I work for a different telecommunications/internet company and very impressed with how through this video is and actually highly impressed with Verizon on how they did this process. Currently our company is skipping most apartment buildings because we are still building the fiber network to more rural areas.
That seems to be the case with a lot of companies. Some come back to do this kind of work, others try to find ways to shortcut the process. I hear CenturyLink likes to use G.fast to serve individual units over existing copper wiring, for example. Verizon seems to be very willing to take on MDUs but it appear related to their desire to retire their copper facilities. They can't do that until everyone is off copper. I wonder if their approach would have been different if we didn't have a handful of copper circuits between a few units with landlines and service for our call boxes.
After Verizon set up the FiOS infrastructure in my building, they informed me I have to wait one week for Verizon to set up Fios in my apartment unit and it feels like forever. After seeing how long the process can take doing it from scratch, I'm actually relived I had to only wait one week. This video was put together very well, thanks for sharing!
My city is finally getting fiber internet. I think I'm just as excited as you were, though I don't have the challenge of convincing all of my neighbors to get onboard with it since I have a single family home. You were definitely very committed!
great video on the process, we had internet run in our house nearly 20 years ago and with Fios lowest offering being 300mbps now I am thinking of redoing our internet with Verizon running fiber in our rural area now I know to take a day I am off to run everything in my house.
One good thing in Canada is all the new buildings have multiple fibers. E.g. my MDU has Telus and Novus in addition to Rogers. I am impressed with your persistence to get fiber. I wish everyone MDU has a member like you who is supportive.
I watch a lot of fiber install videos because I find it interesting to see how it's done in different parts of the world. This one was very good! I live in Germany and the install process at one of my family member's house was very different from the one in this video (granted, it was a different scenario involving a detached single-family home, not a condo). What I'm interested in is what type of network Verizon installed, AON or GPON? For those interested: In Germany, telecom lines almost exclusively run underground in cities (in rural areas, telecom poles are seen more often, but are far from the norm). Instead of the black junction boxes on top of the poles seen in the video, we have larger, curbside cabinets to connect the lines going to the consumers with the lines coming from the exchange. In my family member's case, there was no prior residential fiber in the town at all. A provider offered to build out the network, but only on the condition that a certain proportion of the residents would agree to sign a 2 year service contract with them. The install would then be free of charge for those who signed the contract. Starting in late 2020 with the "pre-marketing", the connection went live in May of 2022. Most of the fiber networks in Germany are GPON. I can only hope that the providers have the good sense to put the splitters in the junction cabinets instead of burying them underground, which would make it much easier to convert to AON down the road or to give individual customers a dedicated line.
@@dtuttle351 FiOS actually doesn't have any XGS-PON. Verizon is using NG-PON2 instead. It is only in 12 COs in NYC at the moment from what I have been told. There is a little BPON still out there but it is being phased out. It's >95% GPON at the moment.
Wow man you are awesome you bought all those glow rods at home depot, they are expensive, I think like 34 bucks per 3, because Verizon guys are always lazy and don't want to do anything, they just go there for 1 hr and leave I am a contractor and always try to complete job no matter what, thanks for going above sir
Ended up getting them on Amazon, I think they were all around the same price. I ended up selling all but one set once the project was done, I really don't need more than one set personally. It cost me some out of pocket but at least I got a lot of my money back.
(From the 403rd Thumbs up), Mr Nizlek this video just short of a Hollywood production quality. Your first English teacher influence or perhaps you had a storyboard, as your video flowed just like that fiber cable from the outside of your building on through to the individual condo owners. For those of us who are a bit nerdy or have IT or telco experience it answered all of my questions. As I live in a multi-family dwelling who wants FiOS I feel as though I have a leg up thank you.
Great job ,, this is a good lesson for all condo and apartment owners,,,Cable was installed to your home ,,,70 years ago ,and its out dated.... if you get on board for Fibire install to your home property will go up in Value
Just came across this today. I'm in NJ next to NYC, Verizon is home here and was one of the first states to get FIOS. That said it wasn't easy depending on where you are. When it first came here I was living in Garden Apartments that had cable and POTS in apartments all the time I was there up to 2013 no one could get FIOS even though it was run right down our street. Fast forward to 2018 and I had moved to a pre war apartment building where I could see the Empire State building from my living room. That was one of the only pluses that and by a miracle I could get FIOS. This though they ran conduit through the hallways and pulled through the wall into the apartment. All in all the install went well and I enjoyed having the service till I left last year. If i'm in the area and can get FIOS again I will certainly do that. I have to say your perseverance is commendable.
@@jesseowusuansah6762 I would doubt that directly. They might see it would be going through Verizon servers but your direct connection takes some work. Not as much but more than a casual glance.
One issue we had when they were installing the HFC solution was getting power to the HFC units mounted on the exterior of the building. They had to have the Hydro utility and an electrical contractor install power lines to the HFC boxes on the outside of the building that ran to the utility room and the central power connection from a local transformer on the property. That delayed a month or so since Hydro had to schedule it with an existing upgrade of the entire intersection that fed the transformer on the property and required engineering modifications to that project as well as informing the bell provider of changes as well that cause them to have to advance a wiring and power project they were scheduled to do on the same intersection. So, most of the projects are never done in isolation. There is always work going on in the neighborhood that can affect your installation at hte building level. They also had to wait since several of the cable vaults in the area were being expanded in-situ and there was only one crew to upgrade 14 vaults that took three days each to perform. That was another project that got prioritized when the discovere4d they didn't have enough free fiber in the neighborhood for the intersection data sensors and the telecom and cable. Our upgrade triggered a whole cascade of changes throughout the entire utility and power infrastructure in the neighborhood and meshed it with those 8 or ten other projects by six different utility and telecom providers. As well we have six condo towers scheduled for construction that would need fiber infrastructure. This also triggered a cascade of area wide fiber upgrades as well to add capacity for buildings that are not expected to be completed for ten years from now.
