On 4/12, Verizon will be at my house running fiber and setting us up for FIOS TV. They're supposed to leave my phone line intact so it won't interrupt my Speakeasy DSL, but I have about 20% faith in them actually doing that, especially since they have to dig a 400' trench along my driveway, where the old phone line is.

The following Monday, they'll be out again to install FIOS Business Internet. The residential and business sides of Verizon don't coordinate and don't share any information. You can't combine accounts and neither side can help coordinate the other for a good install. Instead, they'd rather pay for two crews to come out on two separate days.

They also couldn't guarantee that the FIOS Business Internet installer would even agree to install the second optical termination box (I forget the exact name), because "sometimes a second one is too much work". I asked if they had to install a second fiber cable and was told "no". I have no idea what could be so much work with the second box. The person at Verizon couldn't offer me any details or ways I could make sure it was easier. The reason a second box must be installed is that the FIOS TV service and the Static IP Internet service are not compatible with the same termination box. Unfortunately, I didn't know that until after I had ordered the TV service from the door-to-door college student casing the neighborhood (who was very friendly and professional, btw).

If it wasn't for the 15/2 service plus 5 static IPs I'd get with this, I wouldn't bother going through the trouble. Speakeasy is an excellent company (although I expect that to change with their recent acquisition by Best Buy), but they could only offer me 1.5/768 service with 2 static IPs due to line conditions. Verizon has never been great when it comes to having intelligent people on the other end of the phone, but the business folks (despite their comment about possibly not doing the second box) at least seem competent.

So if this site (and email) is down for a week, now you know why!