Verizon rolls out "super-fast" 20/20 FiOS internet service
By Donald Melanson 
posted Oct 23rd 2007 4:59PM
posted Oct 23rd 2007 4:59PM
Well, it looks like Verizon might be out to put those rumors of it running out of bandwidth to rest, with it today announcing its new symmetrical 20/20 FiOS service that it says "redefines fast." While we're normally skeptical of such hyperbole, Verizon does look to have a case for itself in this instance, as that 20/20 stands for 20 Mbps download speeds and 20 Mbps upload speeds. As Verizon points out, that should let you upload or download a 3GB file in 20 minutes flat. Unfortunately (for some), only those in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut will be able to take advantage of all that bandwidth for the time being, where it'll run "as low as" $65 a month, although Verizon says it expects to roll out "similar symmetrical services" in the 13 other states where it currently offers FiOS internet service "soon."
anyone know when Florida is going to see FIOS anytime soon?? Spring Hill/Hernando County (gulf coast)
Um, no time soon since you are in Bell South er AT&T Territory. Their thought? "We don't need no stinking curbside fiber" at least not yet. Hey at least you have quad stream (i.e. quad digital tuner stream) U-verse. That's something to really be jealous of :^)...
Im in Tampa and have FIOS...just a county or two south of you...
All I can say is that if I get 20/20, I will have the most popular Team Fortress 2 server on the net...
I'm in NJ, and they are laying dpwn fiber right now... Hope they offer this to me!
NY/NJ/CT probably means NYC area. :(
Nope, urban areas will be among the last to get the service, because they've yet to solve the issue of routing fiber up and into tall buildings. This is from the east coast VP of FIOS BTW, whom I managed to reach a few years ago when the service was first announced.
I already have it and i am in Virginia. I am testing it for Verizon. It is going to deployed in Northern Virginia later this year or early next year since the market is so competitive.
I'm in Northern Va and I can't even get FIOS yet. WTF? I guess Verizon hates Alexandria. :(
I am in N. VA and I have fios, the 30/5 plan, for $50 a mo, recently it was upped to $60 a month... dunno where you are getting your info, but its wrong.
Sorry forgot that its not available everywhere in N. VA, im in Herndon.
quote:
OGrizzle @ Oct 23rd 2007 5:21PM
I'm in Northern Va and I can't even get FIOS yet. WTF? I guess Verizon hates Alexandria. :(
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I'm in Alexandria and FIOS is currently an option that's available for me. So I guess they may work their way over to your part of Alexandria soon enough.
City of Alexandria or Fairfax?
Good point. Forgot about the confusion between City of Alexandria and a different neighboring Alexandria that's part of Fairfax County.
I meant the Alexandria of Fairfax County.
i guess i'm upgrading my already glorious bandwidth. mint
They should be busy putting it around the rest of the country. My cable connection is starting to feel mighty slow.
My charter cable connection feels slow too. Of course, at 100+ms of latency and "blazing fast always on speeds" of 300kbps download and 300kbps upload, I'm thinking it is kind of slow.
Especially when my ATT TILT tethered to my laptop will do 1.2MBps down and 500kBps up at about 200ms latency.
So when am I going to get more HD channels?!?!?!
As someone who doesn't even get the option to try FiOS, I wish they'd roll out nationwide before they start doing extra cool stuff like this.
Maybe they should put more effort into offering FiOS to more people, rather than upgrading the lucky sob's that already have it
My town is laying fiber right now, its the local internet/cable company that is doing it, but does this help my chances of getting Verizon to come in and offer FiOS at all?
NJ my ass. South Jersey is still Comcast or nothing when it comes to highspeed... Comcast has a serious monopoly here... I would love to know who I could report them too :)
Odd because I have FiOS here in Philly and my colleague has it in neighboring Buck's County (PA).
I have the 15/2 plan for $49 but due to a monopoly by Comcast in Philly as well, we can't get the FiOS TV service, whereas Buck's County has FiOS TV.
I wish I knew who to take this issue up with as well. Comcast is Craptastic!
Reginald-you are screwed. Most of Comcrapstic's execs live in Philadelphia and the last thing they want are happy neighbors!
Hrmm... I don't know where you live. I'm in South Jersey and have had FiOS for over a year now. It's GREAT. 20/5 and my gaming ping is really low, even on wifi.
