Within the past 1 1/2 - 2 months, I've lost dial tone or had incoming calls go directly to VZ Voicemail on at least 4 occasions.The most recent visit by a Tech was 6 days ago. He "fixed it" and things were fine. When the calls drop to voicemail there's no ring and thus we never know if someone has called. Repair techs are dispatched and they check out wiring at the pole and magically everything is restored. The latest instance occurred Friday night. We went out for dinner and the phones were working. We came home and they were not. It had started to rain while we were out. Dial tone came back about an hour ago (no intervention by VZ techs.) The sun is shining. Rain appears to be the common denominator with the problem.
We have FIOS Internet and TV but copper for telephone (on the advice of the FIOS Tech who installed it.) He stated the advantage to keeping copper was that in the event of an electrical outage, we'd retain phone service. I'm now having serious misgivings about that advice.
My Question: Would a switch from copper to FIOS telephone likely resolve the issues we're having? Is FIOS as susceptible to rain caused outages as copper appears to be? On balance, there are far more days of rain than those where we experience an electrical outage. I attempted to bring this issue up with the folks answering the "repair lines" and got blown off. I'm getting ready to send a complaint letter to the Public Utilities Commission. Any info/advice on this issue would be appreciated.
If you have TV and Internet with FiOS and it is working, your phone should be 100% reliable with a clean signal. On a power loss, you will have up to 8hrs battery back up for the phone only. I have had FiOS voice since 2005, and dropped the copper. At the time of my FiOS install it was all FiOS or nothing. But in 2005 we had no TV and it was Voice and data only.
I would say switch to FiOS digital voice, which could save you money on taxes and fees.
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