There have been many innovations in the telephone and Internet industries. Once, a simple telephone line was enough for individuals to connect with one other by phone or by Web. These days, individuals and businesses send many more kinds of data to one another by email, phone, text message, and instant message.

A connection is needed that can carry the weight of all the audio, video, voice, and multimedia data being sent and received. This is especially true for businesses that use one network to connect all their employees- sometimes in different states or countries.

T-carrier lines were used for many years by businesses to transmit data. Unfortunately, the T-carrier lines can crash when carrying the weight of too much data. Optical carriers have become popular with growing businesses. These connection lines have greater bandwidth and higher speed than traditional lines of T-carriers. Optical carriers (OCs) come in several varieties including OC3, OC12, OC48, and OC192. This article will focus on OC12 connections.

Before explaining OC12, it is important to list a few important terms. They are below:

T-carrier: telephone line that can carry 24 or more channels at a faster rate than a dial-up modem

Optical carrier: fiber optic line that can serve multiple points in a large geographic area at a rate faster than T-carriers

Bandwidth: total amount of data that can flow through a space in a specified time frame

Internet Service Provider: also known as ISP, these are companies that provide connection lines for Internet access

OC3, OC12, OC48, OC192 Connections

A basic breakdown of Optical carrier speeds is as follows: OC3 (155 megabits per second), OC12 (622 megabits per second), OC48 (2.5 gigabits per second), and OC192 (9.6 gigabits per second).

OC12 is in the median range and is useful for a large business with a strong Internet Service Provider. All the Optical carriers are expensive and Optical carrier 12 can cost $100,000-$300,000 per month for businesses to rent. Businesses should be very selective about the ISP they choose since cost, features, service, and reliability varies greatly among Internet Service Providers.

Becoming locked into a contract with an ISP that cannot handle data is a financial and customer service nightmare. The other types of Optical carriers: OC3, OC48, and OC192, among others have higher costs and higher speeds as the number attached to "OC" get numerically larger. The size of the business, amount of data transferred, number of employees and customers, and many other factors will determine which type of Optical carrier service is needed.

The speed of internet plays a vital role in surfing, downloading or uploading. Everyone is keen to know about the upload and download speed the internet service provider ISP is providing.
Nowadays when most of the dialup users have shifted to new services called Broadband T3 the speed is not a problem. The rates of the services are also being reduced and helping the end-user.
The speed is not always consistent and end-user always like to check the speed of the internet i.e. upload and download which in most cases is checked by uploading a file or downloading a file from some site.

For facilitation of the end-user and to ease him in checking speed the can go to various site for checking speed which tells you the IP and at the same time you can choose to check your internet speed as well.

It will just take a minute or two and will perform a test that will shown to you that at that very moment what speed you are actually being provided by the ISP.

You can test both upload and download speeds. Results will display average bandwidth results from other ISP users that use this testing site.

Your connection speed may vary from host to host due to Path your ISP takes to the host, server capacity, Internet traffic, your hardware or OS, neighborhood (cable users).

It is recommended that while on checking speed when download and upload test is in the progress you should close all your other internet related activities to give you exact numeric of the test.

High speed internet services have come a long way in a short amount of time. In fact you can get this internet service almost anywhere in the country so even those that live outside of town or in more rural areas can now also enjoy the benefits of a high speed connection. The other great thing is that there are several places that you can purchase your high speed access so you can shop it around to get the best deal.

One place that you may want to consider especially if you live in a rural area is high speed via a satellite dish. There are a few companies that offer this type of service. What you do is purchase a small satellite dish and their receiver box. It works just the same way that satellite television works. You can find free installation and many rebates on the satellite dish itself. The only down fall with this type of service is it runs best when the weather is clear. This is because thick clouds can block some of the satellite feed however this is a great alternative to dial up when you live outside the service area of other service providers.

Many phone companies are also offering a high speed internet connection through DSL. So if you can get phone service you can also get a high speed connection. This gives you a good option because many of the DSL providers also provide phone service and they give a discount if you combine both services. This savings can put extra cash back in your pocket.

