Where Is Verizon Fios Available?

Verizon Fios is a fiber optic internet, television, and telecommunications company provided by Verizon Corporation. It was initially created in 2005 and has grown and spread across the greater part of the eastern region of the United States within the last 15+ years. However, this comes with a major drawback since Verizon Fios is not offered in every region.

Where to Purchase Verizon Fios?

Verizon Fios is currently available in the following states.

• California
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Florida
• Indiana
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• New Jersey
• New York
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Texas
• Virginia
• Washington

Local implementations of Verizon Fios are mostly in the states with population density in urban and suburban areas around major cities higher.

Verizon has only attempted buildout in areas with higher density since the costs associated with fiber optic cabling are steep. It is not financially viable to lay cables across expansive rural regions where few people are likely to subscribe to the services.

Some of the biggest metropolitan areas where Verizon Fios can be found include.

• New York City Area: All five New York City boroughs plus many adjacent cities are accessible – even suburbs of New Jersey such as Newark and Jersey City.
• Washington DC Metro: Fiber optic is available in most parts of suburban Maryland and Virginia near DC. Some of the cities that have access include Arlington, Alexandria, Bethesda, McLean, and Rockville among others.
• Philadelphia Metro: Philadelphia proper along with the surrounding metro areas of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Southern New Jersey can get Fios. The nearest cities are Cherry Hil, Wilmington, Chester, and Trenton.
• Boston Metro: Essentially all of eastern Massachusetts including the cities of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline, and other areas such as Lowell, Worcester, and more have Fios.
• Southern California: Fios is available in many neighborhoods in Los Angeles, San Diego, and other metro regions.
• Sacramento/Northern CA Region: Verizon Fios expanded to some regions of Sacramento, Fresno, Stockton, and Modesto in recent years.

Fios is also present in other mid to large cities in these states such as Indianapolis, Portland, Pittsburgh, Seattle, San Antonio, and many others.

Verizon fiber optics map covers most of the suburban and urban areas on the East Coast, but its penetration in the midwest and the Mountain West region is still very limited at this time.

How to Check Verizon Fios Availability for An Address?

Given the fact that Verizon has developed a very complex infrastructure, the coverage of Fios can greatly differ even within the boundaries of a single metropolitan area. A certain block may be accessible while the neighboring block is not.

Therefore, to be assured that Verizon can offer Fios services at a certain address, the only option available is to check that particular address.

One of them is the option of inputting your address directly into the Verizon website after you have chosen your preferred service. You will either receive a message that Fios can be installed there or a message that Fios is not available at the specified location.

You can also try dialing 888-583-6937 and ask a Verizon representative about it. They will need an actual address to search for it instead of just a zip code.

There may be the chance that the Fios service area has grown to include your address, so even if Verizon could not offer service to your residence in the past year or two, it is still a good idea to periodically check again. Verizon has persisted in expanding its Fios by deploying fiber optics to new neighborhoods as the years pass.

Is Verizon Fios Coming to My Neighborhood Anytime Soon?

If Verizon Fios is still not available for your address, do you think it will be in the future? Perhaps – but growth in new markets has been declining in the recent past.

In the beginning, Verizon was quite proactive in putting down fiber lines to deliver their high-speed internet service to consumers’ doorsteps all over the country. However, the major infrastructure investments needed to establish new zones led to spending beyond the targeted budgets.

This reality alongside the continuing appetite from shareholders to reduce costs has dampened growth plans from here on.

Verizon has not completely dismissed the possibility of expanding availability to more areas where there is no access at the moment. However, large-scale network expansions, which may include fiber cables that span several miles of territory, are not very probable shortly.

Any new buildouts are likely to be incremental and particular to a dense residential area rather than expanding to new cities or areas with low population density.

People also approach Verizon to ask the company to extend Fios service to their areas. Although customer desire for faster internet brings optimism, it is not enough to file complaints to the management or start lobbying the local government to undertake big capital projects. It also needs to deliver the return on investment that has to pay for huge initial investments in infrastructure.

