Verizon ups its FiOS speeds to 50Mbps, sets the internet on fire

Not content with blazing up your local connection at 20Mbps downstream and up, Verizon has once again bumped its already-painfully-fast FiOS broadband service into the realm of ridiculous. According to reports, the company is now offering a 30Mbps / 15 Mbps service at $89.95 a month, and the nerve-shattering 50 Mbps / 20 Mbps speed at $139.95. The telecom has also introduced symmetrical connections in all 16 states where it currently offers FiOS service, with a 20Mbps / 20Mbps on the up and down, starting at $64.99. Of course, it's all bleeps and buzzes in our particularly lonely corner of Brooklyn, where we'll have to suffer the indignation of a lowly 10Mbps connection until the big V blesses us with some real speed... you hearing us, dudes?

[Via GigaOM]

[BananaBoat @ Nov 21st 2007 4:19AM]

Me and my 6mbit/256kbps DSL will be crying over in the corner if you need us.

[Nathan @ Nov 21st 2007 5:36AM]

I'm not sure if everyone with this kind of speed is getting wallet rapes as much as I am, but I currently fork over $54.00 a month for 5mb/384kb from Time Warner. They are the only game in town (a small, small town) besides Verizon.

On the bright side, Verizon here offers an exciting 256k/256k DSL connection for 45 dollars a month (plus $20/month for the line, and 15 bones more for the "circuit connection" a month, oh and taxes and fees) so total I have the option of what I have now or something like 80 bucks a month for a land line I won't use and slow as snails internet.

If only the FCC would have maintained that internet connections were common carriers, we could have a cornucopia of small town providers cutting throats for customers. Instead we have a handful of nation wide telcos telling consumers what they are going to pay. So sad.

[Nathan @ Nov 21st 2007 5:38AM]

Make that "communication network providers were common carriers" as what I said up there ^^^ about common carriers makes no friggin' sense.

[mushrooshi @ Nov 21st 2007 5:52AM]

Time Warner needs to fix their damn service here!

I am getting ULTRA LOW speeds! After rush hour at around 7-9PM the internet connection, that runs at 8MBPS at 4AM dips to 500 KBPS at that time!

Either that or our 5 year old router needs to be fixed...

[Adrian Williams @ Nov 21st 2007 6:34AM]

@mushrooshi
Cable broadband tends to do that or it could be that you have a Broadband Hog in your neighborhood that gets off work at that time

[johnathon @ Nov 21st 2007 6:49AM]

Yea...mines too.

[DWells55 @ Nov 21st 2007 7:37AM]

Full duplex 20Mb for $65?!? I pay that much for 8Mb/768Kb Comcast cable that often fails to meet those speeds during peak hours. Terrible company, have had endless problems with them and they always blamed my equipment. They refused to troubleshoot our connection anymore until we paid them to require all the coaxial cable in our house. They stated that we "had noise on our lines" and that it was damaging the experience for other customers as well. Every time the technician plugged his line tester in, it reported abnormally high levels of noise. I suggested to him that it was possibly the cable on his device rather than ours, but he insisted that the device was fine and that they were "professionals."

Anyways, after rewiring the whole house, it still reported noise. Although this sounds too good to be true, I'm not lying: the lines still reported noise and the tech tried a different cable on his device. Surely enough, I was right. You have absolutely no idea how difficult it was for me to restrain myself at that point. Every part of me wanted to scream something along the lines of "IN YOUR FACE! Who's the 'professional' now? z0mg get teh own3d, etc." and then burst out laughing, but somehow I showed superhuman self-control I didn't know I was capable of.

End result was that there was water or something in one of the boxes on the cable lines (or so they told me) and that was responsible for my connection dropping out 3-5 times an hour for a couple seconds at a time - just enough to get me kicked out of whatever server I was gaming on, but not enough for casual users on my street to notice. To this day I still have unreliable speeds and terrible TV reception.