Amazing spirit. I had to deal with a couple of ISPs in my country for similar reasons. From your video I must admit that the Verizon team is top-notch when it comes to fiber deployment.
You did an amazing job making this video. I am truly blown away. I work in telecommunications and I'm amazed by how well you communicated this experience. I too am very passionate about internet, love my job, and providing customers with a good experience and strong connection is an amazing feeling.
Thanks for the kind words. Other than the stress of managing the project I found the whole thing very interesting. I definitely learned a lot about fiber and FTTH that I never knew before I started this.
I've told my girlfriend that when we buy a home together fiber is an absolute requirement. There's no way I'm going to let it go after everything I went through on this project!
The Verizon linemen should have tried to rod that duct before saying the duct was blocked. If you could rod that duct, they could have also. You did a nice job sticking with all of the headaches to get what you wanted done.
My god. You are a saint my man. I work for Telus up here in Canada as a Fiber Tech and if half the customers or property managers had your drive it would make our jobs A LOT more easier. Good job documenting all of this.
I salute you for your persistence and patience to complete this project. I hope your neighbors appreciate how lucky they are to have you. I learned a lot from this video and I am sure it took a lot of effort and time to prepare. Well done!! 👏🏽 I live in Egypt and the government is pushing to bring the whole country (urban and rural) onto FTTH. My condo is currently FTTCabinet but I heard there are plans to upgrade us next year; I wonder how will they proceed? Your video has prepared me for what might come.
I work for a Fiber ISP and must say how impressed I am the steps you made to make the project smooth for all partys. Hope you got first years internet free.
Ha, I wish! I didn't get any special treatment but the cost savings from my previous provider effectively worked out to something like a year of free internet.
That so cool and amazing.. I give you a lot of credit for going above and Beyond not only for yourself but the future prove your building telecommunication needs especially in today’s environment with Covid and working from home reliable downstream as long as upstream internet .
One advantage we have in a social housing building is the tenants have little to no say in unit access once a 24-hur notice is given. They have an option to schedule in a narrow window around the proposed date but that is it. They cannot outright refuse entry once it has been scheduled.
Good luck! I know Frontier is doing a massive rollout right now. I don't haven't heard much about whether they are retrofitting MDUs so I'd be interested in your experience. They are building out my parents' condo complex at the moment, but it's not a multi-story building like I have here in DC. I'd be very interested to know if Frontier is willing to pull fiber all the way to the unit in an existing MDU. From what I have heard, AT&T will do it (although they are more reluctant to take on these projects vs Verizon and sometimes ask for the property to share in the costs), and I've heard CenturyLink generally tries to use G.fast rather than pulling fiber to each unit.
This video was so helpful and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for your service to your building and for sharing your process so perfectly. This is a case study in taking initiative, being creative and persistent, and problem solving. I didn’t realize until yesterday how much time I have lost in my business working from home because my upload speed is capped on cable. I took my laptop to a friend’s yesterday and uploaded in 1/10th of the time it takes at home. I also live in a condo in DC, but I am East of the River. I hope to have as much success. My only question is who did you initially email to get a response?
Just Google Verizon Enhanced Communities. There's a contact for each region. That's not the person you need to talk to but they can get you to the right group. The other way is just to file a FAST ticket through customer service.
Excellent video! Lots of good info. I personally been through this process a few times with Verizon in Florida, which is now owned by frontier, but still fios however, I doubt I could’ve explained it as well as you did in this video. Great work!
I went straight to the EVP of SE Marketing and had 2gig fiber lit in my neighborhood for all 2,700 single family detached homes within two months. We're now enjoying 12gigs. Then, Google Fiber found out but they could only afford to light the apartment buildings on the outskirts of my neighborhood. Hilarious how Google, for being so slow, got pushed out by AT&T.
Very nice! Yeah, AT&T is doing a tremendous amount of building. Last I checked they were doing something like 2.5m homes passed per year (though they might have slowed down a bit). Glad you were able to get service!
Thanks for the video...It seems your time line is about right for a new run of fiber to a new area. I have been waiting for 2 years (minus 1 year because Covid stopped the work in running the conduit). Finally in the spring the conduit was run and the fiber is on the pole in my backyard. Now I'm just waiting for the line to run to my house and the final install. I'm expecting any day for the line to be put up, and another day of actual hookup. Covid sure delayed all the work for a year, who would have guess that a couple years ago.
FYI, a tiny correction, this is not an MDU setup, MDUs are where there is one central ONT for the whole building, whereas this is our standard setup, where each location has it's own ONT. I'm a Fios Tech. Great video though.
@@billkenny2570 Huh, I guess I don't think of it as MDU, as in my opinion, MDU is where everyone is fed off one or more centralized ONT versus having one in their unit.
I would think anyone would want to get the best source of internet possible, no matter what. Your neighbor might not have known it at the time, but I hope they fully do now, that what you did here, and you, yourself could only be describe as a godsend.
Nice... I have been waiting since 2019 (the year verizon put up fiber lines) for verizon fios to be available in my town. I remember riding my bike around town seeing what they did, and I saw that same truck near a distributer about a street away. I called verizon 2 days ago for what felt like the millionth time but this time they gave me an awnser and said that they would call me back this week. I still don't understood why it's not activated in my area because there is fiber basically all around town.. again... there is a distributer less than 500 feet away from my street.
