I started with Verizon FiOS back in 2007 or so. At the time, I had Comcast but the signal quality was poor. I had lots of dropouts and couldn't wait until FiOS became available.
The only thing that delayed my switchover was that Comcast Sportsnet was only available on... Comcast. Once the courts said that the channel could be with any service provider, I hopped onto Verizon FiOS within nanoseconds of it being available.
Since the ONT signal level was a lot higher coming into the home than Comcast, I was able to remove all of the line amplifiers that distributed the signals within my home. All I needed was a simple power divider to replace the amps. All of a sudden, I could actually watch TV without dropouts and with much higher video quality.
Going "digitial" meant that the signal coming from the provider didn't go through all of the compression and distortion introduced by the analog power amplifiers that you see up on the telephone poles. At the time, I worked in the industry and knew very well how this was done.
