Haddonfield Buzz: Comcast vs. FIOS

Some borough residents were buzzing last week about cable and Internet service after strong winds and storms caused outages. Here’s a thread of conversations on the Internet chat board Haddonfield Talks after storms over the last two weekends:

Bill Tourtellotte 2/20

The winds are long gone and no comcast phone, Internet or cable for close to 24 hours so far over here? Comcast claims outages in our area and will be fixed soon but they've been saying that since the beginning. Is this widespread in Haddonfield? If so, many folks may not have the ability to respond anyway. So much for our land lines being the reliable backup for our cell phones.

Don't forget to call for a service interruption credit as they won't just give it to you without asking.

Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse typos, etc.

Bill Tourtellotte 2/20

Within the last 20 minutes the service finally came back on.  We are back in circulation! Can we chalk it up to the many wonders of Haddonfieldtalks?  :-)

Daniel P. Tompkins,  2/20

Before we switched to FIOS, we had regular though not too frequent Comcast problems, inability to connect esp. late at night.  We would call for assistance, and generally were told that HQ had no idea what could be wrong; then a crew would show up and fiddle with wires, to no avail. Finally one repair guy said that Comcast sometimes shut down for maintenance, late at night, but told noone.    

Was this the case with us?  Who knows?  Since switching, we've had no problems.

Herb Hess 2/20

Clearly, Governor Christie would choose FIOS over Comcast ;) More to the point, he would round up everyone who chose Comcast and kick them out of New Jersey ;). 

Daniel P. Tompkins 2/20 

Or, pit them against their neighbors.

Walter Weidenbacher  2/20 

Isn’t that being a little Brutal? (Sorry. Sometimes I just can’t resist being Tsarcastic.)

Herb Hess  2/20

Et Tu, FIOS?

Tom Kenny 2/20

We didn't miss a beat with our newly installed Verizon FIOS Triple Play.

 They also install a battery back-up pack inside of the house just in case the power goes out.

Walter Weidenbacher  2/24

My battery conked out after about two years, and there MUST be a replacement cheaper than the $30-40 I’ve found.  I’ve been looking on-and-off for two years.  Meanwhile, life without the battery is totally  tolerable.

Also, since I added TV and landline (triple pack), it SEEMS network response time is slower.

Otherwise, count me as a satisfied Verizon customer.  And now that Verizon Wireless has iphone – and iphone5 in June – well, there’s something to think about.

Bill Zardus 2/27

Ok,  Now I'm curious why Comcast doesn't have this and what specific purpose this battery backup serves?

Does it just keep your computers on for x number of minutes if you lose power until you can save what you are doing and then shut down or does it do more than that?

Walter Weidenbacher 2/27

The Verizon battery is for the telephone only. Necessary because fiber optic doesn’t carry electricity, which is needed to send the signal through the house’s copper wires to the phones, and then activate the phones’ headset diaphragms.  Nope, the battery doesn’t supply the computer, which means unrecoverable SURPRISE if there’s even a split second interruption of juice.  With a fiber optic telephone, no electricity, no phone, unless  you have the battery backup.  (And you’re not stranded if you have a cell phone.)

Bill Duhart 2/28

What do you think of your cable, Internet and cellular phone service in Haddonfield?  Join the conversation here, now!