@@jeffreysnow2640 Not surprised. I went above and beyond to the point of bothering their contractors just to know any information. I'm okay with what I have now, it's just a little underwhelming I know there's something better but I can't actually get it yet.
At&t just finished installing fiber optic lines throughout my neighborhood yesterday. How long do you think it will be until it is in service? I’m too excited and i can’t wait any longer
Hopefully you've got it by now! I've heard 2-4 months for AT&T for a non-MDU. Over on DSL Reports there's a lot of people who are in a similar situation and have provided timeframes.
Jesus, you neighbors have no idea how much good you've done them. I can only wish we could get fiber pulled into your condo community. ATT flat out said no, and I couldn't get anyone on the board interested in talking to other providers to explore options either. Folks complain about Xfinity but do nothing to remedy it. But what can you do...
Yeah, AT&T doesn't seem very interested in MDUs yet. My understanding is Verizon was the same way during then initial FiOS builds. Now that they have hit all the low-hanging fruit they are interested in getting condos and other MDUs off copper so they can fully retire the facilities. I'm sure AT&T will come around with time but the wait has got to frustrating.
Man you’ll be surprised what contractors say what they can’t do but you do it your self and just realize they don’t put any effort to solve to an issue
Im taling training for Fios Verizon Agent to take call and IS SO CONFUSING. There a lot of buttons and options and we must learn all in 1 month. Poor customers who end up with a newbie agent calling customer service with Verizon
Thanks for posting this vlog. I'm waiting to see how this goes with my condo building and VZ. I just got another notice from VZ that's ridiculously lacking info. I can't believe you had to go and troubleshoot a relatively straightforward problem that these telecom SMEs didn't want to bother with. Such a miserable work ethic IMHO.
Honestly the issue there was not Verizon but the contractors. Verizon outsources that portion of the work and their position (understandably) was, 'we paid for this to be done properly, and it wasn't, so it has to go back to the contractors to figure out.' I just didn't want to wait around for all that to happen. The Verizon guys themselves were great. When my neighbor's service was installed they ran into a bit of a snag and the tech stayed hours until about 9 PM on a Friday night to get their service online. But anytime you are dealing with contractors it is a different matter. They're not Verizon and they're probably the low bidder on the job so they're not going to go above and beyond. The biggest frustration during the project was just zero notice about anything. I'd look out my window and if I saw a Verizon or telecom contractor truck there that day then I knew they'd be working. If I wasn't working from home I don't know how I would have pulled this off. We have a management company but no way they'd be on site with no notice to get everyone the access they needed.
This is great, it explains what my building will go through at some point. I'm curious how they managed pulling the right amount of microduct since each apartment will have a different length of microduct needed. did they pull all 12 to the first floor, then eleven to the second, then 9 to the third, until you had seven, and then pass the remaining six to the attic runs? It seems like it would be tricky to bind the microduct to one another until after the all twelve units get their microduct plumbed. If your building's fiber runs are like a E turned 90°, our building is more of a F style layout. And given that the vertical run is like a 3" diameter metal conduit I suspect our microduct runs will only by used for the horizontal runs in each floors hallway. I'm curious to know where they plan on running the walljack, so I can prepare to run a conduit from that to where I want to put the ONT, now I know what I need to ask for. thanks.
Yes, that's exactly what they did. They pulled all 12 to the first, terminated one there, then 11 to the 2nd floor, and so on. Then at my unit (top floor) they cut all all the micro ducts off. They then used little plastic connectors called 'sharkbite fittings' to connect the microduct pulled from the other units into my units. Not sure if they used sharkbites in the other two stacks of units but I don't think so. The sharkbites are a bit of a pain because when the techs pull the fiber through the microducts there's a chance they an get snagged on the sharkbites. It happened on one of the pulls to another unit. Thankfully the sharkbite was in my unit so they had access to cut it open and thread the fiber through. In terms of where the wall jack is, they typically put it near where the fiber enters the unit. In a lot of MDU setups I've seen, they run the fiber through the hallways, but our board didn't want the conduit visible if possible so they pulled it up through the utility risers. Verizon was great to work with and they were willing to modify plans to meet our requirements. Hope this helps!
@@rnizlek Interesting that they pulled the fiber instead of jetting it through the microduct. I'm no expert, but apparently that not only greatly reduces the friction but it also reduces the chance of snag at the connection points.
@@paoloposo You also have to buy microfiber to blow it which is more expensive than a flat drop and with such short runs it isn't even worth it to set all that up
From what I can tell, we are at about 50% penetration, April will be the 2 year mark. Two units still have POTS lines and the rest are with Comcast. A lot of that is just inertia, or older residents who don’t want changes to their TV setup. One or two new residents started with Comcast on move in, which really surprised me given that Fios was available.
You just have to love neighbors that have no cost, only advantages, but just refuse because they can. But at least he was ok with the ducts going through his condo. And man I would hate all that waiting time. When we come, we usually do all the work in one day. We blow the fiber, splice it in the home and the enclosure outside and patch the customer in the PoP, so he is up and running after only a few hours. I would be pissed if all the cable is ready and I had to wait weeks for 2 splices that take 5 minutes. And we didn't change anything bec of Covid. We got a document that we were workers for critical infrastructur and everything continued as before.
Apparently that's pretty common for Verizon. Although I am told that now they don't send the inside path people out, they just have the techs pull the fiber once someone orders service, except for new builds. But to actually work on the fiber Verizon needs to use Verizon employees per their union contract - for running the conduit, they can use contractors. So there's a bit of a disconnect between the contractors and the Verizon employees. I've talked to others who have had their buildings wired and the wait times are similar. But that's pretty unique to Verizon I believe. I love the service though. When I bought my unit I accepted I would never get fiber and that was a compromise I made. I'm thrilled that it was able to happen even though it took forever.