I live in Delran and there is absolutely NO FIOS service in my community's location. They didn't even offer their old pre-FIOS DSL, nothing, zero, nada.
Not all South NJ is Comcast or nothing...I'm in South NJ and I've had FiOS for a long time now, and we just got FiOS TV a few months ago.
From what I can remember, they're trying to do all the townships with overhead lines first, then underground later.
Yea, but south NJ Comcast had cable internet years before us poor Cablevision customers. We only had cable internet starting 2002 when the town over had it from 1998.
"Verizon... Bringing a new dimension to streaming porn!"
FIOS has been available one block away from my house for six months now, but won't be available to me until "sometime in '08". #%@#&$@#%!!1!
At least you have a visual on the FiOS getting to you...
Other people like me have not seen or heard of any FiOS deployment in their neighborhood or even city...
...or state (Colorado)
FIRST!
not even close... so dumb...
My girlfriend just got hooked up with 100/100 service in her apartment in San Francisco, and for only $40. www.web-pass.com (I know it says 45/45 but if you read the news release for 250 King St. it is 100/100).
It is definitely fast as hell. (Couldn't test the maximum because I only have a 802.11g and it tapped out at around 48Mbps on the cnet speed test.
100/100! I can't even imagine how fast that is. Stuck on 6/0.5 DSL in Chicago and dreaming that someday I'll have the same speeds here.
They may be doing Metro Area Ethernet. She won't see those 100 Mb speeds unless she has at least a Gigabit NIC.
As a FIOS customer in NJ, I can say FIOS isn't all its cracked up to be. I had it installed over a week ago, and Verizon still can't figure out why the FIOS phone line suffers from crossed wires and clicking. They've replaced the ONT, and even rewired all the phone jacks in the house, and still clicking.
Additionally, FIOS's 20/5 Internet service is only nominally faster than Comcast's service. Interestingly, the tech used coax rather than Cat 5 to connect the Actiontec router to the ONT. I'm suspect that this Actiontec router is leading to subpar Internet speeds.
The bright spot is FIOS TV. All I can say is WOW! The number of SD channels is staggering, and the quality of both HD and SD is far superior to Comcast or even DirecTV. This reason alone is enough to make me pause when I consider returning to Comcast because of the phone line trouble.
Also, VZ's customer support is as poor as Comcast's. On the other hand, the VZ techs are far more professional than Comcast techs. However, we have convinced VZ customer service to not only give us the first month free for our troubles, but throw in the free Sharp 19 inch LCD TV (model LC19SB24U) that is the current promotion for new customers, who sign up after Oct. 15. We signed up at the beginning of the month, so initially they refused. VZ lists it as a $250 value, but the TV is $399 at Circuit City, so it does ease some of the pain associated with their poor customer service.
I work for an ISP (EATEL) in Ascension Parish Louisiana and the issues we had with the Voice portion of the circuit were due to software issues on our Alcatel ONTs as well as some signal tweaking that needed to be done in the phone switch (General Bandwidth G6).
I have had FIOS data for over two years and it is nothing but awesome. Currently running 4 websites, FTPs, VOIP(non VZ) and 3 heavy users over a 20/5 pipe.
I have had 100% uptime. something that BHN/RR could not even come close to matching, not to mention the latency. Back in the RR days, we had to throttle uploads when everyone was home, just so I could get on VPN to work.
Their billing department may be lacking in excellence but honestly, I'd rather dispute a bill here and there than have my connection sucking for weeks or being down for days.
BizReporter: dump the actiontec for a dedicated router. get your local FIOS tech to get you a stand alone NIM and install a linksys or whatever to use as a router. (just make sure the WAN side is 100mbps and not 10)
As far as TV, the SD signal quality is mind blowing compared to cable. HD is better since they don't compress anything from the source but it wasn't as massive of a change compared to BHN. We were ready to dump all our remaining SD TVs to get the HD quality pic in every room, after Fios video was available we kept all the SD TVs. It was like we bought all new sets. SD is still SD but now I can watch both without cringing at every SD TV. I have not seen a grainy picture since we got FIOS. I don't know how often we called the cable co to bitch about some channel being grainy.
Support: Once you get to a FSC (fiber solution center), the support is excellent. google around to get some 800 numbers to will circumvent all the automated voice commands.
billing and ordering still stinks typical VZ style but the actual product makes up for it, IMHO.
