Verizon's New Marketing Pitch: Squirrels Eat Old Phone Lines So Upgrade To FiOS For Guaranteed Service!
Verizon told Debbie that upgrading to FiOS was the only way to guarantee uninterrupted phone service because apparently, Verizon's old copper lines are no match for the insatiable appetite of copper-munching squirrels. Never mind that FiOS doesn't work during a blackout for more than a few hours, or that Debbie's problem had nothing to do with hungry squirrels...
Debbie writes:
Our phone was out of service beginning last Saturday. We checked the line into the house and it didn't work so we knew it was an outside line problem. I called Verizon customer service for repairs and I explained the situation. I also told customer service that this was 2nd time within a month that this line had not worked. I was told by Verizon that they are updating all of their lines and that their lines are old and are eaten through by squirrels and that they are in the process of updating their lines with FIOS - so if I wanted to be guaranteed having phone service I should call their business office and order FIOS. I asked the service person if what I was hearing was accurate that unless I upgraded to FIOS Verizon was telling me they could not say that I would have working phone service on a regular basis and she replied if I wanted to be sure to have a working phone I should upgrade to FIOS.As I am well aware FIOS is an internet service based phone provider which runs off of electricity and since we lose power regularly where we live FIOS would be the worst type of service to have. It appears this is left out of Verizon's push to get unsuspecting consumers to change their phone service to FIOS if you want your phone to work.
We had no phone service all weekend and it was repaired on Monday afternoon. The repair man from Verizon was great and made no pitch that only FIOS would give us working service.
This is clearly an overzealous upsell, but it could be so much more. Squirrels eating through copper lines, destroying our national telecommunications infrastructure? Listen Verizon, this is viral scare-mongering ad gold, or at least a plausible B-film plot. Don't let it go to waste!
(Photo: jeffcl612)
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Comments:
I've seen mice eat through fiber where I work.
@pianos101: FIOS Digital Voice sure sounds like VoIP. How else would they run voice over FIOS if not by VoIP? There's nothing wrong with VoIP.
@ngoandy: Mice (and I would guess squirrels) will chew on almost anything, even if it ends up killing them (we had to spray some of our electrical cables in the theater department in High School to deter them).
I'm not surprised to hear that fiber is no exception.
it is fact that fiber lines are protected by a layer of kevlar. that squirrel will not cut that line even if it wanted to. FIOS is a definite upgraded, you get your private line so downloading all day wont affect the connection speed of your neighbors.
@OMG! ThePrincessIsInAnotherCastle!:
I agree. She specifically said she has power outages.. Sounds like a VZ plug if Ive heard one.
I hate VZ!
I know it's fun to bash companies, but at least do a little research before you bash.
First, the FIOS ONT (think of the greay network interface box that your copper phone lines hook up into) is backed up with a battery. Depending on the battery, you should have between 6 and 24 hours of phone service. There is no VOIP box that lives in your house. Your home phone wiring plugs into the ONT, which routes the call over Verizon's network. It is NOT like vonage, magicjack, comcast voice, or anything similar. It WILL work if power is out.
Verizon WILL NOT fix your copper phone lines for you. It's just not worth it. VZ must allow competition over their copper, but they have a monopoly over the FIOS fiber. You can get the same exact phone service, with the same exact rates, with none of the broken downtime due to crappy copper if you switch to FIOS.
Or, you could be an annoying whiner and just bitch and moan about how Verizon is trying to rip you off. Pick your battles.
I just wanted to chime in and say yes the is kinda correct, squirrels do LOVE to chew cable and teleco lines. If you ever all of a sudden start getting a fuzzy cable pic or the Internet starts to act weird it's most likely a squirrel that chewed on either the drop to your house or the hard line on the poles. This isn't so much a problem if your lines are underground but when you live in the city that isn't really a option.
@pianos101: Clearly you have never lived in a part of America where power outages are a normal part of any real thunderstorm. I feel for ya, Debbie.
@Michael Belisle: Fios Digital Voice is NOT their "normal" Fios phone service. It is a new service that works along with Fios, and can give the option for people to use VOIP and pay per minute. Standard Fios phone is not Digital Voice and is definitely not VOIP. There is no "limited 911" service as with regular VOIP, and the battery backup ensures that your phone will work for (more than a "few") hours when the power goes out.
Everyone relax, I don't work for VZ, but if any of you have ever used Fios you would know where I'm coming from, business-issues aside. The technology blows cable out of the water.
The price of copper is up, and the Squirrels are is a recession and all it takes is 1 bad squirrel to give all squirrels a bad name...