Oh, and to anyone who tells me to switch: I can't. Comcast showed up and bought out the previous cable company who we never had trouble with. So now we have no choice to pay their prices they set from being a monopoly. The only other internet options are 56K and 768Kbps DSL.

[johnzilla @ Nov 21st 2007 7:51AM]

My cable broadband connection is about 3Mbps down, 256Kbps up. And I'm paying through the nose for it, relatively speaking. On top of that, I live in a major city but due to a quirk of fate and lack of foresight on the part of infrastructure planners 60-70 years ago, I live so far from my CO that the best DSL I could ever hope to get is basically an ISDN line.

If Verizon (or anyone else) came to my area with FiOS, I'd camp out overnight to be their first customer if necessary.

[Mark Richardson @ Nov 21st 2007 8:46AM]

@DWells55
It's not "full duplex". Full duplex means you can send and receive simultaneously. Having the same upload and download speeds is called "synchronous".

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Nov 21st 2007 12:39PM]

@Mark Richardson

It's actually called "symmetrical". "Synchronous" is a different animal altogether. Don't worry, common noob mistake.

[Mark Richardson @ Nov 29th 2007 8:56AM]

@LikesGadgetsWillTravel
sDSL is known as both "Symmetrical Digital Subscriber Line" and "Synchronous Digital Subscriber Line". We're both right. Don't worry, common noob mistake.

[tadmarketing @ Nov 21st 2007 4:21AM]

Hopefully services such as this will help raise America's internet bottom line and pull us out of our stink-hole ratings.
[Editor: Blatant ad link deleted. Thanks Engadget commenters!]

[Nathan @ Nov 21st 2007 5:29AM]

For the love of god, your comment was almost as stupid as your website. Why do you people insist on coming to Engadget and posting one-off observations whilst plugging some of the most shoddy, craptacular sites to ever grace the tubes?

Summary: no one comes to Engadget to see a plug for your one post blog, they come here to get tech news. No one comes to Engadget to hear you moan about what you think is wrong with the United States' internet offerings, they come here for tech news.

Do everyone a favor and keep your shameless plugs on Myspace messages and spam folders.

Final thoughts: You're a joke and so is your website.

[Rob @ Nov 21st 2007 11:06AM]

Nathan, you made me look at his website, just to see how bad it was. I actually thought it wasn't soooo bad. So now no one else has to look, it's not an excitingly bad train-wreck.

But I do agree with Nathan, nothing is more irritating than a lame little comment followed by a link to your website.

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 21st 2007 11:48AM]

Excellent observation!

http://google.com

[Alexander @ Nov 21st 2007 2:47PM]

Dude... the name has 'marketing' in it. How dumb do you have to be to click on ANYTHING from such an obvious spammer?

[Apoco-Lips @ Nov 21st 2007 4:36AM]

I had a 54Mb connection in Tokyo in 2003-04

.... for $15

[mmendoza27 @ Nov 21st 2007 2:14PM]

I know! It's crazy how fast their speeds are, what are the speeds at now?

[roflercopterer @ Nov 21st 2007 4:45AM]

please come to town verizon...I'll even buy a cell phone from you if it'll make you come to my town with your hot hot fiber

[mushrooshi @ Nov 21st 2007 6:01AM]

Hehe, I saw your post about the "be negative rep".

Hilarious! Hehehe sometimes I type in engrish by accident.

[Ray-- @ Nov 21st 2007 10:00AM]

this is probably not because verizon doesnt want to.. but because the politicians in your town are getting paid more from the monopoly they let control the town... almost 90% of what you get offered for TV/Internet providers is controlled by your politicians... if you dont like the way they screw you... then fire them...

[Technex @ Nov 21st 2007 4:49AM]

4Mb download/400kbs upload here...

I would love 50+!

WORLD, TIME TO UPGRADE!

[PB @ Nov 21st 2007 4:56AM]

I live in Sweden, and here (if you're lucky) you'll get 100/100 for about $20 /month. Yes, I'm one of the lucky ones. Thanks for the fiber, Sollentuna Energi. :D

[Tehseen @ Nov 21st 2007 5:03AM]

Sweet, I am upgrading in the morning!