Cable companies have also gotten in on the demand for internet high speed connections. Just as the phone companies have combined their services so have the cable companies. So you can bundle your services and save yourself some cash. However there are even bigger savings to be found in the internet service providers. As the bigger companies begin to work together to save their selves money you will find this works in your benefit and you can find a great deal on high speed service.

The larger companies are teaming up and sharing resources and it is the consumers that are really getting price breaks. For example in many areas in the country you can find service that combines your telephone service, your cell phone service, your cable or satellite, and your high speed access to the internet. When you get this type of combination you will surely save money versus purchasing each service individually. This is because the companies are sharing resources such as wiring, customer service, and even being able to send out one invoice saves these companies millions every year.

So when you are looking to have a high speed connection for your internet service, call some of your other service providers. Oftentimes you will find that if you bundle your services you will not only save money on your high speed internet but also on your other utilities such as cable or phone service.

Wireless broadband is becoming more and more of a commodity than a rarity these days, in the past households tended to have one computer usually stashed away in a box room or a corner somewhere and home internet was set up by your Internet provider to come in through the wall into one machine. Well over the past five years wireless internet has quickly brought internet access to everyone in the household not just one machine.

It's not surprising really, considering most typical households will have a main computer, then there will be the laptop that the eldest takes away to university to do work on and chances are another child will have their first computer in their room for talking to their friends online. Queuing up to use the internet used to be like queuing for the bathroom in the morning.

Wireless broadband came about when people bought Wireless routers, equipment that allows one internet connection to be shared amongst many computers in a small area, whilst it was computer enthusiasts that initially used these you can now get wireless broadband from your internet service provider as a product. An engineer will come out and fit the router and add all your devices to the internet connection.

The technology initially worked to certain strength, dubbed 802.11b it didn't have fantastic range and the strength of your connection depended on how thick the walls were between your PC and the router, invariably like most early technologies it wasn't that impressive with poor data speeds being reported, not only that but other wireless transmitting devices in the home such as TV remotes and even microwave ovens interfered with the signal.

This all changed with the next generation of wireless standards 802.11g chances are if you have any wireless devices they are probably wireless G enabled. Most home video game consoles and mobile phones will connect to a wireless G standard, it provides much faster speeds over the wireless airwaves as well as being strong enough to penetrate the thickest of house walls.

The thing is that Wireless G too is getting old and the craving for quicker speeds brought about the next generation, Wireless N. Wireless N is much more powerful and allows most remote computers to achieve speeds much more like being connected via an Ethernet cable. Whilst most people will typically choose the latest and greatest technology for some reason Wireless N routers and their equipment has not taken off and remains sat on computer store shelves.

Why is this happening especially in the ever changing nature of gadgets and electronics? Well most people put it down to being simply happy enough with wireless G, as well as this most routers for the G standard are cheap enough to be provided by home broadband suppliers for free, (being subsidised by the suppliers monthly charges). Couple that with that most devices that people use such as the Sony Playstation 3, iPhone and Apple TV all use Wireless G it makes for not much need to go faster since the speed boost wouldn't affect these devices.

Most wireless N equipment is obviously more expensive and if you have many computers and other devices sharing your broadband connection then you don't want to be spending money on unnecessarily excessive technology.

For now Wireless N seems to be on the verge of being the new standard as far as consumers are concerned and so there are some people who are buying now in anticipation but until Wireless G becomes obsolete or overburdened then for the typical broadband user, G will do just fine.

Large rural areas such as parts of Scotland and Wales often suffer from poor broadband internet reception, in many cases people who live way out in the countryside can only dream of getting broadband internet in their homes. The fact that the telecommunications industry is vital to Wales economy has led many people to complain to BT and the Welsh Assembly that they want some of the high speed internet that the rest of the country has been enjoying for the past few years.

One communications company, Telecomms Facilities has made one (potentially sacrilegious) suggestion that church spires could be used as mounts for high strength wireless internet transmitters, this would potentially increase the range of internet access to more rural and out of the way areas of Wales, but what would the public and more importantly the Church think?