When tenants get Fios installed to their unit, you say they wont have to take down dry wall, what methods to they have in order for them to get Fios then? Isn't a wire supposed to go from outside to their unit?
There is a conduit fed to each unit through the utility closets in each unit. Verizon contractors the installed a fiber wall jack in each unit. Essentially the fiber comes up the way pathway as water and wastewater pipes. The installation strategy will vary building by building though.
Out of 26 units, I'd say about 40-50% are with Verizon now. We also have a business internet line for the building access control and security cameras through them. As far as I know, no one who has switched has gone back to the cable company.
The speeds have been consistently around >900/850 since I've had the service. One of the great things about being in DC is we're close to a major internet exchange point (Ashburn) so 4-5ms pings to servers are not unusual. Its about 11 ms up to my server in New York. Rumor is that Verizon will be offering >1 Gbps speeds in the new year. I don't really need anything beyond 1 gbps but I might subscribe for a few months just to test things out. If so I'll definitely do a video.
You would think that it's in their best interest to sell their services... I wanted to start the same process in my building here in NYC but now I am thinking that it would be much easier and cheaper to just move to the building where they already have it. Just the amount of BS one has to go through to get a decent internet in one of the most expensive cities in the world is simply stupid. For 6500 rent I get third world internet speeds with no alternatives.
The only counterpoint is it is very expensive for them to do this work. I saw some numbers on our install and the cost was tens of thousands of dollars. They will make that back over time, but it will probably take years given that they’re not going to get everyone in each building to subscribe. The economics for them are largely driven by the desire to retire the copper network. All that being said, I absolutely agree fiber is a selling point for a building, so it would be in the interest of a lot of rental buildings to work with Verizon to get this done, even if it means cost sharing on part of the install. Verizon has made pretty good progress in NYC, though. I have family and friends in Manhattan and Brooklyn and they all have access to FiOS, but I know it is not universal thought the city.
Hi, do you know how we can get verizon to take back their equipment and unplug cables from the fioz box (outside the wall of my home) from the electric pole? I don’t have a Rison I guess the past owners did but Verizon never took back the equipment and now I have a cable hanging that I don’t need getting in the way.
Yes, they had to splice the fibers in the cable that comes off the fibers in the cable that runs into the building, and then had to splice the cables that run to each distribution panel to the cable that comes into the building. There is a direct connection between each unit and the fiber distribution hub that’s on a pole two blocks away, the splicing is just connecting the fibers in each cable together. I could do a video on some point that shows how everything is connected.
That's the easy way to do things! I moved from a place that had it and it was the only compromise I made when I bought this place. At the time it seemed like only new construction and single family homes had it in my part of town and that was out of my price range. I just accepted that I was not going to get it here and I still sort of can't believe I was able to make it happen completely on Verizon's dime.
The people who stood in the way were all unit owners. Had they been tenants it would have been very easy to require access under the terms of the lease. We legally had the right to run the wiring per our bylaws but an owner can make life very difficult if they want to. Some people just don't like change, but since this I've built a relationship with that guy and he's very nice. I just don't think he understood the value of what we were doing initially.
DSL was just as good and it came over the phone lines. I used to work for Verizon and when they tried to implement FIOS back in 2007/ 2008 the company was going bankrupt !!!
AT&T offered up to 18 Mbps at my house up until around 2019-2020. I hardly consider that "just as good". The service was reliable as I had relatively few service outages in the decade we had the service, but its just painfully slow compared to the 500 Mbps I have with comcast.
awesome if you like continuous updates in the middle of the day instead of I don't know maybe doing it in the middle of the night when nobody's watching. awful just awful
Or at least not when we did. This year one other building in the neighborhood was retrofitted. Most buildings around here don't have it. Eventually Verizon will make it happen in order to retire the copper plant, but I didn't want to wait around for that!
This is an incredible amount of dedication. Verizon should have paid you to run that mule tape.
Nice job.
or at least offer them a month of access :)
the tenants should pay for lagging behind
Absolute chad moving heaven and earth to get your neighbors first world Internet
and also did it in such a good way with regard to communication
I work for a different telecommunications/internet company and very impressed with how through this video is and actually highly impressed with Verizon on how they did this process. Currently our company is skipping most apartment buildings because we are still building the fiber network to more rural areas.
That seems to be the case with a lot of companies. Some come back to do this kind of work, others try to find ways to shortcut the process. I hear CenturyLink likes to use G.fast to serve individual units over existing copper wiring, for example. Verizon seems to be very willing to take on MDUs but it appear related to their desire to retire their copper facilities. They can't do that until everyone is off copper. I wonder if their approach would have been different if we didn't have a handful of copper circuits between a few units with landlines and service for our call boxes.
After Verizon set up the FiOS infrastructure in my building, they informed me I have to wait one week for Verizon to set up Fios in my apartment unit and it feels like forever. After seeing how long the process can take doing it from scratch, I'm actually relived I had to only wait one week. This video was put together very well, thanks for sharing!
My city is finally getting fiber internet. I think I'm just as excited as you were, though I don't have the challenge of convincing all of my neighbors to get onboard with it since I have a single family home. You were definitely very committed!
great video on the process, we had internet run in our house nearly 20 years ago and with Fios lowest offering being 300mbps now I am thinking of redoing our internet with Verizon running fiber in our rural area now I know to take a day I am off to run everything in my house.