How about the promised FIOS TV in New England?
Yeah, I live in MA and we have FiOS TV service.
Last time I checked MA was in New England.
Sorry MORE of NE. I went to FIOS on the promise of Internet(got it) and TV (who knows if or when).
I live in NYC, and cant get Fios. Still stuck with timewarner crappy service.
All I can say is, I live in one of the counties that's lucky enough to be wired all up to hell with fiber and FiOS. Unfortunately, the central office that services me is in the one frigging municipality that's in bed with Comcast, and want like $2 a foot from VZ to wire the city. Worst thing is, I don't live in the city, the lines from the CO cross the city limit, so I can't even vote for a different city council to reverse those ridiculous charges.
All you guys who don't have FiOS yet, at least you guys have a chance of getting it soon. Me, I'm probably NEVER going to get it, AND the houses just 3 blocks over are on the other CO which does have FiOS.
Move.
Sell your freaking house and move three blocks. Life's too short, man.
do they have wifi? try bridging their network.... ar ar ar
When I move, internet service is going to be one of the top factors. What a change in priorities compared to years past when people looked at crime rates and school quality lol.
I was seriously just thinking this same thing. Damn I wish I had FiOS. The wife and I are moving soon, and that's one of the main reasons I won't live in an apartment again!
It will freaking take 10 YEARS before this gets to vermont...
Dang I wish I had those upload speeds...
I already called to order this. :)
20/20 Mbps broadband + unlimited local and long distance for $80/mo. Couldn't pass that up.
Anyone know what's keeping verizon out of northern california?
Wild fires?
I've been waiting for 10mbs FIOs on my street for a while. I live in Mass near a bose office so we always get these kinds of thigns late. We had to wait 4 years more than most people for cable internet >:|
what are you whining about??? There are still people waiting for cable internet.
altho i cant get this i think it will be awesome i have fios now and i love it so much better than aol
HAHAHAHA
Take that you sweds!
We're catching up....
Anyone know why san fransisco can't get this?
Actually, better question:
What alternatives to comcast are there in san fransisco's bay area
check out www.web-pass.com. they offer 45/45 at reasonable prices. i
don't have it yet, but apparently they have excellent customer
service. if any of the testimonials are true at all, then this sounds
like the way to go. the better to keep corporates like VZ out.
Um, i live in NY and i still get no fios service.
I have Cablevision Boost. 30/5 mb for $40 a month. can they beat it?
also there is no fios in Brooklyn yet.
I have Optimum Online Boost (Cablevision) also, and the 30/5 is fine for me, at a lower price. I don't really care too much about my up, and my down is amazing. And my gaming couldn't be better. Not planning on going to FiOS anytime soon.
I wish fios would be in our area (central IL) but dsl has not even been around this area for more than 3 years yet.
Umm I don't know about people up north but Comcast here in Houston, Texas gives about 17.5 MB dl and 10 MB upload; since I don't have a server I don't care for the upload but seriously though, for $45.99/mo, my dl is damn fast!
This is nothing! I need them to upgrade my 50/5 so I can get like 30/30 or something like that.
I wonder if I should call about this. I'm in NJ and already have an install date for my FIOS. However, I'm sure by NJ they mean only the norther part of NJ by NYC.
They're redefining fast? I hope they redefine it as something cool, like "a dessert that consists of of a sweet filling between two layers of flaky pastry crust."
In the developing world, i.e. Bulgaria, Romania, other countries in Eastern Europe etc. you get 100/100 service over LAN cables in most metro areas for USD 5-15 month. Granted the fast speed is only available in the metro area but that is where most of the desired content resides.
So you download a 3GB file in 5 minutes. And you have more interesting content than what is available on the mainstream sites in the US.
Still for DSL users upgrading to 20/20 for $65 may make sense :)
Fortunately the way the FIOS network is designed, the TV channels and Internet access run on difference wavelength so have no affect on each other's bandwidth capacity. Except in the case of PPV which are IPTV based, so they can slow down your Internet connection.
But either way FIOS needs an upgrade to the video part to get more room for HD channels.
I just checked my building in Manhattan and we don't have it yet. Not that Time Warner's is all that bad but everyone wants to be faster right?
And I still can't get even DSL at my house.
DAMNIT!!!!!