please help me wrap my head around this!

[mna86]

Hi all,   so I ordered verizon fios yesterday and drove to store to pick up my self installation package as my apartment already has an ONT.

I installed the equipment using coax and later learned that you can simply connect a cat5 cable to ont and connect that to your personal router.  I had to call tech support but they did it and everything works great without any verizon equipment other than the ONT.

I called customer service to get information and authorization on returning the verizon actiontech router and the person I spoke to insisted that verizon service does not work without the actiontech router.   No amount of reasoning with her could convince her that it's currently working just fine without it and that I shouldn't have to pay $5 a month for equipment that will sit in a box, unused and unplugged.

what is that about?  can I simply lie to them and tell them that I bought my own equipment from amazon for them to let me return my actiontech router or will they ask me for a serial number/mac address/etc?

Thanks,  any clarification would be much appreciated

[gs0b]

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@mna86 wrote:

I called customer service to get information and authorization on returning the verizon actiontech router and the person I spoke to insisted that verizon service does not work without the actiontech router.  

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Welcome to the forums.  You're talking to other customers here.

If you have FiOS TV service, the Verizon Actiontec router is almost mandatory.  There are ways to setup a network without it, but it gets somewhat complicated.  This is most likely what the Verizon representative was thinking.

I'm guessing you're an Internet only customer, in which case you can use any router you want once the ONT is provisioned for Ethernet instead of coax.  I thought that all ONTs had to be programed by Verizon to select Ethernet or coax, however it seems you have a model that supports both without any Verizon involvement.  This is a good thing.

Anyway, if you are truly an Internet only customer you should call back and make sure the representative knows this.  Just tell them you have your own router.  Technically, they don't need the MAC address or similar, as you've already demonstrated.

Finally, if you use a non Verizon Actiontec router, be prepared to get the cold shoulder from Verizon if you ask for support.  They don't support anything other than their routers.

You might find this web page helpful:

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/verizonfios/3.0_Networking

Enjoy!