One good thing in Canada is all the new buildings have multiple fibers. E.g. my MDU has Telus and Novus in addition to Rogers. I am impressed with your persistence to get fiber. I wish everyone MDU has a member like you who is supportive.
all the best from Hamilton Canada
I watch a lot of fiber install videos because I find it interesting to see how it's done in different parts of the world. This one was very good! I live in Germany and the install process at one of my family member's house was very different from the one in this video (granted, it was a different scenario involving a detached single-family home, not a condo). What I'm interested in is what type of network Verizon installed, AON or GPON?
For those interested:
In Germany, telecom lines almost exclusively run underground in cities (in rural areas, telecom poles are seen more often, but are far from the norm). Instead of the black junction boxes on top of the poles seen in the video, we have larger, curbside cabinets to connect the lines going to the consumers with the lines coming from the exchange.
In my family member's case, there was no prior residential fiber in the town at all. A provider offered to build out the network, but only on the condition that a certain proportion of the residents would agree to sign a 2 year service contract with them. The install would then be free of charge for those who signed the contract. Starting in late 2020 with the "pre-marketing", the connection went live in May of 2022.
Most of the fiber networks in Germany are GPON. I can only hope that the providers have the good sense to put the splitters in the junction cabinets instead of burying them underground, which would make it much easier to convert to AON down the road or to give individual customers a dedicated line.
@@dtuttle351 FiOS actually doesn't have any XGS-PON. Verizon is using NG-PON2 instead. It is only in 12 COs in NYC at the moment from what I have been told. There is a little BPON still out there but it is being phased out. It's >95% GPON at the moment.
Wow man you are awesome you bought all those glow rods at home depot, they are expensive, I think like 34 bucks per 3, because Verizon guys are always lazy and don't want to do anything, they just go there for 1 hr and leave I am a contractor and always try to complete job no matter what, thanks for going above sir
Ended up getting them on Amazon, I think they were all around the same price. I ended up selling all but one set once the project was done, I really don't need more than one set personally. It cost me some out of pocket but at least I got a lot of my money back.
Top tier content Ross. Installing that pull string was a pro move on your part.
I admire your persistence getting this done! I have Frontier (ex Verizon) Fiber now for 10 years and would not want anything else!
(From the 403rd Thumbs up), Mr Nizlek this video just short of a Hollywood production quality. Your first English teacher influence or perhaps you had a storyboard, as your video flowed just like that fiber cable from the outside of your building on through to the individual condo owners. For those of us who are a bit nerdy or have IT or telco experience it answered all of my questions. As I live in a multi-family dwelling who wants FiOS I feel as though I have a leg up thank you.
Great job ,, this is a good lesson for all condo and apartment owners,,,Cable was installed to your home ,,,70 years ago ,and its out dated....
if you get on board for Fibire install to your home property will go up in Value
Just came across this today. I'm in NJ next to NYC, Verizon is home here and was one of the first states to get FIOS. That said it wasn't easy depending on where you are. When it first came here I was living in Garden Apartments that had cable and POTS in apartments all the time I was there up to 2013 no one could get FIOS even though it was run right down our street. Fast forward to 2018 and I had moved to a pre war apartment building where I could see the Empire State building from my living room. That was one of the only pluses that and by a miracle I could get FIOS. This though they ran conduit through the hallways and pulled through the wall into the apartment. All in all the install went well and I enjoyed having the service till I left last year. If i'm in the area and can get FIOS again I will certainly do that. I have to say your perseverance is commendable.
Hey can someone view your browsing history if you are connected to his FiOS wifi?
@@jesseowusuansah6762 I would doubt that directly. They might see it would be going through Verizon servers but your direct connection takes some work. Not as much but more than a casual glance.
One issue we had when they were installing the HFC solution was getting power to the HFC units mounted on the exterior of the building. They had to have the Hydro utility and an electrical contractor install power lines to the HFC boxes on the outside of the building that ran to the utility room and the central power connection from a local transformer on the property. That delayed a month or so since Hydro had to schedule it with an existing upgrade of the entire intersection that fed the transformer on the property and required engineering modifications to that project as well as informing the bell provider of changes as well that cause them to have to advance a wiring and power project they were scheduled to do on the same intersection. So, most of the projects are never done in isolation. There is always work going on in the neighborhood that can affect your installation at hte building level. They also had to wait since several of the cable vaults in the area were being expanded in-situ and there was only one crew to upgrade 14 vaults that took three days each to perform. That was another project that got prioritized when the discovere4d they didn't have enough free fiber in the neighborhood for the intersection data sensors and the telecom and cable. Our upgrade triggered a whole cascade of changes throughout the entire utility and power infrastructure in the neighborhood and meshed it with those 8 or ten other projects by six different utility and telecom providers. As well we have six condo towers scheduled for construction that would need fiber infrastructure. This also triggered a cascade of area wide fiber upgrades as well to add capacity for buildings that are not expected to be completed for ten years from now.
Amazing spirit. I had to deal with a couple of ISPs in my country for similar reasons. From your video I must admit that the Verizon team is top-notch when it comes to fiber deployment.
You did an amazing job making this video. I am truly blown away. I work in telecommunications and I'm amazed by how well you communicated this experience. I too am very passionate about internet, love my job, and providing customers with a good experience and strong connection is an amazing feeling.
Thanks for the kind words. Other than the stress of managing the project I found the whole thing very interesting. I definitely learned a lot about fiber and FTTH that I never knew before I started this.
Congrats on FiOS. I moved from NJ(FiOS) to a new 55+ community in PA. My requirements were….. 2 car garage, full basement and…….. FiOS!
