Internet Access was not back on while she was talking to them. In sorting out some lingering billing / package issues... which just proves Verizon is laughably inept at such things... Verizon and my wife came to terms about certain features. When I did an Internet speed check this evening, our FIOS is 10 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up. I'm willing to pay additional for the 15/15 tier, but in the end it isn't worth it to try to negotiate that additional speed and cost into the package. I think we have a year in our package, and by then the use of our landline will probably be down to about nil, so we'll probably convert that over to lifeline service) and by then we'll probably be able to have picocells from the wireless carriers. One thing that all this billing hassle has made abundantly clear - I'm not going to trust Verizon to get billing for a bundle of video services right, so most of their investment in deploying fiber to me is going to end up stranded.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
This article was written and posted via Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) ; Sprint Mobile Broadband service using a Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem - 1xEV-DO Rev. A... shared to the household Ethernet / Wi-Fi via a humble Mac Mini.
I dropped ADSL for HSPA. I have:
VOIP over HPSA,
AT&T Sierra 881U,
Cradlepoint CTR500,
Phone Power HT502,
8 port switch.
I over paid for bad DSL for years. HSPA works here. I am still being billed for DSL for months after canceling. I
ported out my number to VOIP.
[Edited for readability]
Posted by: Henry | September 23, 2008 at 20:56