FIOS setup technical questions

[donheff]

FIOS is coming to my neighborhood in a couple of weeks but i can't find technical information that addresses whether I can seamlessly transition to it. My concern is with TV since Internet installation should be straight forward.

I currently have Comcast XFinity which hooks up to my self installed POS house coax plant at their outside NID. There it feeds three separate coax segments that enter the house thru the basement, the attic, and a kitchen wall. The basement segment splits inside the house to service the living room and two locations in the basement. The Xfinity mother-ship DVR is currently in the basement and the other Xfinity boxes connect to it for live TV signals and for DVR service. So They must be able to connect back thru their respective segments through the NID splitters to get to the mother-ship.

As I understand FIOS, it works in a similar fashion. The optical cable terminates at an ONT outside the house and then they hook up to the house cable plant. My question is whether they will be able to hook into the three external COAX segments that terminate outside like Comcast does. I don't want VZ explaining that they need to run new cable around the floorboards or some such travesty.

 

[Amethyst]

Our ONT is inside, in the basement. We have to provide the power; also change the battery now and then. We did not have it installed (tenants did that while we were overseas) but I know they laid cable across the lawn, because they put some stepping stones back wrong. When I dug in that area (not knowing what had been done) I almost cut the optical fiber with my shovel.

 

[eytonxav]

I think they usually run it into your house via a cable to an inside router, and then that box feeds the Fios TV via a cable and the internet via cat5. Do you have any type of smart wiring cabinet inside your premise?

 

[jazz4cash]

Our ONT is inside, in the basement. We have to provide the power; also change the battery now and then. We did not have it installed (tenants did that while we were overseas) but I know they laid cable across the lawn, because they put some stepping stones back wrong. When I dug in that area (not knowing what had been done) I almost cut the optical fiber with my shovel.

Same here but they did change out the battery as a courtesy on one of many outage incidents due to construction 1/2 mile away. The low battery alert chirped for 2 months but didn't cause any problems since the AC power was connected. It seems they have trouble figuring out that multiple outages on a single block indicates the problem is not in the house. We switched over from Comcast several years ago.

 

[donheff]

I think they usually run it into your house via a cable to an inside router, and then that box feeds the Fios TV via a cable and the internet via cat5. Do you have any type of smart wiring cabinet inside your premise?

Not a chance. I ran the coax myself 30 years ago to a rooftop antenna. Various remodeling has made that stuff largely inaccessible so I pray that it keeps working.

 

[ziggy29]

Just weighing in to register my extreme jealousy. We still have nothing but DSL here, but in a town of 300 people in the middle of nowhere, I guess we should be lucky to have that. I just wish our data limit (150 GB/mo) was higher, since we've taken to streaming a lot of Netflix and Amazon since we scrapped the dish.

We vacationed in Santa Fe for a week in early June, and we rented a cottage which had close to 100 Mbps service, probably 16-17 times our speed when it's at its best. I thought I was in heaven. I downloaded a LOT of stuff to a USB stick while we were there.

 

[GrayHare]

All the Fios installs I've seen have the ONT indoors. The ONT cabinets, with air vents on top, do not look weatherproof to me, though Fios may employ different cabinets depending on install location. The ONTs I've seen have, among other connections, only a single coax out. If your ONT ends up indoors I would imagine you could run coax from it to a splitter at your outdoor coax area.

 

[Bflotomny]

I had FIOS installed about 4 years ago after having "adelphia" then Time-Warner. The main station is in the basement, they installed it. From it they used existing cable inside to connect my TV's and the modem for internet. I'm not sure that's appropriate since the cabling was installed by others (ad or T-W) and is their property. But it works flawlessly

 

[harley]

It's been a while, since I've been FIREd for 11 years now, but back when I worked for VZ I was in one of the early trial locations for FiOS. My (solid plastic)ONT was outside, and the connectivity inside the house was seamless. I was running wifi and Cat5, so they just ran to the FiOS router and from there to my router. For the TV they hooked right into my existing splitter.

It was actually pretty funny, because when they did the installation there were two guys working, and about a half dozen execs standing in my backyard watching. Probably one of the most expensive installs ever, at least salary-wise.

I'd kill to have FiOS back, having suffered extensively with Mediacom and less painfully with Comcast since we moved and started snow birding. The only negative issue I experienced with FiOS was that I was the first person in the nation to move from one FiOS enabled house to another one, and VZ hadn't properly set up the disconnect/reconnect software process yet. They did a delete service work order that kept floating around in the system, causing my new service to get disconnected every month for about a year. I got to know the service reps in the FiOS call center by name. They'd see me call and already be typing in the reconnect order by the time they answered the phone. It was hard to complain since it was all free.

 

[Cobra9777]

I've had FiOS since 2006. ONT is outside where the fiber terminates. Router, power supply, and battery backup are inside (other side of the wall from the ONT). IIRC, the installer just hooked up our existing house coax to the ONT. Same with the house phone wiring, which lit up all the phone and coax outlets throughout the house. The router has a separate coax connection to the ONT through the wall.

We now only subscribe to 50/50 internet plus broadcast tier TV, which requires no STBs. Our set-up is really simple... coax is hooked up to two HDHomeRun tuners that plug into the router and feed live TV throughout the network. Our two TVs only use Fire TV boxes hardwired to routers... no coax, no STBs, no other input sources. We mostly watch Amazon Prime, Netflix, and some other streaming sources. For live TV, EPG, and DVR functionality, we run Kodi on the Fire TV boxes.

 

[eytonxav]

Not a chance. I ran the coax myself 30 years ago to a rooftop antenna. Various remodeling has made that stuff largely inaccessible so I pray that it keeps working.

They will run the FIOS to your cable splitter and there will be a Verizon modem/router that will feed the signal to the other cables that connect to the splitter. I believe they could install another downstream modem near a wall jack to feed your internet or you might be able to go wireless for the internet or possibly via the power lines. The ONT should be installed on the outside of your premise and a battery unit on the inside. Usually Verizon does not do rewiring of someone's inside premise, unless perhaps at an extra charge, but don't think you will need that.