@Michael Ortega: When I was in college we had a raccoon chew through a in-ground power line and shut off power to close to 50,000 people for several hours. (It being college, people immediately began setting furniture on fire on the quad.)
1. Verizon will eventually phase out all the copper in your neighborhood. They encourage people to do so because copper is expensive and is now inefficient for data transfer compared to fiber.
2. All Verizon FIOS traffic is inherently digital; it also uses IP. Therefore, all FIOS voice traffic is voice over IP. There is nothing wrong with VOIP, except that you can't carry electricity over plastic/glass fiber and therefore there needs to be electricity along the whole chain.
Just as a point: aerial fiber lines are loved by squirrels the same as copper. There is usually no special protection for aerial fiber. Armored fiber is available, but it still wont protect from trees falling or car vs pole accidents.
Trust me, they even have tried special coatings to make the fiber taste bad. They still chew it.
You can get FiOS. When they install Fios, they also install an 8 hour backup battery for the phone. Go for it. Fios owns.
What about those of us with Verizon who cannot yet get FIOS? (They stopped right up the street.)
Oh, the horror. Now I must go out and reason with the squirrels.
Wait, this is the same Verizon who wouldn't cut a tree branch laying on their line between poles, as their reasoning was it wasn't broken YET. (They eventually did cut the branch before bad things happened.)
Come on, Debbie...you don't want those crappy boring old copper phone lines for $30 a month when you can have shiny-new super-duper whiz-bang FiOS for $120 a month! Come on, be a sport!
What Verizon didn't mention is that (depending where you live) many of their cables are 20, 40, 50, or in some cases 80 years old. They are reluctant to repair their copper, because ultimately they'd like to phase it out and they'd much rather put their money into installing fiber than fixing old obsolete copper trunks.
Squirrels are a problem, but aging infrastructure and neglect is more of a problem. I think they still have lines in service that were installed by Alexander Graham Bell himself.
FiOS is awesome if you want high-speed computer service. If you just want a telephone dial-tone, copper is more than adequate.
everyone knows squirrels prefer cable company coax wires over verizons phone wire.
@pianos101: Ah, I see a passing mention of "standard" FiOS voice in the fine print. After searching some more, it sort of sounds like POTS over FiOS is on its way out. I'm convinced that VoIP is the future.
@R3PUBLIC0N: I wish they'd hurry up phasing out the copper in my area, and start offering real internet. Maybe I should start coating the wires with peanut butter...
@Michael Ortega: Rodents are an issue when it comes to gnawing through PVC jackets, but they have made advancements in making them unpalatable to them.
The CSR should have shut his/her yaps when the first NO was uttered, and don't make excuses to keep phone lines from being repaired. They got in deep trouble in Florida with the union and the PUC over neglected copper runs. I think they got nailed for 1.5 millbills for it.
Did they call a sales line or a residential repair number?
I have FIOS via AT&T because I want the higher Internet speeds, but I'd hate to see the old copper phone lines go extinct; the battery backup seems like such a shoddy stopgap measure.
Although, I wonder if a reasonably sized solar panel would be enough to keep the phones operational-- at least for a short time each day?
it may not be "voip" the fancy marketing word, but no matter what you do every single thing leaving your house over that piece of fiber is indeed "IP"
by switching to fiber, they are skirting all sorts of laws and protection regulations that exist with copper lines.
This problem of squirrels getting out of hand would never have gotten this far had we only allowed cats to attend Sniper's School as the gods intended.
Damn dog lobbyists and their cat-sniping, kitten-hating ways...
@Michael Belisle: It doesn't have anything to do with the fiber coming from your house. A POTS connection through Fios still goes through the PSTN. VoIP is an Internet protocol, and doesn't require the expensive PSTN equipment to setup a call.
Verizon blamed a 37 hour business-class FiOS outage I suffered on squirrels. The also promised to take the copper down during installation, but didn't, and now say that it is their policy to leave it in case I ever want to go to copper. If I hadn't suffered the outage, I would think they left it behind for the squirrels.
Maybe a cat and not a squirrel? Now, hear me out, please.
I know that a lot of Consumerist readers are cat lovers (sorry, me have allergies, so no cats for me), but a number of years ago my ex-sister-in-law called me because her computer wasn't booting up properly. Something about there being no keyboard. Well, there was a kb there. I saw it. She saw it. And I could see it was connected. However, once I got under the desk and traced the kb cord, well, imagine my surprise when I saw that the cord's insulation was missing and I could see the copper wire. It seems the cats liked to jump up at the cord and over time managed to scratch the insulation away. For all I know, one of them might have even bit it, but I don't think they really chewed on it, as that would have probably caused the actual kb to get yanked to the floor. The solution? Buy a new kb and keep the cats out of the room.
