FiOS bits and pieces

There hasn't been too much activity on the FiOS front so far in this still-young week, so I've rounded up a few random items that might be of interest.

FiOS Doesn't Play Nice with VOIP?

There was a bit of a dust-up over on Consumerist last week when a FiOS adopter was told that they would have to convert their VOIP lines from other providers to Verizon phone lines in order to become a FiOS customer. Verizon has dispelled this rumor as pure garbage, which in fact only means that the customer service representative was totally incompetent. Maybe a friendly Personal Account Manager would have helped in this situation?

How does Verizon "black out" games?

I saw this post over at ericd.net complaining that FiOS' Versus channel disappeared during a Bruins NHL playoff game last night, but the game was carried on NESN. I saw similar behavior during the Caps game the other night: the game was carried locally on Comcast Sports Net and nationally on Versus. I went to check the Versus feed and found just a black screen.

Putting both experiences together, I guess this is the FiOS way of less-than-elegantly blacking out a game. When I used to have DirecTV, I used to get a message that said something along the lines of "This game isn't available in your market". Hopefully Verizon can implement something a little more user friendly than just a missing feed.

FiOS HD Woes

Engadget stirred the pot a bit more yesterday re: FiOS' lack of HD options. While the post tells us nothing new, there are some nice links in there from the past six months that lay out why Verizon is stuck with the current size of their HD offering and what they're doing to fix it.

A little more "what's up" on the new FiOS PAMs

I mentioned these new FiOS personal account managers, or PAMs, in a post last Friday. At the time, I didn't have a clear idea of exactly who or what they would be or how they would work.

Luckily, the 'remove the labels' blog has more information about Verizon's new approach to customer service:

Here’s how it works: Each new FiOS TV-phone-Internet customer receives the name of an individual “PAM,” as Verizon is calling them, plus a refrigerator magnet with the manager’s cell phone number and e-mail address. Each “PAM” carries a Blackberry, works from 8AM to 8PM, and is responsible for around 800 customers. These new positions receive a base salary, but receive a bonus depending on how highly customers rate their support satisfaction.

Sounds pretty good on the face of it. These PAMs won't necessarily be able to fix all of your problems on their own, but they will serve as a friendly go-between for you with the much maligned Verizon customer service department. That would probably remedy 75% of complaints right away. Actually getting the customer service department to follow through would be the last 25%.

I'd like to see this system work and eventually be phased in for all FiOS customers nationwide, but the cynic in me wonders how much the PAMs cost and whether or not they will make enough of an impact in terms of customer retention and positive PR to justify that cost. We shall see.

Anyone out there have any PAM experience you would like to share?

What's a reasonable price for a FiOS HD VOD movie?

That's the question for the new poll. I've already expressed my view that the $5.99 for a one-time-view movie is way too high, HD or not. Let's see what you all think.

Apparently some crazy "study" has determined that $9 is a reasonable price point for HD VOD titles. Let's hope Verizon doesn't put too much stock in that research next time they are considering price points for movies on FiOS.

So, what's your opinion? Vote in the poll, leave a comment, share your thoughts.

FiOS digital lineup is expanding

FiOS is rolling out the ION channel suite to Northeastern markets this week. From the article on CMSpin:

In addition to its 2007 agreement to carry the ION Television Network, Verizon FiOS recently added The Worship Network (www.worship.net), qubo and ION Life to its Boston, New York, and northern New Jersey markets. The launch follows the recent addition of the ION channel suite to the FiOS TV lineup in Philadelphia, Southern California, Dallas, Tampa and Washington, D.C. FiOS also plans a future launch in Portland.

Not much else to add. These aren't exactly the most exciting batch of new channels for me, but I was enjoying the Wonder Years reruns that ION was running several months back. ION is located in sort of a funny place in my lineup, so I almost never see it in the guide. It's stuck in that forsaken bunch of SD public and non-English channels between 9 (the highest numbered local channel) and 50 (USA Network) that I almost always completely skip over. If there's something worth watching on PBS, I'll catch it on HD PBS networks which are nicely interlaced with everything else in the 800s.

Poll Results: How satisfied are our readers?

Our first blog poll closed at the end of last week, and the results are in. The sample size is too small to mean much, but let's analyze it anyway.

