There followed some several items on these pages about another concern I had with FiOS TV, the fact that video-on-demand movies and shows use the same bandwidth pool in the FiOS architecture as the Internet access. I became concerned that concurrent video-on-demand programming and heavy Internet usage might result in slower performance. Verizon has been peeling back the onion and explaining this to me. There’s a little additional detail later on in this post.

But first let me deliver some good news. The account problems I’ve had with FiOS — which have amounted to Verizon’s records showing me as having standard DSL instead of FiOS — have been fully rectified. Frank Boersma, director, set-top box and in-home network engineering at Verizon, whom I quoted in this recent post, was able to set in motion a resolution process. The problem dates back to my original FiOS Internet installation date, early in January of 2006.

There’s an upside and a downside about the account fix: My bill will likely go up because the FiOS service costs more now than it did when I first installed the fiber-optic service. But Verizon has already upgraded my service from 15Mbps down/2Mbps up connection rates to 20Mbps/5Mbps. The increased upstream throughput is, in particular, very welcome. The faster 20/5 rate was a free FiOS upgrade rolled out in some areas last year. It didn’t reach me because, to Verizon, I didn’t have FiOS.

Boersma recently added to his description of how video-on-demand (VOD) co-exists with Internet data transmission:

The 50Mbps service available to many FiOS customers is provisioned at 59Mbps. The data service is throttled at 50Mbps — leaving 9Mbps for VOD traffic. Therefore a FiOS data and TV customer with 50Mbps data service would not see an impact to their data service until they started three or more concurrent video-on-demand sessions (each VOD session uses approximately 4Mbps of bandwidth). Even then the impact would be a small percentage of the overall bandwidth available for data as video traffic has priority. For a customer with 20/5 service, there would be a 39Mbps for video on demand before there would be any effect on data traffic.

Verizon is also moving to address the video and data bandwidth for FiOS service areas capped at 30Mbps. Boersma said: “In markets where 30Mbps is our maximum speed, the service will be provisioned at 54Mbps. We are in the process of rolling out these new standards, so not all markets have the 54Mbps or 59Mbps settings yet.”

Apparently, my town is configured to support 50Mbps service (but at $180 a month, I think I’ll pass). Bottom line, though, while some 30Mbps-provisioned customers could experience a video-on-demand squeeze when running multiple, concurrent on-demand sessions while performing heavy Internet downloads, Verizon is moving to address that possible issue. The concerns I expressed in earlier missives about this potential problem have evaporated.

And then my buddy Ken Mingis placed the one he bought — after pledging with me that he would not buy one, I might add — in my hand. The universe tilted. I entered an altered state of being. And my mouth dropped open. I had to have one. Had to!

So 3G or not, I’d probably be buying one. If I could. But my wife, Cyndy, would probably make me sleep out back in the shed (along with the mystery mammal that’s living beneath it). And she’d have cause. Apple’s iPhone is darn expensive when you consider the two-year contract. And as you’ll see, I haven’t exactly been frugal lately.

But that the iPhone is expensive is about all I can say bad about it. It’s much smaller than it looks on TV, offers a lot of cool functionality, and it would fit better in my jeans pocket than either of my current cell phones. The screen is gorgeous, the operation intuitive, and while the keyboard might be an issue, the many applications have some ingenious innovations, in the style we’ve come to expect from Apple.

So here I sit dreaming up a reason to buy an iPhone next year. Maybe. In the meantime, if you’re waiting on 3G, maybe you should reconsider and go out and gitcha one now. This article from AnandTech, which, naturally, Ken (my wife calls him a bad influence) passed to me, offers realistic reasons why 3G may not be coming to an iPhone near you any time soon: No 3G on the iPhone, but Why? A Battery Life Analysis (AnandTech).

It’s not just the battery life either. According to AnandTech, quoting a Steve Jobs interview in the Wall Street Journal, the 3G circuitry might have made the iPhone bigger. That would not have been good. Not at all.

Since you can connect your iPhone wirelessly to any Wi-Fi network, surfing speed isn’t as much of a big deal. Even AT&T’s EDGE network isn’t terrible at 100kbps. For Web surfing and email, it’s OK. It’s definitely not up to snuff for YouTube though.

I know you’re probably growing a little indifferent to all the iPhone coverage, but this is truly good content. Check out Computerworld’s iPhone reviews and video. The seven-minute video, in particular, gives the best view on what it’s like to use the iPhone.

• iPhone Demo: The Video
• First look at the iPhone: Tomorrow’s technology today
• Hands on: Five things I love, and three I don’t, about the iPhone
• Macworld Review: Apple’s iPhone lives up to prelaunch buzz