[Jesse S @ Nov 21st 2007 5:22AM]

Overpriced, disgusting shared fiber. No thanks.

Their speed will probably be more like 20/15...

[Kennyb123 @ Nov 21st 2007 9:29AM]

Stop spreading FUD. Do you know ANYTHING about FiOS Internet?

I have it here in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I have the 15/2 plan, and I PEG the bandwidth tests at exactly that. There's no doubt in my mind that a 20/20 plan or a 50/20 plan will do the same. This isn't shared fiber. This is FTTP = Fiber To The Premises. In other words, a dedicated fiber line is attached to my house.

I also just got FiOS TV, and I honestly had no idea I could watch HD movies at Blu-Ray / HD-DVD quality... minus the 1080P. (1080i) ZERO COMPRESSION.

So, yeah, I'm a fanboy. But stop posting stupid crap Jesse. Thanks.

[DorianGray @ Nov 21st 2007 11:30AM]

I had FiOS in Maryland (DC-area),then I moved to NC. Went from sweet sweet torrent goodness and FiOS TV -- which is *SO* nice, to friggin suck-ass Embarq and their craptastic, farkin' useless satellite offering. TV connection drops daily -- plus the exciting see-if-you-can-hold-your-breath-longer-than-the-channel-change wait EV'RY TIME YOU CHANGE THE GD CHANNEL! Oh yeah, and to complete the Embarq/Dish partnership monopolistic trio of services sucktacular trifecta, our land line dies for about a day every 3 weeks or so.

FCC -- you pandering bunch of piss-pants politicos, quit sucking the telecom lobbyist teat and help Americans not be bound to internet speeds equivalent to a got-damm Venezuelan village.

Everyone else, if you live someplace with FiOS, stay there. I sure wish I had...

[Jesse S @ Nov 21st 2007 1:26PM]

It's not direct fiber, it is fiber to the house/whatever, but it isn't direct from the hub or wherever. It is shared on a neighborhood basis, like every consumer internet is.

Dedicated internet costs thousands of dollars per month, eg. T1.

[sr @ Nov 22nd 2007 12:36PM]

Hey Kennyb: You must be stupid if think that the fiber coming to your house has your name on it. Also what the heck do you mean by "NO COMPRESSION?"

If you knew anything about digital video you'd know that there is no such thing as consumer level uncompressed video. It will be at least 10-15 years before someone can give us uncompressed (or at least lossless) digital video.

[NoAndThen @ Nov 21st 2007 5:26AM]

@Tehseen: Um, it is the morning.

This just proves even further how hard comcast tries to F you up the A.

Oh, and if a fios rep tells you that they don't offer service at your house, ask to talk to the next level up, because they 'didn't offer' service at my address, but the lines were on the street... it's just that no one had ordered it to that house yet, so there was no connection to the line, and therefor technically it wasn't offered. Miraculously, a week later it was offered!

This makes me feel like homer simpson when he thinks about donuts (mouth waters) auuggghm...

[Tehseen @ Nov 21st 2007 5:34AM]

Morning when they open :P

[TRLK @ Nov 21st 2007 5:38AM]

100Mb for around $20~$30 is not uncommon in korea..

$139 is frankly ridiculous

[jperry @ Nov 21st 2007 10:13AM]

I get 100 Mbs for 240 a year on campus.

[Tim Brown @ Nov 21st 2007 6:21AM]

pity us poor UK folks, BT is only starting to roll out 24mbps next spring and are only considering installing fibre in "greenfield" sites, whatever the hell they are, some time soon. B******s!!! 6Mbps/512kbps if I'm lucky

[Tim Brown @ Nov 21st 2007 6:22AM]

forgot, its £34GBP a month, or $68US

[Joe @ Nov 21st 2007 6:45AM]

PITY you, with a 24MB connection?

