Verizon has rolled out new national bandwidth tiers which are available to current FIOS internet customers free of charge. The kicker is that existing customers have to either call Verizon, or go to their website, to ask for the free upgrade to the higher speed. In my case I was getting 15/2 Mbps download/upload speeds which will increase to 20/5 Mbps. Additional information is contained in this Wikipedia article.
A money saving tip for anyone who is getting FIOS TV service and wants to connect multiple TV's is to call 1-888-GODIGITAL (1-888-463-4448) and ask for two free digital converter set top boxes. If you don't do this Verizon is happy to charge you $3.99 a month per box...so you are saving about $100 a year by calling 1-888-GODIGITAL. There are some comments on this program at Engadget HD. The Motorola DCT 700 boxes you get are for analog TV's. If you have an HD capable TV and want to watch HD you will have to pay $9.99 a month for a HD box.
Everett is the second city in Washington to get FIOS TV, thanks to an approval vote by the City Council on July 23. In case you are curious Lynnwood was the first city in Washington to get FIOS TV.
I'm expecting the installer to show up sometime today and am pretty excited about getting to watch CSpan-2 (which Comcast pulled from their basic cable), TV Land, Turner Classic Movies and actually see some HD shows on my LCD TV.
