Not a day goes by that someone doesn't ask us when FiOS TV will be available in their building in New York City. It seems that New Yorkers are anxious to have an alternative to their cable service.

We're not surprised. After all, when New Yorkers see a good thing, they want it.

We're making good progress with our deployment of FiOS TV in the Big Apple. Last year, we expanded the service into an additional 140 neighborhoods in each of the five boroughs. All told, FiOS TV is now available to an estimated total of 810,000 households in parts of 253 neighborhoods. Read more...

Hey FiOS TV customers in New York and New Jersey! If you're looking for Rachel Maddow, look no further than Verizon FiOS TV. Want your Morning Joe? Well, now we've got it. I'm happy to announce today that Verizon can now distribute MSNBC to all of our customers in the entire New York and New Jersey area!

As many of our readers know, we've been offering MSNBC throughout the rest of our footprint, even in parts of the NYC-metro area. But we've been unable to do so in parts of the region - until now. Read more...

Joe Ambeault, Director, Consumer Product Management and Development for FiOS TV sat down with Steve Donohue, Contributing Editor for Light Reading to discuss Social TV. As you'll see, Joe talks about everything from interactive programming and advertising, to our popular Widgets and even gives a look at what's ahead. Joe gives good insight on Verizon's thinking and strategy behind interactive TV and what our consumers love about Widgets.

Check it out. Read more...

Giving great value and staying ahead of the competition is always good for consumers. That's why Verizon is so proud of the continuing innovation and service enhancements we're bringing to both our FiOS and our traditional High Speed Internet services and bundles.

During the 4th quarter of last year, FiOS TV subscriptions passed the 2.86 million mark, and FiOS Internet made it into 3.43 million homes. The fiber network now passes 15.4 million homes and businesses or almost half the total premises in Verizon territory. Read more...

If you're like me, you purchase your airline tickets on-line and reserve a hotel and rental car via the Internet. Chances are good that you also obtain real-time online flight updates on the day of your travel using a personal digital assistant, cell phone or your computer.

Consumers increasingly are managing their service needs themselves, at a time and place of their choosing, instead of working with a so-called middle man.

At Verizon, we believe that makes a lot of sense.

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I don't know who Kevin Dobson is rooting for in the Big Game on Feb. 7. But he has a lot to be happy about even though his beloved Steelers aren't in the finals.

Kevin, who lives in Pittsburgh, submitted the winning video in the Verizon FiOS Ultimate Mancave Makeover contest. He'll receive a complete high-tech electronics package valued at $10,000 - including one year of FiOS TV and Internet services.

The contest kicked off last October and the winner was named last week. Contestants had to explain why they deserved a Mancave Makeover in their video and encourage their friends and families to vote online. Read more...

There's no doubt we have our favorite subjects here at the Verizon at Home blog. And interactivity is one of them. That's why we devote every Wednesday to Widgets and find other opportunities to talk about how easy it is to connect with friends, shopping and information on FiOS TV.

Now, the Yankee Group's Vince Vittore is predicting that 2010 will be the year that interactive TV takes off. He says it will move from the experimental phase to a mass-market service. Contributing to this, he says, are factors like social networking, connected TVs and competition. Read more...

"It's beyond cable."

That's what you'll see and hear in Verizon FiOS ads these days, but it's so much more than just words. With the introduction of new symmetrical speeds -- 25/25 Mbps and 35/35 Mbps - in all our FiOS markets, Verizon is taking broadband to levels that cable can't. The big news here is that the upstream speeds match the downstream speeds - and they're superfast. And, as GigaOM blogger Stacey Higginbotham wrote last summer, upstream speeds are the coming revolution in Internet service. Internet connections that are two-way fast are driving interactive applications like social networking, video conferencing, work-at-home, online multi-player gaming, telemedicine and so much more. Read more...

The images and stories from Haiti since the 7.0 earthquake shook the island nation to its core are gut wrenching. Thousands of people were killed or injured, entire villages wiped out and countless buildings flattened, leaving millions of people in need of life's basic necessities. Starting today, Verizon will waive charges for all residential landline calls from the U.S. to Haiti going back to Jan. 12 through Jan. 31. Verizon Wireless also will waive fees for all long distance calls placed to Haiti from the U.S. during this period. Read more...

The practice of astrology and horoscope reading goes back to ancient times. You may or may not believe that the position of the planets on the day of your birth can influence your destiny. Either way, it can be fun to read your daily horoscope. And, it's easy to do while you're watching TV with the FiOS TV Horoscope Widget. Just go to Widgets in the FiOS TV Interactive Media Guide menu, or press the Widgets button on your FiOS remote control. Just for kicks, I clicked on the Horoscope Widget recently to check out my astrological outlook for the day. First I checked my own sign. Read more...

Today's guest post is by Dr. John D. Halamka, Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston. Dr. Halamka is a FiOS Internet customer and blogs at http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com.