Amazingly the Church was positive about the motion, as were the broadband campaigners, obviously they were for the idea as they would get their much sought after internet but the church was swayed by a potential new revenue stream. Bizarrely they also believed that by renting out their church spires that their places of worship would become beacons of the community for the 21st century.

Perhaps someone needs to tell them that they may not want hundreds of blackberries tapping away during Sunday mass, but overall they were agreed that the idea would be best for all involved.

BT reports that 99.9% of the Wales population is now able to get broadband internet but the Welsh Consumer Council begs to differ with some areas of Wales having as little as 42% of their population connected to the internet. For a long time now many organisations have stated that statistics like these are not good enough and need to change, the abundance of these broadband "not spots" has lead to companies looking to unorthodox methods of delivering broadband internet such as this wireless church spire proposal.

Telecomms Facilities has been enabling broadband in many rural areas over the past few years using similar techniques but feels that the height of some of these spires is perfect for spreading their reach even further. The idea may be pushed forward sooner than expected as they initially believed the church may have protested to using their places of worship as antennas.

Several factors could come into play, including the need for that type of bandwidth, latency factors, and resiliency. If a client needs an extremely resilient connection with low latency, and high bandwidth, a protected SONET OC3 solution is the best choice, due to the nature of the architecture.

If you have strict requirements in regard to latency and line quality OC3 could be a good choice as an alternative to ethernet services.

With OC3 you can have complete end-2-end monitoring of bit errors, and it is also dedicated 100% for your usage. Ethernet services lack the full end-2-end monitoring capabillity, as frames could get dropped alog the way.

The CPE equipment will cost you more for OC3, than for ethernet. The built in redundancy in SONET/SDH can provide sub 50ms switchover easily, but to harvest the full potential of redundancy you must offcourse have redunant fiber to your location.

Conditions to consider

1) Data usage requirements

2) Redundancy is a feature, not a requirement. Therefore the architecture dictates the requirement and fees.

3) Other (possibly concatenated) options that are available to provide similar bandwidth

Optimal Conditions

1) Several key hub locations (forming the OC3 ring) that are well connected to the remaining network

2) A CONTINUOUS bandwidth requirement of more than DS3 24x7

3) A well integrated voice and data architecture that can run across this backbone and therefore reduce PSTN and Dedicated Access Data line cost.

4) Existing purchasing relationships with the CPE equipment vendors, allowing you to reduce CPE costs

I think everyone would agree on a monetary standpoint that when the costs of DS3's exceed the costs of having the OC-x circuitry then it's time to begin to think about a switch. The problem lies in the fact that you have already heavily invested in the DS3 hardware and now will have to purchase OC-x hardware to begin a migration. So you have to factor in hardware costs with the overall cost equation.

Secondly you have to keep in mind redundancy and latency. If your network is mission critical and requires no downtime then it becomes a bit more complicated. Ordering 1 OC3 on sonet still does not guarantee no downtime. To ensure that this downtime is kept to a minimum you have to order 2 OC3 circuits. When ordering the first one you want it to be the primary with the lowest latency/jitter between two points. Your redundant circuit will not be this way. This circuit will NEVER touch any hardware, CO, line across a barren field, that your primary circuit uses. This will mean a slower and lower quality circuit, but you ensure that connectivity will be maintained in the event your primary circuit takes a hit.

Once again even that will begin to affect the cost equation. If management begins to worry about the costs they should be reminded how much it would cost them to have any kind of outage. Todays consumers do not tolerate disruption of services of any kind anymore so the longer your services are unavailable the higher your churn may end up being. There is a big difference between degraded service and no service to the customer. If it's slow they will normally shrug it off unless it's always slow. The second it's down they will begin to agitate.

Since most LANs are Ethernet, WAN connectivity is most efficient by creating an Ethernet internet (lower case "i" meaning a network built out of smaller networks, but not necessarily the Internet (upper case "I") your home PC is connected to ). There is no translation, like with an OC3 and there is very little overhead like there is with ATM solutions.

