One hot summer Saturday a few years ago, my husband was tinkering with the fuse box in the garage. Somehow, the Verizon FiOS central box was affected and stopped working.  After stating our cases of who exactly was responsible for this situation, we retreated to separate corners of a small house.

I sent a tweet to FiOS from my iPhone, and they responded right away. They tested the box remotely and said it was dead.  It would be Tuesday before someone could come out since it was a holiday weekend.  That news was not received well.

Under normal normal protocol, I would have watched TV and he would have hopped onto the computer to play Battlefield. However, we had no cable, no internet, and no phone.  Netflix streaming wasn’t even an option.  The silence was deafening.

Out of desperation for some information from the outside world, I played with Apple TV. Then I figured out if I had the FiOS wifi router on (even without internet), my Apple devices would see each other and Airplay would work.  I had some video content on my MacBook Pro. So I queued up the video on my MacBook and sent it to the TV via Airplay, and we got through the weekend watching a series I had been meaning to watch.  It was a funny series, and we survived the non-FiOS weekend with comedy.

All services run through that central box. Many people don’t realize if you have a situation where the power is out, if you plug that one box in to your generator, you’ll have your internet, cable, and phone service (assuming you power those devices as well).

We’ve been very happy with Verizon FiOS and their customer service. They are responsive on Twitter, and my goal is to never have to call customer service. They were out there first thing Tuesday morning getting us back up and running.