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There are so many good reasons to become a Verizon FiOS or High Speed Internet (HSI) subscriber. Today we're adding even more, and we're letting you know at the At Home blog. We've created new FiOS bundles that include more high-def TV choices and even faster two-way Internet connections. We've also placed more value in our new HSI bundles.

Read more...

I'm counting down: 29 days until the Winter Olympics begin. And I'm excited. I can't wait to watch Apolo Ohno race and possibly become the most decorated American at the Winter Games. My FiOS TV DVR will be set for the women's figure skating - especially if Sasha Cohen makes the team. And there's always the fun of trying to figure out exactly how the sport of curling actually works. If you're lucky like me, you are a FiOS customer, which means you'll get a whole lot more than just watching the Olympics on your TV set. We'll get everything from live coverage in HD; to an on-screen interactive application with medal counts, athlete bios, news and more; to highlight clips, full events and more online and on Video on Demand. Read more...

One of the big themes from CES this year is there are now a lot of TVs and devices that connect to the Internet. Verizon does it differently -- connecting people to the Internet through our network via FiOS TV. FiOS TV Widgets use this network connection to deliver Internet content to the TV screen. I sat down with Verizon's Maitreyi Krishnaswamy, who directs interactive services, to talk about FiOS TV Widgets and plans for 2010. Read more...

Clever Rolling Stones. "Time Is On My Side," they said. You get the feeling that it must be true -- that the longer you wait, the cooler things get, technologically -- when you see pieces like this one from Network World, scanning backward to things that happened 25 years ago. The magazine calls them "2010's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries," but for some of us, it's a walk down Memory Lane. In 1985 Nintendo debuts. Windows 1.0 hits the chips. AOL is born. The first Blockbuster video store opens. The first "dot com" addresses are dispensed. Are you kidding? In some ways, 1985 and these events seem like ancient history. In some ways, they seem like yesterday. Some of them are so passé that that they rate a giggle. Some of them live on. Read more...

Here at the At Home blog we always like to tell you about free stuff - and we have two free previews coming up on FiOS TV that I'm sure will excite our sports fans. First, beginning tomorrow, Jan. 9, and lasting until the 15th, customers can check out ESPN Full Court. This package gives college basketball fans access to games that are outside their local viewing area, featuring schools from many of your favorite conferences including the SEC, ACC, Big East, Big 12, Pac-10, WAC, MAC, MAAC, Colonial and Sun Belt. You'll find ESPN Full Court ($114 for the season, or a half-season is $79) on FiOS TV channels 1010-10115. Read more...

This is another in our series of guest blogs. Today's blogger, Gary Wall, talks about how FiOS Internet service has helped grow his video production business.

My name is Gary Wall, co-owner of Small Pond Video Productions, a complete production house for video production and meeting support located in Dallas. For a combined 40 years, the principals of the company have been producing award-winning business communications including marketing, sales, training, motivational and informational programs for Fortune 500 companies around the world. Our business has experienced an unprecedented growth this past year, supported in part by the faster Verizon FiOS Internet speeds (25/15 Mbps).

Read more...

The BCS bowl action is coming to an end with tomorrow's anticipated match-up of Alabama (1) vs. Texas (2), and the NFL playoffs kick off this weekend. I can already hear legions of armchair quarterbacks talking to their TVs, offering up their best advice and wittiest comments to coaches, players and commentators alike. But why talk to your TV when you can use the FiOS TV Twitter Widget to offer up your hot sports opinions right on the screen for other fans to see? Launching the Twitter Widget adds a whole new dimension to the game. Read more...

As I've admitted before, I'm a shameless reality TV addict. Some of the best reality programs have nothing to do with voting someone off an Island. More often I'm now gravitating to the more "real" reality shows about food, cooking, decorating and house hunting. For example, I was excited to watch some of my favorite Food Network chefs take on the White House's executive chef, Cristeta Comerford, on Sunday Night's episode of "Iron Chef." Those commercials previewing the episode that said the secret ingredient was "of national importance" reeled me in. Read more...

From time to time, we'd like to offer observations of experts in various fields that we think readers here would like to see. So we're planning to add guest blogs. The first is below from Dan Rayburn, Principal Analyst at Frost & Sullivan and EVP at StreamingMedia.com, who is an expert in the area of online video. Let us know what you think and make sure to check out the video below of Dan discussing FiOS Internet and streaming content.

As a Principal Analyst at Frost & Sullivan and EVP at StreamingMedia.com, my job is to consume as much online video as possible via broadband connected devices and then write about what I am seeing in the market on my blog at BusinessOfVideo.com.

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The holidays are over, and it's cold almost everywhere. Just when it seems that we'll never make it to spring, there's something to look forward to: Our beloved network TV shows are back this week. My FiOS TV guide says there's plenty of other stuff to watch. Read more...