I have a long deep love of the internet and have often re-thunk how to get it into my needy little hands. DSL, Cable, Dial-Up, you name it, I have tried it all. I have also kept a watchful eye on Verizon’s touted FIOS network. It’s amazingly fast speeds sent shivers down my spine, in theory. I figured this was the ultimate end for all my high speed needs.
I feel different now.
When we moved into a new home recently where there was every conceivable communication utility coming onto the property. Cable, Satellite, Land line phones, and yes even FIOS, dead or alive it was all sticking into some crevice of our new home. The previous owners had an additive philosophy during their 20+ years of residency, meaning they never got rid of anything, when they upgraded from land lines to cable, they left the land lines. When they went from Satellite to FIOS, they left the satellite dish and all its trimmings. When we moved in there were literally dozens of cables coming into the house from the telephone pole. The entrance to the crawl space had about four cables lines, 10-15 telephone lines, each room had at least two land line phone connectors and a cable lead somewhere in the floor. An insane the amount of wall acne that existed on these premises.
So the other day I decided to give Verizon a call and ask them if they would come out and remove all their crap I was not using from our house. After being passed along to two different customer service folk, the bottom line was that they would send me a box to put the interior FIOS junction box for return, but said the exterior artifice was the responsibility of the previous home owner. Well, that was all I needed to realize the day had come when I could take all the crap off the house, cut all the cables and toss it all in the trash. It was such an incredibly exhilarating process to remove all that junk, and then finally left with a box of fiber optic madness I place in on the curb with the attached sign.
About an hour later a junk man came by the threw the lot into the back. So long FIOS!