Independent research earlier in the year showed that 96% of Verizon FiOS subscribers were "happy" with their service. How do our results stack up?

• Extremely satisfied - 4 (28%)
  
• Satisfied - 7 (50%)
  
• Neutral - 0 (0%)
  
• Disappointed - 1 (7%)
  
• Extremely disappointed - 2 (14%)

We have 78% of respondents indicating that they are Satisfied or Extremely satisfied. If we assign scores to each selection, such that Extremely satisfied is a 5 and Extremely disappointed is a 1, we have an average score of 3.68.

Not too shabby, but not exactly "96% happy" either.

If you responded to the poll, leave a comment and let us know why you voted like you did. Even if you didn't get a chance to vote, take a minute and share your thoughts.

FiOS News Roundup: Misleading ads, other misleading ads, and PAMs

Verizon and FiOS have been in the news this week more than once relating to misleading advertising. The first incident has CNET claiming that Verizon has lifted the phrase "near flawless" out of a New.com article and is attributing it to a CNET review. The ad in question is right here:

CNET's take on the issue is right here in the CNET Crave blog. Here's the quote in it's original context in the news article (the key phrase has bee bolded):

This fierce competition reinforces how important it is for Verizon to offer a near-flawless TV experience. Verizon's executives knew that getting that experience right would be key, and that getting it right meant making sure there was enough bandwidth on the network to deliver several streams of high-definition video at once. It also meant ensuring the service was reliable and met customers' expectations.

Not long after the CNET dust-up, Verizon made news for a second time when it filed suit againt Time Warner for misleading advertising. Verizon claims that Time Warner is misleading customers by claiming that FiOS requires a satellite dish. TW is also touting that it's been in the fiber game for over a decade. Here's the 60 second version of the commercial in question:

Verizon's Eric Rabe has issued an online response to both situations via the Policy Blog this week.

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In other news, Verizon is looking to change the face of its FiOS Customer Care system by introducing personal account mangers, or PAMs. These new managers have been deployed on a trial basis in some areas of Florida. From the article, it's not exactly clear how the PAMs will function. It sounds like they will provide a friendly, personal interface to the customer but not necessarily be equipped to make technical changes. Customer care is one of the biggest areas of complaints that I hear about from FiOS customers, so hopefully these PAMs are a step in the right direction.

The FiOS analog tier might be going away sooner than you think

It's no secret that the FCC has mandated an end to analog television broadcasts by early next year. But, it looks like Verizon is getting a bit of a head start. In a release on Monday, the company announced its plans to start phasing out the analog tier of FiOS TV.

Verizon will phase out the analog channels on a regional basis. In New York, customers will see the transition on April 21. Customers have been notified well in advance by letters, e-mails and phone calls from Verizon.

Verizon will furnish all customers in need with a free digital-to-analog converter to accommodate older TV sets. This isn't being done for purely altruistic purposes, those. CED Magazine is reporting that it is part of a deal Verizon has cut with the FCC:

In fact, Verizon had cut a deal with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cease analog transmission prior to the 2009 date in exchange for a waiver exempting it from the ban on set-top boxes (STBs) with integrated security, which was put into effect in July.

It's also pretty clear that Verizon will try to use the whole switch-over/free converter scenario to try to upsell basic analog customers to more expensive programming packages.

The good news is that the sooner the analog tier is a thing of the past, the sooner that bandwidth can be put to good use... like more HD options.

More on FiOS HD VOD

When I posted about HD Video On Demand launch last week, I promised that a full review was forthcoming. And it still is. But for now, here are a couple more of my first impressions:

• Picture quality - The HD VOD picture is very nice. It's slightly less crisp than watching live HDTV, but it's a huge improvement over the SD VOD options, especially on a large screen HDTV. And it certainly looks a lot better than those craptastic Comcast screen caps from yesterday...
• VOD Interface - The VOD interface is still slow. For now, like I mentioned, the HD options are just one section of the overall VOD menu. And did I mention that the VOD interface is laggy and slow? I think I did.

I'm not the only one with opinions on the new HD VOD, though. There's some commentary over on the Dallas Morning News' Technology Blog.