Most voice applications still use TDM (the OC3 Protocol) and TDM natively breaks any sized circuit into individual 64K voice channels, generally using 56K for payload and 8K for signalling (although ISDN uses 64K for payload and reserves separate channels for signalling). The great thing aboput TDM is that, it is very reliable. If the circuit is passing less than the rated throughput, it is broken and goes into alarm. Under Ethernet, its possible to have a loss of throughput without an alarm.

Both TDM and Ethernet can be oversubscribed by the carrier, however, and equipment can drop information without causing either to go into alarm.

The rub here is that more and more voice applications are using voice-over-internet (lower case "i") -protocol, which is more effective over Ethernet. That is not to say that enterprises are using the Internet (upper case "I", the thing your home computer is hooked up to); it means that they are using the same protocol to deliver voice via private Ethernet circuits.

VoIP is now the main protocol for long distance.

So, if you are a telco with a legacy switching fabric that cannot be replaced, an OC3 makes huge sense.

If you are building a data network or voice network and local carriers have Ethernet available AND the Ethernet service includes your required level of redundancy, then Ethernet is overwhelmingly preferred.

A Cisco fired network can deliver the same 50 ms failover as SONET on 2 fibers with multiple failover routes with very small latency (One network we provision has 1ms in the core and 2 ms each at the serial ports, for a total of five milliseconds of latency). Ethernet can also be designed for point-to-multipoint applications at layer 2 or Layer 3 using very simple equipment. OC3s (TDM) requires use of a large Ethernet router, ATM Switch or Frame Switch with huge operational overheads and the need to program visibility ( the ability for any location to communicate directly with another location).

So . . . An OC3 makes sense if you need more than 45 mbps but less than 163 mbps, Ethernet is not available or is not available in an adequately robust configuration or if your network uses legacy protocols that cannot be replaced.

Price of a complete solution will be based on requirements and specifications, but Ethernet is generally much less expensive.

For help in finding the best solution for your situation and applications .... whether it's ethernet or OC3 bandwidth .... simply submit a request via DS3-Bandwidth.com. By the way .... their assistance is free.

Spam email is everywhere. Despite things like blacklists and email filters, everyone gets them now and again, if not on a daily basis. In some cases, hundreds can land in an email account in one day. It's annoying and sometimes it is hard to tell if an email is one that you asked for, or if it is spam. You may have signed up for special offers from your favorite retailer, but you may get spam that looks like the real thing. Here are some ways to tell the difference.

Some unsolicited emails are obvious. You may receive something asking you if you would like various parts of your body enlarged. You may get something offering to sell you fake Rolexes, or perhaps timeshares. These are obviously Spam and can be deleted or marked as such to alert your service provider. Others, however, are not quite as obvious. You have to know where to look.

You can start by looking at the To: field. You will see your email address there, but you may see more. When you get spam, in some cases, it is sent to many people at once. You will see email addresses that are very similar to yours included in the to: field. That is a good sign you should delete. You can also look at the email address. A legitimate email from a real company will have that company name in the address. They will never use Hotmail or Yahoo to send you a message.

Another clue that you are dealing with a spam email address is when the address is funny looking. The part after @ may not be a real company name, and you may find it does not match the offer in the email. The beginning is not something a company would commonly use either. It may be from Tony12345@ddd.com. You can also be certain that Tony is not a real person and that email should be ignored.

For more information about spam email and what you can do, you should look around for more information. This is a common problem that most Internet users share, so there is a lot of things you can do to detect and report any email that may be spam. There may never be an end to it completely, but there are things you can do to keep yourself safe.

Finding out the origin of an email message is not always as simple as looking up the message and reading who it is "from". This is especially true with emails you receive from senders you don't know. The problem is anyone can create a false identity or a fake address and use this as their sender information. For instance, someone could pretend to be a customer service representative from your bank in an attempt to scam you out of your money, etc.

Therefore, if you receive a suspicious email, and would like to find out the true origin of the electronic message, you will need to access the email message headers to discover the information you are looking for.

