I have been an incredibly happy FIOS customer since 2005. I have sung the praises of fast, reliable internet service to all those who asked.
Over the last several months however Internet performance has been terrible (high latecy, packet loss) to many key content sites and my workplace. It appears the common issue is a peering dispute with cogent and perhaps other content delievery sites.
As far as I can tell, "eyeball" networks, such as cable companies and Verizon want content providers to pay to deliver content to captive eyeballs, e.g home users. Content providers argue that the reason home users want internet access at all is access to content they provide.
While I can appreciate Verizon's argument, as described here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601624.html
I would like the message to make it to someone in Verizon that the way this looks to the FIOS customer is my FIOS internet service is unusable for connections to large portions of the Internet. Also it sends a very strong message that Verizon is perfectly willing to deliver terrible performance for months on end to order to play "peering chicken" with other providers to increase revenue. I was unable to deliver this message via support channels.
Verizon tech support, while very polite, has no idea about this issue and will happliy waste your time and verizon's money swapping out routers and tweeking wifi settings.
My other main choice in comcast, which apparently battling level3 over the same issues:
http://www.internap.com/2010/12/02/peering-disputes-comcast-level-3-and-you/
I hope someone at the FCC is watching this debacle...