I've told my girlfriend that when we buy a home together fiber is an absolute requirement. There's no way I'm going to let it go after everything I went through on this project!
The Verizon linemen should have tried to rod that duct before saying the duct was blocked. If you could rod that duct, they could have also. You did a nice job sticking with all of the headaches to get what you wanted done.
My god. You are a saint my man. I work for Telus up here in Canada as a Fiber Tech and if half the customers or property managers had your drive it would make our jobs A LOT more easier. Good job documenting all of this.
I salute you for your persistence and patience to complete this project. I hope your neighbors appreciate how lucky they are to have you.
I learned a lot from this video and I am sure it took a lot of effort and time to prepare. Well done!! 👏🏽
I live in Egypt and the government is pushing to bring the whole country (urban and rural) onto FTTH. My condo is currently FTTCabinet but I heard there are plans to upgrade us next year; I wonder how will they proceed?
Your video has prepared me for what might come.
I wish i had someone like you to help get fiber to my building... you did amazing job
I can't believe how pumped I am to watch this.
I work for a Fiber ISP and must say how impressed I am the steps you made to make the project smooth for all partys. Hope you got first years internet free.
Ha, I wish! I didn't get any special treatment but the cost savings from my previous provider effectively worked out to something like a year of free internet.
That so cool and amazing.. I give you a lot of credit for going above and Beyond not only for yourself but the future prove your building telecommunication needs especially in today’s environment with Covid and working from home reliable downstream as long as upstream internet .
One advantage we have in a social housing building is the tenants have little to no say in unit access once a 24-hur notice is given. They have an option to schedule in a narrow window around the proposed date but that is it. They cannot outright refuse entry once it has been scheduled.
I might be copying this process in a frontier MDU that’s still using their copper footprint. Fiber is on the street right now recently installed
Good luck! I know Frontier is doing a massive rollout right now. I don't haven't heard much about whether they are retrofitting MDUs so I'd be interested in your experience. They are building out my parents' condo complex at the moment, but it's not a multi-story building like I have here in DC. I'd be very interested to know if Frontier is willing to pull fiber all the way to the unit in an existing MDU. From what I have heard, AT&T will do it (although they are more reluctant to take on these projects vs Verizon and sometimes ask for the property to share in the costs), and I've heard CenturyLink generally tries to use G.fast rather than pulling fiber to each unit.
Great job doing all the pm work.
This was great to watch! I'm nearly there on a 9 unit condo building in Greenwich CT and all this rings true. Patience 😎
I think I saw your post over at DSLR. Looks like you got it done... hope you're enjoying the service!
@@rnizlek ordered today!
This video was so helpful and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for your service to your building and for sharing your process so perfectly. This is a case study in taking initiative, being creative and persistent, and problem solving.
I didn’t realize until yesterday how much time I have lost in my business working from home because my upload speed is capped on cable. I took my laptop to a friend’s yesterday and uploaded in 1/10th of the time it takes at home. I also live in a condo in DC, but I am East of the River. I hope to have as much success.
My only question is who did you initially email to get a response?
Just Google Verizon Enhanced Communities. There's a contact for each region. That's not the person you need to talk to but they can get you to the right group. The other way is just to file a FAST ticket through customer service.
Excellent video! Lots of good info. I personally been through this process a few times with Verizon in Florida, which is now owned by frontier, but still fios however, I doubt I could’ve explained it as well as you did in this video. Great work!
I went straight to the EVP of SE Marketing and had 2gig fiber lit in my neighborhood for all 2,700 single family detached homes within two months. We're now enjoying 12gigs. Then, Google Fiber found out but they could only afford to light the apartment buildings on the outskirts of my neighborhood. Hilarious how Google, for being so slow, got pushed out by AT&T.
Google has essentially given up on their fiber project and laid off most of the people working on it
Very nice! Yeah, AT&T is doing a tremendous amount of building. Last I checked they were doing something like 2.5m homes passed per year (though they might have slowed down a bit). Glad you were able to get service!
Thanks for the video...It seems your time line is about right for a new run of fiber to a new area. I have been waiting for 2 years (minus 1 year because Covid stopped the work in running the conduit). Finally in the spring the conduit was run and the fiber is on the pole in my backyard. Now I'm just waiting for the line to run to my house and the final install.
I'm expecting any day for the line to be put up, and another day of actual hookup. Covid sure delayed all the work for a year, who would have guess that a couple years ago.
FYI, a tiny correction, this is not an MDU setup, MDUs are where there is one central ONT for the whole building, whereas this is our standard setup, where each location has it's own ONT. I'm a Fios Tech. Great video though.
I'm a tech in Manhattan all apt buildings are considered MDU (multi dwelling unit)... he's not talking about a MDU ont building setup
@@billkenny2570 Huh, I guess I don't think of it as MDU, as in my opinion, MDU is where everyone is fed off one or more centralized ONT versus having one in their unit.
I would think anyone would want to get the best source of internet possible, no matter what. Your neighbor might not have known it at the time, but I hope they fully do now, that what you did here, and you, yourself could only be describe as a godsend.
braver than the troops for all your effort
Learn how to do push-ups lol
Great video and write up
Ross , you did a very good job !
Nice... I have been waiting since 2019 (the year verizon put up fiber lines) for verizon fios to be available in my town. I remember riding my bike around town seeing what they did, and I saw that same truck near a distributer about a street away. I called verizon 2 days ago for what felt like the millionth time but this time they gave me an awnser and said that they would call me back this week. I still don't understood why it's not activated in my area because there is fiber basically all around town.. again... there is a distributer less than 500 feet away from my street.