The only way that Verizon could expand its fiber optics coverage significantly again would be through a large business deal. For example, Frontier Communication bought Verizon Fios operations in some regions of California, Florida, and Texas in 2016 thus allowing expansion in those regions.

If Verizon gets another chance to sell infrastructure or get into a strategic alliance with a firm that intends to offer Fios, then the cable-based service provider may advance into cities where it currently does not operate. Without such a deal though, most regions that are not currently served with Verizon Fios are likely to remain unserved.

How the Verizon Fios Works?

However, for areas that are covered, you might be asking the following questions – what is Fios service and how is it different and provided compared to such options as cable internet, or DSL from the local phone company?

Fiber Optic Service is abbreviated as Fios. This is the wiring that Verizon employs to bring your home services. Even plain copper wiring is still seen today, but Verizon uses the latest fiber optic cables directly to your premises.

Fiber carries information on light beams through flexible glass wires, unlike fiber which uses electric signals. This technology is a better option than cables since it offers faster and more dependable internet than cables. In most of the cases, Verizon Fios speeds were close to the maximum advertised speeds in a consistent manner.

It is also seen as a more future-oriented solution since fiber can contain additional bandwidth capacity. While standard cable internet is throttled during high neighborhood traffic hours, Verizon fiber has enough buffer to guarantee a lightning-fast connection.

To connect Verizon Fios to your home, you require an installer to fix fiber optic terminals and cables that run from the street lines to your residence. This normally takes a few hours only. They will install an Optical Network Terminal which will have sockets for phones, routers, TV set-top boxes, and others.

Once your home is wired up with fiber optics properly, you can subscribe to Verizon plans.

• Gigabit Internet: Uploads at up to 75 Mbps, and downloads up to 940 Mbps – the fastest among nearly all other residential ISPs.
• Digital TV: Ranges from 70-550+ depending on your selected bundle with additional features such as media sharing, in-home streaming, and application control.
• Digital Voice: The home phone comes with unlimited local and long-distance calls, voicemail, caller ID, and many other options and features available.

Verizon Fios offers various prices depending on the subscription plan and the location of the user.

Pricing for Verizon Fios depends on which services you want to bundle together.

For high-speed internet only, stand-alone gigabit plans start as low as $39. 99/month, which requires auto-pay discounts and no paper bills. Triple-play bundles that incorporate television, internet, and home phone costs range between $79. 99 and $149. 99 per month.

However, services such as promotional pricing and new customer offers can help to lower the first-year costs if the provider insists on an annual subscription. This is why it is possible to find offers such as $500 off split over the first 12 months of subscribing to the car service. Thus, the actual amount that you will pay per month will not be the same.

Other factors can affect your bill such as taxes and fees, rental charges for devices like routers or DVRs, extra costs for additional television channels, and differing base tariffs depending on the region. Hence, the actual Fios pricing tends to be somewhat variable, even significantly so.

The point is that even though Verizon Fios is a premium service, bundled products like TV and internet, TV and phone, or simultaneous purchase of multiple products plus temporary offers for new customers go a long way toward cutting overall costs. Comparison shopping deals are advisable where possible in a bid to maximize the amount of savings when signing up.

The Takeaway

Verizon set its sights on an aggressive target of providing Fios to over 18 million households in the eastern part of the United States by 2010. While they hardly achieve that, their fiber optic network covers a vast geography extending from Massachusetts down to Virginia plus California, Indiana, and other city clusters.

Finally, for residents in these areas of the country, Fios offers some of the fastest measured internet speeds. Their fiber optic network preserves performance benefits over existing structures.

However, the company’s plans regarding the expansion of availability to homes all across the country were significantly reduced some time back. The growth rate has all but stagnated and it still manages to encroach into a couple of new markets typically.

Anyone expecting Verizon Fios to extend its services to their city in the future if today they have no trace of its presence is likely to be left frustrated. The future construction is expected to be very selective and at most, limited to small construction projects on the current structures.

However, with millions of households within the reach of next-generation fiber internet, TV, and digital phone service now, Verizon Fio's impressive telecom capabilities are still available to any American albeit without nationwide coverage.

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