/sits here on his Verizon 768kbps/128kbps connection that costs $50/mo.

[Tim Brown @ Nov 21st 2007 6:57AM]

6Mbps/512kbps if I'm lucky, but ouch to your speed, I feel your pain, that's got to hurt.

[xman @ Nov 21st 2007 12:02PM]

Joe @ Nov 21st 2007 6:45AM
PITY you, with a 24MB connection?
/sits here on his Verizon 768kbps/128kbps connection that costs $50/mo.

Verizon is ripping you off since that same DSL service only goes for $14.99/mo for the last 2yrs. I know a few people who use that basic service and I don't understand why they are charging you $50/mo

[Ryan @ Nov 21st 2007 6:57AM]

They could give me 1TB/1TB, but until they loosen their belt a bit and open up port 80 and 25 for residential service, it's still crippled AFAIC.

[bsm0f0 @ Nov 21st 2007 8:32AM]

I'm moving to a FIOS area soon and already called to arrange service installation. I didn't know they disabled port 80 and 25 ... wtf. Guess I'm calling today to cancel.

Yay, more comcast interweb access ... /sad

[Urza9814 @ Nov 21st 2007 1:46PM]

...I have yet to find an ISP that doesn't. Just route it through port 81.

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 21st 2007 11:55AM]

Someone was telling me about a DNS service that "redirects" hits to any port you specify instead of port 80. I wish I could find that.

[Ryan @ Nov 21st 2007 1:49PM]

Comcast doesn't explicitly block anything Urza - I run HTTP and SMTP servers through my residential comcast conne+++CARRIER LOST---

[Jamar @ Nov 21st 2007 6:59AM]

What America needs is more competition- let foreign companies into the fixed-line business (particularly Japanese/Korean companies) and we'll see some real service. I mean come on- 50/20 for for $140? So-net (Sony-operated ISP) offers 100/100 for half that (marbe less) in Japan.

And on the topic of size and density- when Verizon covers every little bumfuck village in America then you have an argument about size. They're not, though, they've probably only covered in total an area about the size of Japan.

[Freerefill @ Nov 21st 2007 12:28PM]

I work for an engineering firm in New England, specializing in telecom. Verizon is paying us to determine where to put up FiOS cable, mainly in residential areas. Let me tell you, there is no shortage of jobs around here. Yeah, right now, they probably haven't covered a huge area. But they plan to cover the entire eastern seaboard, from what I hear. They've already made a nice dent in New England.

As for those speeds.. I sure hope I get a job or two around where I live.. that would be cool to see them putting up the fiber where I told them to, and using it. Prices, Comcast, and other countries be damned, I want my pr0n!

[Mile @ Nov 21st 2007 7:00AM]

Most servers are not on the 10Mbps let alone 50Mbps connection so the download speeds don't change.

[eric @ Nov 21st 2007 7:06AM]

Haha, I laugh at your 50mbit/s from behind my 100mbit/s for roughly $15/month. Also, it might be of interest to you that private consumers here in Sweden are already testing 1Gbit/s, which will be rolled out to the general public before long :D

[jjrs2 @ Nov 21st 2007 7:14AM]

I don't mean to gloat, but 50mbps really isn't all that fast by global standards. My connection here in Japan is faster than that and it only costs about $50 a month.

[Sasha S. @ Nov 21st 2007 7:15AM]

Still another proof that USA is sadly lagging behind. For the record 100 mbit/sec for something around 30 to 50 dollars a month is where the world is today.

I think that our fellow geeks in the USA are getting a bad deal and that they should be aware of that. Engadget editors should be travelling around the world a bit more and get a bit wider perspective.

[Majortom1981 @ Nov 21st 2007 7:33AM]

I guess engadget has timewarner then. IF you are in a cablevision area you can get the 38/5 package. ITs better then the 50/20 packag though because you can actually run an email or web servr. You can open those ports up.

Id rather get 15 less upload and 12 less download for the ability to run a webserver.