Residents of the Westchester County community of Mount Pleasant and the Long Island village of Sands Point are a major step closer to having a real choice for their cable television services, thanks to newly approved agreements authorizing Verizon to offer its FiOS TV service, delivered over the most advanced fiber-optic network straight to customers' homes. The Board of Trustees for both communities voted Tuesday night (May 22) to approve video franchises for Verizon.

Mount Pleasant and Sands Point join a growing list of New York communities that are paving the way for competition and choice in the television market. In addition to these two communities, Verizon has been granted video franchises in the Westchester County communities of North Castle, White Plains, Rye Brook, Irvington, Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Tarrytown, Eastchester, Mount Kisco, Elmsford, Port Chester, Tuckahoe and the Town of Greenburgh. Verizon also has video franchises in the Rockland County communities of Chestnut Ridge, Airmont, Piermont, Orangetown, Clarkstown, Nyack, South Nyack, Upper Nyack, Grandview-on-Hudson, West Haverstraw and the Town of Haverstraw; and on Long Island in the villages of Massapequa Park, Cedarhurst, Laurel Hollow, Lynbrook, Mineola, East Rockaway, Farmingdale, Valley Stream, Freeport, Williston Park, New Hyde Park and Bayville, and in the towns of North Hempstead, Huntington, Smithtown, Hempstead and Oyster Bay.

Do we really need any more reasons to be jealous of those who already have Verizon FiOS broadband and IPTV service? I think not, but Verizon continues to push the envelope through slick new offerings and features. The new FiOS Interactive Media Guide is no exception and again begs the question of "What have cable providers been doing for the last decade?"

This is simply another testament as to why Verizon recently scored #4 on PC World's Best Product List. While we don't agree with all in the top 20, Verizon's FiOS service is definitely one that deserves its notch.

Click on the below thumbnails to see larger images.

There's really not much I can say about this guide except "wow" and you have to see it for yourself using their full demo to see the slick interface, instant channel changing, search functionality, DVR integration, PC integration, widgets, and everything else.

The new interface is available in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Verizon recently launched FiOS TV, and other FiOS TV subscribers will have it later this summer.

Consumers in five more communities in the greater Philadelphia area now have a choice of video providers as Verizon expands its amazing FiOS TV service to some 32,000 households in Chalfont, Ivyland and Hilltown in Bucks County and in Hatboro and Lower Merion in Montgomery County.

And they can get a great value with a bundle of FiOS Internet, FiOS TV and Verizon's reliable voice service for as little as $99.99 a month.

These Bucks County and Montgomery County residents join consumers in 71 other southeastern Pennsylvania communities who already can sign up for FiOS TV, the only television service delivered over the nation's most advanced fiver-optic network straight to consumers' homes. FiOS TV now is available to nearly 224,000 Pennsylvania households.

Consumers can check online at www.verizon.com/pa/tv9 to see if FiOS TV is already available in their area, or to request that Verizon contact them when FiOS TV is available. Consumers also can call their local Verizon sales office or 1-888-619-5388.

Now, Verizon FiOS TV subscribers can enjoy BBC World News as it joins the Verizon FiOS TV channel lineup on channel 92.

Verizon provides FiOS TV over the nation's most advanced fiber-optic network, straight to customers' homes. Verizon FiOS TV offers a broad collection of all-digital programming, more than two dozen high-definition channels, 8,600 video-on-demand titles and more. At the end of the first quarter, Verizon FiOS TV had 348,000 subscribers and was available to approximately 3.1 million households in parts of California, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

BBC World News provides international news, business and sports reports, plus award-winning current affairs series and documentaries, to a weekly global audience of 65 million viewers.

To accommodate the surging demand for its stellar new TV, broadband and voice communications services, Verizon is looking to hire 120 new customer service representatives in New Jersey, at call centers in Madison and Hamilton Township.

Verizon is looking to add 70 representatives in its Hamilton Mega Call Center in Mercer County and 50 in its Madison call center in Morris County. The job postings come as the company continues to aggressively roll out its new fiber network in areas throughout the state. Currently, Verizon is selling its industry-leading FiOS TV service in 180 communities, with many more soon to come.

Verizon will be adding three more channels, HGTV HD, Food Network HD and LMN HD (Lifetime Movie Network), to the FiOS IPTV national channel lineup. The three channels will be available in all FiOS TV markets by the end of this week, bringing the total number of HD channels to at least 27 in most markets, depending on the number of local channels that broadcast in HD. FiOS TV subscribers with an HD-capable TV and an HD set-top box will receive the three new channels at no additional cost.

Additionally, Verizon has expanded FiOS TV coverage in Montgomery County, MD, Newport News and Chesterfield County, VA.