I used to work for Verizon, they care nothing about customer service. If you have DSL just stick with that. FIOS is not much better
@@jeffreysnow2640 Not surprised. I went above and beyond to the point of bothering their contractors just to know any information. I'm okay with what I have now, it's just a little underwhelming I know there's something better but I can't actually get it yet.
I live in a co-op with over a hundred units. The installation process took about 3.5 years start to finish.
Amazing fiber optic
Super cool and extremely well done!
At&t just finished installing fiber optic lines throughout my neighborhood yesterday. How long do you think it will be until it is in service? I’m too excited and i can’t wait any longer
Hopefully you've got it by now! I've heard 2-4 months for AT&T for a non-MDU. Over on DSL Reports there's a lot of people who are in a similar situation and have provided timeframes.
@@rnizlek yep i’ve got it installed 3 months ago! Best internet out there im so greatful
Great video, but there is no way my landlord will be willing to suffer a moment of her precious time or effort to get us connected to FiOS.
I hope the entire block recognises the lengths you went to!
Worlds best neighbor !!
Huge respect!
Well done.
Jesus, you neighbors have no idea how much good you've done them. I can only wish we could get fiber pulled into your condo community. ATT flat out said no, and I couldn't get anyone on the board interested in talking to other providers to explore options either. Folks complain about Xfinity but do nothing to remedy it. But what can you do...
Yeah, AT&T doesn't seem very interested in MDUs yet. My understanding is Verizon was the same way during then initial FiOS builds. Now that they have hit all the low-hanging fruit they are interested in getting condos and other MDUs off copper so they can fully retire the facilities. I'm sure AT&T will come around with time but the wait has got to frustrating.
Man you’ll be surprised what contractors say what they can’t do but you do it your self and just realize they don’t put any effort to solve to an issue
Im taling training for Fios Verizon Agent to take call and IS SO CONFUSING. There a lot of buttons and options and we must learn all in 1 month.
Poor customers who end up with a newbie agent calling customer service with Verizon
Thanks for posting this vlog. I'm waiting to see how this goes with my condo building and VZ. I just got another notice from VZ that's ridiculously lacking info.
I can't believe you had to go and troubleshoot a relatively straightforward problem that these telecom SMEs didn't want to bother with. Such a miserable work ethic IMHO.
Honestly the issue there was not Verizon but the contractors. Verizon outsources that portion of the work and their position (understandably) was, 'we paid for this to be done properly, and it wasn't, so it has to go back to the contractors to figure out.' I just didn't want to wait around for all that to happen. The Verizon guys themselves were great. When my neighbor's service was installed they ran into a bit of a snag and the tech stayed hours until about 9 PM on a Friday night to get their service online. But anytime you are dealing with contractors it is a different matter. They're not Verizon and they're probably the low bidder on the job so they're not going to go above and beyond.
The biggest frustration during the project was just zero notice about anything. I'd look out my window and if I saw a Verizon or telecom contractor truck there that day then I knew they'd be working. If I wasn't working from home I don't know how I would have pulled this off. We have a management company but no way they'd be on site with no notice to get everyone the access they needed.
This is great, it explains what my building will go through at some point. I'm curious how they managed pulling the right amount of microduct since each apartment will have a different length of microduct needed. did they pull all 12 to the first floor, then eleven to the second, then 9 to the third, until you had seven, and then pass the remaining six to the attic runs? It seems like it would be tricky to bind the microduct to one another until after the all twelve units get their microduct plumbed. If your building's fiber runs are like a E turned 90°, our building is more of a F style layout. And given that the vertical run is like a 3" diameter metal conduit I suspect our microduct runs will only by used for the horizontal runs in each floors hallway. I'm curious to know where they plan on running the walljack, so I can prepare to run a conduit from that to where I want to put the ONT, now I know what I need to ask for. thanks.
Yes, that's exactly what they did. They pulled all 12 to the first, terminated one there, then 11 to the 2nd floor, and so on. Then at my unit (top floor) they cut all all the micro ducts off. They then used little plastic connectors called 'sharkbite fittings' to connect the microduct pulled from the other units into my units. Not sure if they used sharkbites in the other two stacks of units but I don't think so. The sharkbites are a bit of a pain because when the techs pull the fiber through the microducts there's a chance they an get snagged on the sharkbites. It happened on one of the pulls to another unit. Thankfully the sharkbite was in my unit so they had access to cut it open and thread the fiber through. In terms of where the wall jack is, they typically put it near where the fiber enters the unit. In a lot of MDU setups I've seen, they run the fiber through the hallways, but our board didn't want the conduit visible if possible so they pulled it up through the utility risers. Verizon was great to work with and they were willing to modify plans to meet our requirements. Hope this helps!
@@rnizlek Interesting that they pulled the fiber instead of jetting it through the microduct. I'm no expert, but apparently that not only greatly reduces the friction but it also reduces the chance of snag at the connection points.
@@paoloposo You also have to buy microfiber to blow it which is more expensive than a flat drop and with such short runs it isn't even worth it to set all that up
Great video!
Very informative! Thanks for sharing.
How many units actually purchased Fios services
From what I can tell, we are at about 50% penetration, April will be the 2 year mark. Two units still have POTS lines and the rest are with Comcast. A lot of that is just inertia, or older residents who don’t want changes to their TV setup. One or two new residents started with Comcast on move in, which really surprised me given that Fios was available.
You just have to love neighbors that have no cost, only advantages, but just refuse because they can. But at least he was ok with the ducts going through his condo.
