Well, the day hasn't gone exactly as planned, but what's new?

For the past six or seven years I've been on and SDSL dedicated line because I needed the high-speed uplink and don't do business with a cable companies because I've never owned a TV.  For the majority of the time the DSL works fine, but about every six months there's a glitch in the system and it's usually a week or so before they get it straightened out.  However, in the last month or so it's been down and inordinate amount and that no matter what they tried seem to smooth out the service.

Last week I ordered that the Verizon FiOS fiber optics system that's attached to the pole right outside my office and today the technician showed up to install it.  The process was painless.  He drilled one hole in the side of the house to run the fiber-optic cable through and then mounted the two boxes in the basement and plugged in the battery backup system that keeps the telephones operating in case of a power failure.  My telephones are now run through the fiber-optic system, as well,which should alleviate a problem I've had with other people on the line during heavy rain. The entire installation to just over two hours.

I chose the 15 Mbps download/ 2 Mbps upload option that, for the first year, runs $45 a month.  That's about one third the price of my DSL line with much more speed.  It will cost me a little bit to get out of my contract for the DSL, but it will pay for itself rather quickly and hopefully I'll have a stable system.

So far I've downloaded a 150 Meg file in about 15 minutes and have experimented with some streaming video that worked extremely well.  Open-source Internet speed testing programs vary widely, depending on where the server is located, but at the worst of times it's much, much faster than the DSL.