Last week, our T1 and Verizon copper-fed fax line went down for a few days, supposedly due to flooded manholes, according to our carrier. Of course our cable modems weren't affected, and the Vonage service was still available for use. (VoIP saved us from being completely incommunicado!)

While discussing the situation with one of the carrier's service reps, he asked me if FiOS was available. It is, in fact Verizon almost refused to give us service on our existing copper feed, until they got it though their thick skull that we had existing copper service that we wanted to "expand" (read - different department).

The rep went on to explain that fiber is fiber, and Verizon is still obligated to re-sell their fiber just like copper. I was under the impression, from much of the discussion here, that the whole reason Verizon is pushing FiOS is that they don't have to share their infrastructure.

The rep claims that they're doing this all over now, providing fiber-based T1 service at huge discounts over previous fiber circuits, because Verizon has done the leg work. I haven't looked at the rates yet, but I know that even requesting a T1 from Lightpath (who used to have an office in our building, and the building is "lit") was not nearly as cheap as our copper T1 is.

Not only that, but we were considering switching out two cable modems (one is dedicated to support our ESI IP extensions) for the FiOS service anyway, (with static IP's) and switching from copper T1 to a SIP gateway. (with T1)

What do you think of our options? Does Verizon do this?


Rob Cashman
Customer Support Engineer