And man I would hate all that waiting time. When we come, we usually do all the work in one day. We blow the fiber, splice it in the home and the enclosure outside and patch the customer in the PoP, so he is up and running after only a few hours. I would be pissed if all the cable is ready and I had to wait weeks for 2 splices that take 5 minutes.
And we didn't change anything bec of Covid. We got a document that we were workers for critical infrastructur and everything continued as before.
Apparently that's pretty common for Verizon. Although I am told that now they don't send the inside path people out, they just have the techs pull the fiber once someone orders service, except for new builds. But to actually work on the fiber Verizon needs to use Verizon employees per their union contract - for running the conduit, they can use contractors. So there's a bit of a disconnect between the contractors and the Verizon employees. I've talked to others who have had their buildings wired and the wait times are similar. But that's pretty unique to Verizon I believe. I love the service though. When I bought my unit I accepted I would never get fiber and that was a compromise I made. I'm thrilled that it was able to happen even though it took forever.
The amount of anxiety throughout this video lol
When tenants get Fios installed to their unit, you say they wont have to take down dry wall, what methods to they have in order for them to get Fios then? Isn't a wire supposed to go from outside to their unit?
There is a conduit fed to each unit through the utility closets in each unit. Verizon contractors the installed a fiber wall jack in each unit. Essentially the fiber comes up the way pathway as water and wastewater pipes. The installation strategy will vary building by building though.
Wonder how many people signed up for service after your project was completed.
Out of 26 units, I'd say about 40-50% are with Verizon now. We also have a business internet line for the building access control and security cameras through them. As far as I know, no one who has switched has gone back to the cable company.
Hope you upgraded your Wyze Cams since this video was made lol
Definitely! haha
great video would like to see a follow up with the speeds
The speeds have been consistently around >900/850 since I've had the service. One of the great things about being in DC is we're close to a major internet exchange point (Ashburn) so 4-5ms pings to servers are not unusual. Its about 11 ms up to my server in New York. Rumor is that Verizon will be offering >1 Gbps speeds in the new year. I don't really need anything beyond 1 gbps but I might subscribe for a few months just to test things out. If so I'll definitely do a video.
You would think that it's in their best interest to sell their services... I wanted to start the same process in my building here in NYC but now I am thinking that it would be much easier and cheaper to just move to the building where they already have it. Just the amount of BS one has to go through to get a decent internet in one of the most expensive cities in the world is simply stupid. For 6500 rent I get third world internet speeds with no alternatives.
The only counterpoint is it is very expensive for them to do this work. I saw some numbers on our install and the cost was tens of thousands of dollars. They will make that back over time, but it will probably take years given that they’re not going to get everyone in each building to subscribe. The economics for them are largely driven by the desire to retire the copper network. All that being said, I absolutely agree fiber is a selling point for a building, so it would be in the interest of a lot of rental buildings to work with Verizon to get this done, even if it means cost sharing on part of the install. Verizon has made pretty good progress in NYC, though. I have family and friends in Manhattan and Brooklyn and they all have access to FiOS, but I know it is not universal thought the city.
Hi, do you know how we can get verizon to take back their equipment and unplug cables from the fioz box (outside the wall of my home) from the electric pole? I don’t have a Rison I guess the past owners did but Verizon never took back the equipment and now I have a cable hanging that I don’t need getting in the way.
Also is splicing when they set up the cables in the distributer?
Yes, they had to splice the fibers in the cable that comes off the fibers in the cable that runs into the building, and then had to splice the cables that run to each distribution panel to the cable that comes into the building. There is a direct connection between each unit and the fiber distribution hub that’s on a pole two blocks away, the splicing is just connecting the fibers in each cable together. I could do a video on some point that shows how everything is connected.
@@rnizlek that would be great!
seems very stressful having to rely on tenants to allow project to continue.
I swear the next house I buy better have access to fiber internet
That's the easy way to do things! I moved from a place that had it and it was the only compromise I made when I bought this place. At the time it seemed like only new construction and single family homes had it in my part of town and that was out of my price range. I just accepted that I was not going to get it here and I still sort of can't believe I was able to make it happen completely on Verizon's dime.
Hello sir Ji can you please help me
shame on those tenants who frustrated the install. perhaps the lease should not be renewed on the next cycle.
The people who stood in the way were all unit owners. Had they been tenants it would have been very easy to require access under the terms of the lease. We legally had the right to run the wiring per our bylaws but an owner can make life very difficult if they want to. Some people just don't like change, but since this I've built a relationship with that guy and he's very nice. I just don't think he understood the value of what we were doing initially.
My Job
I’d like to be your neighbor and friend 👍 well done
DSL was just as good and it came over the phone lines. I used to work for Verizon and when they tried to implement FIOS back in 2007/ 2008 the company was going bankrupt !!!
How? I have DSL, and I am so itching to change to a better service.
AT&T offered up to 18 Mbps at my house up until around 2019-2020. I hardly consider that "just as good". The service was reliable as I had relatively few service outages in the decade we had the service, but its just painfully slow compared to the 500 Mbps I have with comcast.
The ends of all your sentences trail off in volume even when I turn my TV louder. Maybe there is something wrong with your recording device.
awesome if you like continuous updates in the middle of the day instead of I don't know maybe doing it in the middle of the night when nobody's watching. awful just awful
Hall Jennifer Young John Martin Margaret
If it wasn't for you that building would never have gotten fiber 😅
Or at least not when we did. This year one other building in the neighborhood was retrofitted. Most buildings around here don't have it. Eventually Verizon will make it happen in order to retire the copper plant, but I didn't want to wait around for that!
You don’t need internet, get outside an exercise
cringe video