@pianos101: When I got FIOS installed, I was told that the battery was good for THREE hours, not 24.
@morlo:
lol sorry forgot about that one, thanks. i also heard fiber lines have some special layer of jello or something like that.
Where I live the problem isn't squirrels; it's a gang of copper thieves that is climbing poles in the dead of night and stealing about 300 feet of aerial copper telco cable about once a month or so. Frontier Telephone has offeed rewards, the the perps are still out there and due to strike again soon.
Fortunately I have Time Warner Digital Phone, and they haven't resorted to stealing the HFC cabling... yet.
@pianos101: Voice delivered via FIOS can be either VOIP or Tradition TDM. It all depends on the configuation back in the CO. In some configurations the line will be resident in a class 5 digital switch. In other configures the line would go to VOIP switch that is connected to the PSTN via high speed trunking. The service from both are identical from a user stand point, with full E911 support. As other have stated the ont has a battery backup, as far as how long that really depends on the make and manufacturer of said ont. But I do believe it is up to 8 hours.
@Révolution: If you happen to live in a city where its offered. I live in a city of 30K where they project its 3-5 years out, 2-3 years ago.
While I may not believe squirells, I would believe insects as I know Fire Ants LOVE to get into electrical boxes and usually end up shorting them out. I have also heard that bees swarming will sometimes seek out an electrical box or light, as the "hum" is sometimes inviting.
Fuck Verizon! Here in WV they are selling out to Frontier. When they got a HUGE rate increase a couple years back they agreed to upgrade a bunch of stuff & do more maintenance (a specific # of millions $$$ was outlined). They have drug their feet on this ever since even with a consumer/regulatory committee reviewing their progress regularly to hold their feet to the fire. They have done next to nothing on this and their trouble rate continues to suck. Rain = 3rd world phone service in WV. Now with the pending sale to Frontier, they have literaly stated that this prior agreement should not affect the sale. Take the money & run Verizon.
@David Bixenspan: That's cheap for phone service if they'll just hook you up with that an nothing else. I suspect, however, that you have to buy data service too, which would push it up into the $100/mo range.
Again, comparable to cable and landline/DSL, but expensive if all you want is a dialtone for your landline.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): We never set anything on fire when we lost power at my college. I feel all left out now. :D I did learn to play RISK during a power outage freshman year though.
@Firesoul1: The "kevlar" that you speak of is closer to a fiberglas and it's purpose is to protect the optical glass from breaking. It is more of a strain relief than anything that will keep a squirrel from eating into it. Take my word for this, as I not only work with the copper and fiber optic cables but have had a squirrel in my fireplace that ate through the metal on my fireplace screen... which is a LOT heavier than anything up on poles.
The jel inside the cables does in fact taste bad to most animals ( because they they do in fact love chewing all cables, even coax ) but it doesn't always stop them.
All underground telephone copper or fiber lines have gel in them, or compressed air (about compressed air cable).
I don't think FIOS fiber uses kevlar cable. Too expensive. FIOS users aren't paying for 99.999% reliability. 99.999% reliability fiber cable (SLA business grade) that goes to cell towers and businesses is independent and shares nothing except the pole and same manholes (different pipes though). The 99.999% fiber also uses these things so if a truck or tree knocks down the pole, the horseshoe will break (made from plastic) and release the slack cable, the fiber optic cable falls to the ground with the pole and the customer will maintain service. All the phone company has to do is replace the pole, then coil it back up onto the pole. FIOS doesn't do this.
No matter what, you can always escalate your problem to the state PSC for copper phone service. Who cares if its squirrels, the bogeyman, or terrorists, they are required to repair it each time in a timely manor.
According to Outwitting Squirrels: 101, Teflon is a good (and hilarious) solution to many squirrel problems... perhaps someone should reference Verizon to this book.
I think I just need to point out that Fios phone service is NOT internet based and is NOT VOIP, like you would get from the cable company. Fios phone runs on regular old copper wire in your house, but is just transferred to fiber between your house and the Verizon office.
That said, yes, in a power failure you will have about 24 hours of battery to run your phones (and only your phones). But Fios is much more reliable than cable (VOIP) and the quality is better too (even better than POTS). Debbie should upgrade, since these days power outages are somewhat rare and everyone has cell phones anyway.