I previously posted about Verizon’s FiOS service. This is a high speed fibre to the home service offered by Verizon. The service is much faster than cable Internet service or DSL and offers high speed uploads AND downloads.
There was recently an article in the International Herald Tribune. This exposed an interesting challenge of the service. When you sign-up for it, Verizon unhooks the copper connections to your house and so they effectively lock you into the service. This is a very scary case of lock-in since Verizon are the only people who control the fibre access and so they are effectively monopolizing your Internet and phone connectively. The ability to lease copper wires is protected by law; this same requirement does NOT apply to Fibre. It sounds like you can re-connect the copper, but that they discourage this and make it difficult. In many respects, this seems like a step backwards. I am okay with the exclusivity thing, but Verizon should be required by law to re-connect copper. The consumer should not have to fight for this; it should be a basic part of the service.