Have you gotten a chance to try out the new HD goodness? Leave a comment and share your impressions. Still waiting for HD VOD or FiOS in general and have some questions? Leave them and we'll try to get you an answer.

How compressed is your FiOS HD signal?

HD compression has been a hot topic for the last week or so. In order to conserve bandwidth and launch some additional channels, Comcast increased the compression of a number of its HD channels last week. This didn't go unnoticed to HD junkies, and threads like this one over at AVSForum show why. The screen shot comparisons between Comcast and FiOS service don't just show a little graininess... the compression is very obvious and downright embarrassing for Comcast.

Surely not by coincidence, Verizon has started running ads touting its own "pure uncompressed high definition" programming. This raised some eyebrows from critics and Verizon has been forced to clarify its position. From the article:

Verizon media relations director Bobbi Henson, asked to substantiate the claim in the TV spots, said the point of the campaign is to show that “our FiOS TV customers are receiving HD that’s not compressed by Verizon.”

“It’s true that content owners compress their video before sending it to video service providers,” she said in an e-mailed statement. “But we forward the signal to our customers the way that we receive it.”

Verizon isn't adding any additional compression to signals it receives from content providers; the content providers may be providing a compressed signal, though. So while FiOS customers may not be seeing "pure uncompressed" HD in every case, Verizon is still providing as nice of a HD picture quality as possible.

Are you satisfied with FiOS? Take the poll

We've added a new poll over on the right sidebar which asks the simple question: How satisfied are you with your FiOS service overall? If you haven't voted yet, go ahead and share your opinion.

The results won't be in any way scientific, but should be an interesting comparison to the data we posted back in February that showed FiOS subscribers are 96% satisfied with their service.

Baseball season is here... When will FiOS offer MLB Extra Innings?

Since HD VOD is now up and running at my house, it's time to move on to the next item on my list of features that I'm pining after: MLB Extra Innings. Baseball season has been underway now for almost a week, and Verizon has thus far remained silent on their plans to roll out the package since initially announcing that Extra Innings was in the works back in February.

Last we knew, Verizon was still in the process of negotiating a deal with MLB for the rights to carry the broadcasts. Even after that deal is in place, it could take up to two months for Verizon to reconfigure the channel line up on its nationwide network according to this article from Fredricksburg.com.

Here's the latest update from Eric Rabe on the Verizon Policy Blog:

No new news here, sorry to say. We continue to negotiate, but, to be clear, it takes us some time even after a deal is reached to get new content on the FiOS system, and not all areas get the content at the same time. So that's the story for now. Obviously, when we have something more substantial to say, you'll hear it here first!

Posted by: Eric Rabe on March 20, 2008, 01:02 PM EST

We can hope that Verizon is preparing its network for the Extra Innings package while negotiating the deal. We can also hope that Verizon has reached a deal with MLB and is withholding announcement until they are ready to launch the service. For now, let's just hope that Verizon gives us some sort of heads up as to what's going on.

Stay plugged in for more info as it becomes available. Subscribe to the blog feed to stay up to date.

FiOS HD Video On Demand silently launching in select markets

As I mentioned back in my February post about VOD, I've been waiting for some HD goodness. It now looks like cravings will be satisfied.

While channel surfing last night, I came across a Verizon FiOS commercial that was touting HD VOD. I pulled up the VOD menu, and sure enough, there it was: "High Definition" was one of the options under "Browse".

My experience apparently isn't an accident or an anomaly. Broadband Reports has unconfirmed reports of HD VOD launces in Texas, California, Maryland, Northern NJ, and Philadelphia/Delaware. I can add Northern Virginia to that unofficial list. We'll expect some official announcement from Verizon later this week.

I didn't have time to play with it too much last night, but here's a quick rundown of what I saw:

• There were two main partitions of HD content: HD Movies and HD Television.
• HD Movies had a decently large selection of revent movies, all of which seemed to be priced at $5.99. I haven't gotten a chance to gauge the picture quality yet, but I'm still holding to my view that this is too pricey.
• HD Television had sub-menus for about 4 CBS shows (including Jericho, maybe a CSI or two?) and a whole bunch of other content that didn't interest me in the least.

I'll need to investigate a bit more later this week when I have some time.