On Feb. 8, the MACC (Metropolitan Area Communications Commission) Board of Commissioners recommended the approval of a video franchise agreement reached with Verizon for 10 municipalities and Washington County. Today, Washington County formally approved the MACC recommendation, following earlier approvals by the 10 municipalities.

Verizon already offers FiOS Internet and FiOS phone service. The new franchise agreement will allow more than 156,000 Washington County households to receive Verizon FiOS TV early next year.

CZ over at Verizon's PolicyBlog got a moment for a little Q&A action with Brian Whitton, Executive Director of Access Network Design and Integration for Verizon's FiOS service. Brian provides some insight into Verizon's decisions to use MoCA and FTTP for FiOS and FiOS TV.

Some of the questions asked include:

• What is the speed range that FiOS needs to be able to support in Verizon's eyes in order to deliver the kind of content experience they dream of?
• Is there anything being deployed elsewhere on the globe that is better/faster?
• What new content services will Verizon make available for FiOS users and by when? what are the application they are focusing on first? games? video conferencing? movies?
• Motorola technology and set-tops power the Verizon Home Media DVR service, so I’m familiar with its use of MoCA to network TV throughout the home. What is your view on the choice of MoCA (using existing coax cable) as a networking platform versus other options that are out there? What do you think of wireless networking platforms and when do you think we’re likely to see a wireless solution deployed that can effectively stream HDTV?

Jump over to the PolicyBlog to check it out. There will be some additional Q&A posted soon.

Starting today, Verizon FiOS TV subscribers in the Washington metro area will be able to tune to a new local television channel, FiOS1, for local weather, traffic, news, sports and community features. FiOS1 is Verizon's first owned-and-operated television channel in the United States, and the company expects to launch similar channels in other markets this year.

FiOS1 is on Channel 1 in the FiOS TV channel lineup and is available at no extra cost to FiOS TV digital subscribers in Northern Virginia and parts of Maryland.

Verizon will soon begin deploying an advanced technology from Alcatel-Lucent that will dramatically improve the capabilities of Verizon's industry-leading 16-state fiber-to-the-premises network.

The new technology, called a gigabit passive optical network, increases the aggregate broadband speeds on Verizon's FTTP systems by four times downstream to the customer, and by eight times upstream back to the Internet. This provides the capability for future enhancements to FiOS Internet Services and FiOS TV. Verizon will be the first major telecommunications company to deploy the new technology to customers in the United States.

According to an article in the Los Angeles times today, some California cities have a growing distaste for Time Warner.

Moorpark, California, a city of 7,000, is so fed up with Time Warner's service that they've slapped what could be a $25,000 fine for providing bad service. “Time Warner has, for a period of time, not lived up to the obligations that are required for the citizens of this community,” said Councilman Keith Millhouse.

The city claims that Time Warner has failed to meet obligations set in its franchise agreement.

According to the LA Times, Time Warner said they will "respond accordingly" and will "work with the city to resolve the issues satisfactorily. Moorpark started a formal process, but there are no fines and no findings yet."

Verizon has wasted no time getting California's first state-issued video franchise for their FiOS IPTV service after the Public Utilities Commission recently changed California's video-franchising process.

Under the franchise, Verizon can offer FiOS TV in 45 more communities in Southern California. These are in addition to the 18 communities where the service is already available under locally approved franchises.

Later this month, the company will announce the communities that will be first to get FiOS TV under the state-issued franchise. They will include many in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura and San Bernardino counties where construction of the nation's most advanced digital all-fiber-optic network is already complete. Verizon will announce more communities as workers finish the network construction in new areas.

The WSJ has an article about Verizon's FiOS service and the appeal it has had with online gamers.

Verizon stated yesterday that nearly 60% of New Jersey now has the ability to subscribe to FiOS TV. Verizon said this was possible through the addition of 62 more New Jersey communities. Among the 62 additional communities: ten communities in Essex County; East Brunswick, Old Bridge and South Brunswick in Middlesex County; and five more communities in Union County. The expansion brings to 168 the number of New Jersey communities where Verizon's FiOS television and Internet services are now available.

According to Verizon, "Thousands of consumers are continuing to sign up each week for the service."

Industry expert and StreamingMedia.com Executive Vice President, Dan Rayburn, has launched a new blog entitled The Business of Online Video. Despite the site being just few days old, it already contains some interesting viewpoints and we look forward to more of Dan's thoughts.

In the most recent article, he explains his experience as a customer of the Verizon FiOS service. It's enough to make any of us non-FiOS users extremely sick or jealous of Dan and anyone else who has the service.

"...over the years I have had nightmares with Verizon for DSL. But when it comes to their FiOS offering, it really does seem too good to be true. A year ago, I signed up at $45 a month for 15MB down and 3MB up. About 6 months after it was installed, Verizon upgraded me to 20MB down and 5MB up - at no charge. Since when do phone companies give away anything for free?!?"

Since when does any company.