Fios is an all optical network that verizon is setting up. They got pissed that the cable tv companies were going into the phone market, so they are striking back by offering everything that the cable companies offer, but better packages and cheaper. The have blazing fast speeds for interenet. MSFT I believe is supporting the software on the cable box. I am fairly sure it isn't available out of the gate, but allegedly a really cool feature will be offered in the future.
Currently cable companies send every single channels info to your box and when you change the channel your box takes care of deciphering it. It takes a lot of bandwidth and requires the use of heavy compression. Fios allegedly (from an article I read about 2 - 3 years ago in time magazine) will only send 1 channel (the one you are watching ) to your box. When you change the channel, your box will request the info from verizons servers. This does a couple of things. It will allow for more channels to be available as it won't have the bandwidth constraints. The speed of the network should be very fast, so you shouldn't notice much of a drop of signal when you change the channel. The visuals should improve, as it doesn't need to be compressed. The future thing that I was talking about, is the ability for you to control the camera at sporting events. Lets say you are watching a baseball game, and there are 10 camera's at the event. In theory, the software was developed for you to be able to have access to all 10 camera and to chose the one you want to look at. So if there is a close play at the plate, you can flip the channels to see the best view of the action. I don't know how far off that is, but it sounded awsome to me. Best case scenerio is that fios will get the pricing down for cable, tv, and phone and with the competition, allow for regular improvements on interenet connections.
I have had comcast for a long time, and for the first couple of years, I would get speed boosts every 6 months to a year. They would go up 1/2 to 1mbps in the connection speed. That hasn't happend for me in over 2 years. They claim, that the week before verizon sets up the fios in my area, they are going to double my connection speed in order to compete with the fios 15mbps. That was about a year ago now, verizon had laid the wiring down in my neighborhood about 1 1/2 years ago, but they haven't flipped the on switch yet. My parents who live about 5 min away in the next town, had verizon setup show about 1 3/4 years ago, and about a year ago now they switched the service on. So they are getting about double the internet speed and are paying $25 less a month then I pay and they are out of the promo period. Whenever I call comcast they tell me I am not in a competitive market, and they will up the speed when they can
