Steve I have Verizon FIOS, and will never go back to CATV or and copper services. I know Verizon offers a few different interfaces, but mine uses the Tellabs ONT-611 ineterface with oprional Standby battery.
The Tellabs unit has
1 10/100 Mbits/s port
4 Standard POTS ports
1 CATV coax port
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tellabs_ONT611_close-up.jpeg
There is really not much to do with them except plug in your 3 cables if using all three services (CATV, INTERNET, & POTS), it is what you do with the ports that dictates what equipment you need.
For example if the home has a router to service more than 1 room, then you need the test equipment to deal with it if you do trouble-shooting, netoworking, commisioning, etc...
The phone is straight forward, all you need is a known good working phone or butt-set to test.
Same for the CATV port, just one known good working TV to connect directly to the dmarc.