If you do any amount of P2P work, FiOS kills Comcast and the other cable providers.  No upload/download limits and no P2P throttling.  I love the service, had for several years now. 

Verizon’s Tech Support sucks - limited hours, ignorant support personnel,  and getting the right Dept. can be a NIGHTMARE.  And what is up with that GODAWFUL Telephone Menu Robot - hire some folks to answer the phone for God’s sake! You’re a PHONE COMPANY, FIRST AND FOREMOST (Remember Bell Atlantic?)

And I’m about sick and tired of having to show their service personnel how to make a decent cable crimp (no kidding!)  But once the service is up and running properly, it’s a doddle.  And my download speeds for snagging music, movies and such is tremendous.

Once it’s right, you’re gold.  getting it right HAS been problem…

-RW-

I’d much rather have the “bottleneck” at their central locations than all over the country so they have less places to upgrade to give more bandwidth to everyone.

Second they claim to not re-compress the video on FIOS TV as they send it to their subscribers, unlike what everyone else is doing.

Last they do not have a monthly upload / download cap on their internet connections so you are free to enjoy those movie download services offered by Sony, Netflix, etc. without having to worry about being disconnected.

Too bad I can’t get it here :(

A few minor corrections and updates to this article.  First, it talks about “converting one of their 100+ TV channels” to a DOCSIS channel.  Not quite.  A cable HFC system is broken into 6 MHz channels.  One of these channels will fit 1 DOCSIS channel (30 - 40 Mbps), one analog television channel, or around 10 to 12 digital channels.  Digital transmission is more efficient than analog (which is why analog over-the-air broadcasts are being eliminated in 2009).

Also, depending on the cable operator, there can actually be up to 1000 people sharing a DOCSIS channel (250 is specified in the artible), though HFC plant upgrades are rapidly reducing this number.

Finally, cable operators are currently planning an upgrade to a new DOCSIS version called DOCSIS 3.0.  DOCSIS 3.0 allows them to combine multiple (initially 4 channels, more in future DOCSIS channels to provide connections of 100 Mbps or more to each subscriber.  So cable operators will soon be able to offer far faster speeds than those offered today.

Thanks for that savvy response, now I understand why.

thanks

I don’t have FiOs so this is based off of my knowledge of the industry.
It is technically possible to have a PCI/PCIe interface card that the FiOs fiber terminates into, but i doubt we’ll ever see it.
Why?:
1. Services:  There’s more than just Internet access coming through that fiber.  Video and Phone signal needs to be taken out of the light and sent to other devices.
2. Control of the signal:  The reason FiOs/cable/satellite all have set top boxes is so they can control the content/service that you receive.  In the 80s/90s getting a simple filter would unscramble HBO for you.  Older Cable modems are hacked into give higher bandwidths, The satellite cards used to be able to be reprogrammed to allow free service.  Having that box in our house gives them the ability to mitigate a lot of the risk of theft.
3. Support:  It provides a clear line between them and you.  If you have an internal card in your computer and down the road, you run into a problem with accessing the Internet, it gets blurry as to where the problem really is.  Did you install a program, or contract a virus that is diminishing the performance, or is there a problem with the interface card, or is it a service problem?  With a separate box, at an absolute worst case scenario, a tech can come out to your house, plug in a laptop to the box and ensure there is nothing wrong, or identify and troubleshoot if there is a problem with the service.
With the interface card they’d have to pay a more expensive tech to troubleshoot through your computer, and that would probably come after many frustrating support calls.  People are a lot more expensive to have than putting that box at your house.