Verizon vs. Small town companies
xxHopefulxx
Enthusiast - Level 3

I heard from someone that Verizon is trying to sell their old lines outside of towns to smaller and more local ISP's.  Does anyone know if this is true and does anyone know when this might take place, because I'm so tired of not having high speed internet, because it makes our computer useless and now some newer computers can't even sustain Dial - up.

0 Likes
Re: Verizon vs. Small town companies
Iflyhigh4fun
Newbie

I am not sure, but I will say this is the WORST service  I have  had in years from any internet provider. DSL Sucks

0 Likes
Re: Verizon vs. Small town companies
jmw1950
Specialist - Level 2

Actually Verizon has already sold off the operations in a number of states, to either FairPoint, or Frontier (depending upon the state). With the lines goes to ISP business. The new providers tend to be serious under capitalized, so neither is likely to making significant investments in enhanced services. My point is that if you don't have access to FiOS or DSL now, you are not likely to get it after the sale either.

You can almost always get High Speed Internet. The question is how much are you willing to pay for it. I don't think there is any location in the lower 48 that is out of range of Starband, WildBlue or Hughesnet (all of which are Internet via Satellite providers).

There are some down sides to Sat based Internet. Things like VOIP don't work very well because of the high latency in the connection, virtually of them come with some sort of download limits, and of course, you'll pay about 3 times as much for them as you would for basic DSL. However that is probably your only option.

Re: Verizon vs. Small town companies
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

 mattheww basically outlined what you need to do, at least for the short while in terms of getting Broadband. What might also be another option is a 3G/4G solution. Verizon doesn't offer an Unlimited Option on their Wireless network, unless you happen to have an iPhone through them so you need to be careful with them if you go with 3G/4G service. Once past your limit, the price per Gigabyte starts to show up, which can get not so nice very, very fast. Sprint (if you can get coverage by them) offers Unmetered bandwidth on their network, so they are also another option if you don't wish to deal with bandwidth limits.

Away from that, it's paying up to get an expensive business-class connection put in, such as a Fractional T1, sticking with Dial-up (kind of hard to do these days; site's are simply getting too big and PCs run too much over the connections these days), or going with a Wireless/Satellite solution. A T1 I can see viable if you are for example, going to deliver service (wirelessly) to neighbors around you and split the bill for the T1, but it's generally not something a home user will get unless they have real needs for it.

Now as for small towns being bought up, Verizon I'm sure is done selling off their unwanted parts of the network at least for the short while. Frontier I know has been working to try and bring DSL out to those areas Verizon sold off. I wouldn't expect Verizon to bring it out to you though. It takes a lot of demand for it to even remotely be considered to be deployed.