What are message headers? When you create an email, your e-message is processed by the email server at your Internet service provider (ISP). When your message is sent to another internet user who does not have a mailbox on the same server as you, the electronic mail server forwards the message to another email server. As the message moves through various mail servers, a new received header line is added to the message. It is not uncommon for the message to travel through numerous servers until it reaches the one where the mailbox of the recipient is located.

E-mail message headers contain a list of technical details regarding the email including:

- Who sent the message

- The software that was utilized to compose the message

- All of the email servers through which the message passed on its way to your inbox

Each of the above details can be extremely helpful when it comes to identifying problems with electronic mail or exposing sources of unsolicited commercial emails (UCE), also known as Spam. Unfortunately, spam has become an increasing problem on the Internet, and so has the nefarious practice of creating fake information in message headers, which is commonly known as spoofing.

How can you find message headers? In order to access the email headers you require, you will need to find out how to locate them through the program, web mail or e-mail provider where you have opened the questionable message. Each program and provider has their own method for displaying headers. To discover them with the service you are using, you can perform a general online query (I.E. "how to find email message headers in hotmail").

Any computer or other technological device that is publicly connected to the Internet is given a unique number called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. IP addresses contain four groups of numbers that are separated with periods, and each number group can feature number(s) that range anywhere from 0 - 255. An example of an IP address is 1.123.13.231.

Due to the fact that IP numbers are generally assigned to ISP (Internet Service Providers) in region-based blocks, the Internet protocol address tends to be used for the purpose of identifying the country or region where the associated computer is connecting to the World Wide Web. Additionally, a computer user's IP can also be traced to reveal their general location.

Therefore, you can actually trace a computer consumer's IP address to find out certain details about them, including their ISP location. Why would you want to trace someone's IP? This can be very useful if you receive what you believe to be spam or fake emails, and would like to find out where these messages came from.

To trace an IP, all you need to do is enter it into the query box on a website that provides this tracking service. Sounds simple enough, but how do you obtain the IP address you need? All you have to do is access the email message headers associated with the electronic message you would like to investigate, as the senders IP will be listed among the details within the headers. Essentially what you are looking for is the original IP address enclosed in square brackets, which should be listed near the senders email address. Do not select the first IP you see, as there are additional IP addresses listed in headers because each server has its own.

What can an IP Trace or IP lookup find? Details that you may learn about the computer from its IP address include:

- Hostname

- Geographic location details (I.E. country, state/region, city, latitude, longitude and phone area code)

- ISP - The name of the internet service provider

- Location specific map (Map that points out where the ISP the computer is using is located)

The geographic information that is found in an IP trace is from a publicly available geolocation database. Thus, you need to keep in mind that the results you will be given will not be 100% accurate in regard to providing the exact location of an IP address. To give you an idea of how accurate an IP tracer is, before you lookup the IP of the owner of an email address, conduct a search on your own.

Every website on the Internet contains a domain, which is one of the main elements that make up a DNS (Domain Name System) address. A domain is a significant part of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) because it locates any entity on the web. There is more than one domain name, and they are separated into diverse categories, which are represented by a suffix such as .com, .net, .org, .edu, .ca, .uk, .fr, and so on.

Just like websites, email addresses also feature domains, and the domain of an address can reveal information about the e-mail sender. What type of information? Sometimes a domain suffix can tell you the country the email address is from, for instance, .us (United States), .ca (Canada), .fr (France), .uk (United Kingdom) etc.

On the other hand, common U.S. domain suffixes, such as .com (Commercial), .net (Network), .edu (Educational), .gov (Government), etc. are typically used to represent a type of industry, institution, and so on. In example, many company websites use the domain suffix .com. However, with the exception of .gov, .edu, and .mil, anyone can register any domain, regardless if their intent is to match the definition of the suffix they choose.

What this means is that spammers can email you with a false identity from a popular company (I.E. eBay) and use a fake, but similar, domain to try and trick you into downloading their malicious attachments, or have you follow the link provided in their email to scam you out of money or personal information.

