FIOS coming to the city?

[phillyclaude]

I live in East Kenso, near Sergeant and Coral, and got a notice yesterday that FIOS is coming. Anyone else get one of these? I wonder if they'll actually get to carry CSN. Comcast having some competition would be super

[Mr Morley]

They're doing North and South Philly first (probably because of the high concentration of cable/dish customers). In another thread, someone reported that they already had FiOS service connected south of Snyder.

[PhillyKev]

And yes, it does carry CSN. By law, land based operators can't hold a monopoly on stations, they must be available to any other land based operator in the area to broadcast. That didn't apply to satellite companies which is why Comcrap was able to lock out Dish and DirectTV. But I checked the Fios channel line up to confirm, and CSN is available. Can't wait to drop the evil overlord and still enjoy the Flyers.

[phillyclaude]

Comcast IS required to share CSN with the satellite companies in most of the country. Within the city, its transmitted using fiber and microwave links using the old PRISM network equipment. Since it never gets uplinked to a satellite, they enjoy an FCC loophole and get to lock out directtv and dish

Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[PhillyKev]

Ahh, interesting. Also states in there they struck a deal with Verizon to allow CSN on Fios, they weren't requried to. That's a bit worrisome. I wonder how long that deal lasts and if it's possible Comcast could back out of it.

[phillyclaude]

I've heard that the Satellite companies have a much smaller market share in Philly than nationally due to the CSN issue. Since Verizon has to put out such a huge amount of money up front for FIOS installs, I'd imagine that it wouldn't be worth doing in Philly without CSN locked up for a while

[phillyclaude]

a brief update:
I made the jump to FiOS and couldn't be happier . I ended up paying $99/month on a 2 year contract for their first tier triple play service, and a free DVR for 6 months. The installer was pleasant, and knowledgable. The install was VERY clean and professional looking - its night and day between Comcast and Verizon's work.

Everything's been great so far. The program guide and DVR menus are VERY slick, much newer and a way better interface than Comcast's cluttered mess. The channels are clustered, so all the movie channels are together, all the sports channels are together, etc. Another nice feature is all the HD channels are exactly 500 higher than the SD version. Comedy Central is 190, Comedy Central HD is 690.

[desolate]

They're doing North and South Philly first (probably because of the high concentration of cable/dish customers). In another thread, someone reported that they already had FiOS service connected south of Snyder.

They are doing it for economic reasons.


They wanted to go into places that people would buy and council demanded they wire poor areas as well to get the license.