Not All Verizon FiOS Customers Will Get 100% Fiber

CORRECTION: Customers Will Get FiOS Optical All The Way To Their Apartments, Verizon Plans

Interesting news for apartment dwellers everywhere: Verizon is slowly creeping into Manhattan, but the difficulties of bringing FiOS to apartments will mean that some subscribers won’t get 100% fiber.

A tenant in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village who orders FiOS may find that the company doesn’t pull fiber all the way to the apartment, because this entails wall-mounting a box in the apartment, and not all layouts have the space for it, Cevis said.

In those cases, Verizon will pull fiber to the basement, and use a phone line to carry Internet data the last part of the way. Coaxial cable will be used for video when that becomes available. Subscribers will be able to get the fastest current Internet plan, with downloads of 50 megabits per second, but may not be able to take advantage of future speed increases available to subscribers with fiber all the way to the home.

Verizon’s first choice is to take the fiber all the way to the apartment, Cevis said.

NYC customers are also not able to get the “triple-play” package because Verizon doesn’t have a video franchise agreement with the city.

Verizon’s FiOS Takes Manhattan [AP]
(Photo:Ben Popken)

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