Therefore, you need to pay close attention to the domains of electronic mail messages you don't recognize. For instance, if you receive an e-mail from a customer service representative from eBay and the domain used in the address is .net, right away you will know that this is a phoney message, because eBay's domain is .com.

Thus, if you receive "important", "urgent" or too-good-to-be-true emails from a company you may or may not do business with, make sure you don't click on any link or attachment in the message, and investigate the true domain online by looking up the name of the company in a search engine.

Once you have verified the domain, you should then proceed to find out who the email is from by investigating the email message headers, and running a reverse email lookup to see what other information you can find.

We are regularly reading and experiencing the importance and advantages of a fiber network and the reasons behind the popularity it is gaining by each passing day. GEPON is also a part of this increasingly popular network architecture. Before getting on with GEPON, an introduction would do just fine, as where it came from. EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Networks) or GEPON (Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Networks), also known as Ethernet PON is an IEEE/EFM standard for using Ethernet for packet data, as defined in IEEE 802.3ah. It defines how Ethernet can be transmitted over new media types and in our context point to multipoint fiber.

EPON/GEPON is a fast Ethernet over passive optical networks which are point to multipoint fiber to the premises (FTTP)/fiber to the home (FTTH) architecture in which single optical fiber is used to serve multiple premises or users. A 'PON' architecture consists of an Optical Line Termination (OLT) on the provider's side and one or many Optical Network Units (ONU) on the users' side. This type of architecture is always better than the point to point ones. These are fast replacing existing technologies as DSL or cable modems as EPON/GEPON are capable of providing bandwidths of up to 1 gigabit and beyond and also serve multiple purposes at a time.

GEPON or EPON has been deployed widely in Japan and provides for a symmetrical 1.0 Gbps data rate in both directions, upstream and downstream and is fast gaining momentum across the globe for obvious advantages for both providers and users alike. GEPON's biggest advantage is its use of native Ethernet protocols. Also the economics of scale associated with Ethernet components such as optical interfaces, adds to it.

GEPON or EPON provides seamless connectivity for any type of IP-based or other packetized (Ethernet) communications as it employs a single Layer 2 network that uses IP to carry data, voice, and video. Since Ethernet devices are present everywhere from home network to regional, national and worldwide backbone networks, implementation of EPONs has proved to be cost-effective. Also it provides secure communication as encryption is provided in both ends i.e. upstream and downstream, so the chances of eavesdropping fade away. As the transfer rates in Ethernet scale up by the day the scalability of EPON/GEPON is limitless and so is the flexibility of ADNET GEPON devices where we have a variety of products to choose from.

Of the many advantages to offer some are worth to notice, With the GEPON/EPON standard, there is no limit on the number of ONUs, remember these are the units on the users' side. At ADNET we have a range for these ONUs with varying features and competitive prices an example would be AN-ONU-FTTH-02 which are perfect for a building or an apartment setup to access the ip service, with fully integrated triple play solution to deliver TV, internet and phone services at the same platform. This is not the only one that is on offer, there is a wide range to select from depending on your requirement.

GEPON/EPON requires a single management system, which means GEPON/EPON results in a significantly lower total cost of ownership. EPON also does not require multi-protocol conversions. Talking about management how can we forget the providers' advantage using this technology? We have OLTs at the provider's side, and for these too ADNET has a number of products to offer like AN-OLT-CC65000-4 which is perfect for the provider's site which offers simplicity of Ethernet with effectiveness of bandwidth utilisation of fiber. It has built in routing/switching capabilities and can be integrated with the operator's existing infrastructure. It also has triple play full integrated to deliver TV, Internet and phone services at the same platform.

Even if you're not a technical person, you have probably noticed Internet service providers talking about fiber-optic connections. You know that fiber-optic connections are faster and provide higher quality, more reliable service. In other words, fiber-optic equals good. Cable companies, particularly, are very eager to make sure you know fiber-optic is good. What they don't tell you is that they don't offer fiber-optic connections all the way to your computer. While providers don't like to admit this, their fiber-optic connection stops at the curb. Verizon Fios is the only Internet provider who actually brings fiber-optic all the way into your home, right to your computer.

Fiber-optic connections are, indeed, very good. Data signals are transmitted as pulses of light over extremely fine strands of glass fiber. The signal that reaches your computer with Verizon FiOS is extremely clear, and arrives incredibly fast. At this point, consumer Internet access does not get better than fiber-optic. Verizon FiOS takes advantage of new technology to bring that fiber-optic quality all the way to your computer.

Until recently, fiber-optic to the curb was the best you could get, and it was certainly better than analog lines. Cable Internet is faster than some alternatives. But with Verizon FiOS, you get the absolute fastest home Internet access available. FiOS offers speeds of up to 50Mbs downstream and 5 Mbps upstream. If you want fast Internet, Verizon FiOS is your best choice.

Of course, speed is not the only thing you look for in Internet access. You also want a reliable connection. Verizon FiOS brings you the most stable Internet connection because the signal travels over fiber-optic connections exclusively. You'll be amazed how stable your connection is, and you will definitely not miss the occasional stutter in service, brownout or complete downtime.

You might expect a faster, better Internet connection to cost a lot more than cable, but Verizon FiOS actually costs less than you currently pay for your cable Internet connection. Plans start at $42.99, which includes your Internet connection and access to great online entertainment including games, movie trailers and reviews, and music videos, reviews and mixes.

Installation of your Verizon FiOS comes free with your one-year contract, so you won't have to spend your free time installing a new Internet connection. A professional Verizon installation technician will set up the hardware and software on your computer, connect your computer to the Internet and make sure it's working correctly, and provide a welcome packet with everything you need to know about your Verizon connection.

Cable companies had a monopoly in many areas for far too long, and their high-speed Internet has been popular because it is faster than other options. However, cable companies also have a reputation of being difficult to deal with, and most people keep cable Internet connections only because they have few alternatives. Now you have the choice of faster, more reliable, more affordable Verzion FiOS with available free installation and lower monthly rates than cable. Choice is good. Choosing Verizon FiOS will free you from the cable company.

If you currently have cable Internet and/or television, ask yourself how happy you are with the reliability, and with the customer service you get when you call for help. Most cable customers would happily choose another provider, if someone else offered the same speed, quality and content options at a comparable price. Verizon Fios goes one better.

Cable Internet providers brag about their high speeds and fiber-optic networks, but there's one fact they're leaving out. The fiber-optic networks cable providers use stop at your curb. Your Internet access enters and leaves your home over conventional analog connections, because cable fiber-optic networks do not extend into your home. Verizon FiOS is the first Internet service to extend fiber-optic connection all the way to your computer, which means FiOS is extremely fast.

Verizon FiOS is also a reliable Internet Service Provider, because the signal travels over digital fiber-optic networks exclusively. Fios provides stable Internet service and is Verizon's new FiOS service with excellent uptime and reliability.

You'll also find the quality of your connection is excellent with Verizon FiOS; you won't have the equivalent of a brownout when your connection seems to falter.. With Verizon FiOS, you get the always-on connection you pay for.

And if you currently have cable, you'll appreciate that Verizon FiOS comes with better, more courteous and more helpful customer service technicians than you may get with your current provider. While you should find yourself needing customer support far less often with Verizon FiOS, when you do need it, you'll have a pleasant experience and get your problem solved quickly.

When you sign up with Verizon FiOS, you'll get access to a library of great content, including games, gaming reviews and news, movie trailers and reviews and exclusive interviews, and music reviews and features mixes exclusive to Verizon users.

As you can see, Verizon FiOS does not offer the "same speed, quality and content options" as cable; it offers much faster connections, with better quality and excellent content. You'll also be surprised to find it does not cost about the same as cable, but actually costs less, with plans starting at $42.99 monthly.

When you sign up with Verizon FiOS for one year, you'll get a free professional installation, connect to the Internet at blazingly fast speeds, pay less per month than you're currently spending on cable, and get the excellent quality and professional support you expect from an Internet service provider.

Verizon FiOS offers an alternative to the cable company alternative and realizes that your Internet service is an important part of your life, and you expect and deserve the best.