With
DOCSIS 3.0 (and the corresponding 50Mbps download speeds) being deploying in varying parts of America, Verizon understands what it's up against. Reportedly, the carrier is gearing up to push its 50Mbps FiOS internet -- which is
currently only available
in a few of its more favored states -- to its entire US footprint. Best of all, we're hearing that all 16 FiOS-enabled states could have access to the service as early as next week, and if you're anxious to sign up, just know that it'll run you $139.95 per month with an annual contract. Thankfully, Verizon is also planning to boost speeds in the basic and middle tiers as well, with the former going from 5Mbps to 10Mbps and the latter going from 15Mbps to 20Mbps. Yeah, we like where this is headed, but we've still got aways to go before we can even sniff
Sigbritt Löthberg's connection.
[Via
Reuters]
Update: Here's
Verizon's official release.
posted Jun 18th 2008 7:54AM
2MBPS seems to be the mainstream in the uk. Sick of being ripped off.
Competition FTW!
I wrote about my FIOS installation here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_417871531652
I tested my line speed on Speakeasy and saw that it was easily 3 times faster downloading than Cable in my area.
I only have the basic package. If they push up to 50Mbps, I'm thinking the benefit will mostly be for FIOS TV cause computers themselves begin to bottleneck the data delivery. I use FIOS on Xbox 360, PS3 and my laptop. I haven't noticed a major difference in online gaming that hasn't been for the worst - it seems my games are laggier than when I used DSL. But the connection is more reliable and won't disconnect during storms.
Yes, competition is great and all, until the damn isp blocks all newsgroup access.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080616-alt-blocked-verizon-blocks-access-to-whole-usenet-hierarchy.html
This is great... I'm moving to a FiOS area and just ordered 15/2 last week for my new house! Now I'll be upgraded to 20/5 at no cost! HELL YES!!!! See ya later Charter!!!!!!
@Flashpoint.
50 Mbps is hardly bottle neck material. My firewire port does 400 Mbps, my 1394 hard drive's bottle neck is the firewire interface it's self. Most modern computers can easily handle one gigabit internet speeds.
Heck, my USB thumb drive does more than 50Mbps!
The 50Mps is the line speed. It is NOT your internet speed.
Verizon FiOS deployments are designed for triple play - voice, internet, and video (high def). Verizon uses MPEG4 High Def feeds, so you gotta figure they're slicing off about 10Mpbs for a single HD feed. They take another 6 out for voice and you've got a 34Mbps connection AT BEST, if the equipment isn't throttling your connection because it's been stuffed into outside plant retrofits that can't cool it enough, if your ISP is giving you unrestricted access, and if your house's internal wiring isn't screwing it up.
please bring me FIOS so I can dump Time Warner Cable...please
CO-SIGN!!!
Umm I figure 8mbps is the mainstream in the UK, I live in the UK.. if you live near an exchange you can get 20mbit ADSL2+ at around $40/month.
The problem with the assumption that broadband internet in the US is anywhere close to that of the UK or Japan ignores the fact that the US is nearly 4 times larger in landmass then both of them combined. Higher cabling costs, greater distances.
UK = 244,820 sq. km
Japan = 377,835 sq. km
US = 9,629,091sq. km
California = 411,015 sq. km
oops ** 16 times bigger
Most of the population in the U.S. lives in cities, about 80%, if I recall correctly. About 1/3 of the country is very thinly populated. Of those 80%, most of those cities are concentrated in the North Eastern seaboard and some spread along the coast. The other part part of the majority of the population lives in the South and Northern part of California, with medium-size towns and small rural towns in-between. Again, no excuse, as to why I can't get higher-quality, and affordable broadband service levels in L.A..
If your looking for an ISP in the UK that dosn't throttle or interfere with bittorrent, try Be* or O2.
$139.95 should include digital cable as well.... quite a price for just internet
BUT ITS SO FAST!!
It's probably just internet. Their highest-tier FIOS has always been a pretty substantial jump over the middle tier.
It's actually a great price for the speed they are giving you!
Yes, now I can browse the web at 10 times the speed... or not...
No it's not a great price. Other countries have a lot higher speed for a lot less money.
It should be $35.00/month for 50Mbps.
Great for a business who's paying over 1k for a T3 dedicated line.
oh why oh why must i suffer here in Miami while other people get to play with real speeds!
West Palm Beach feels your pain too.
Face it, you live where people go to die.
and they should have the right to blaze through the internet til their hearts decide to give!
Your suffering in Miami and West Palm Beach?!?!?! Well, I could see the Miami bit if your not Cuban. But still, you can always drive down to the Keys.
I feel this immense pain as well. Though perhaps moreso since I can't even get comcast cable internet in my community here in Pembroke Pines. I'm stuck on ATT DSL - yeeeeeaaachh.
This is great and all but it just makes me even more pissed the don't service Chi-town.
Please tell me why they can't roll out 100Mbps to all subscribers like Japan has had for how long now...
Because Japan is a much smaller country and is easier/cost effective to wire.
Personally, I prefer Korea. We've got 100Mbps for about $30/month.
In my case, I decided to save $10/month and "settle" for 10Mbps. Though, I do admit the connection gets a little sluggish on Fri/Sat nights when Starcraft gamers log on.
(I also expect the internet here to slow to a crawl for a month after Starcraft 2 is released.)
See, that's the thing. When we get "100Mbps" in the US, we actually SEE 100Mbps, pretty much the entire time.
It's easy to provide "100Mbps" service that's oversubscribed to all hell. Technically, at my university, we have "1000Mbps" service (gigabit ethernet). But of course you never see that except to internal servers (and Akamai servers, like Windows Update - we have a mirror on campus).
If your internet gets slow because of "Starcraft Gamers", clearly it's heavily oversubscribed and really can't take the load. That's how you offer a "lot" of bandwidth for cheap.
DOCSIS 2.0 (which Comcast is using right now) can handle 40Mbps. They could sell "40Mbps" connectivity tomorrow if they wanted to. The problem is that there isn't enough capacity to really support people using that kind of bandwidth.
So, yeah, wake me up when you can do 100Mbit/s downloading Ubuntu ISOs over BitTorrent. If you can, great. If you can't, then your "100Mbps" connection really isn't.
Hooray, a speed increase...
I have fios 15 Mbps symmetrical (supposedly), and it seems like I never get these speeds... I know rates vary and depend on a lot of things, but I'd be happier just to get what I'm currently paying for.
You know what? Screw the bandwidth. I'd like less latency (I PLAY GAMEZ).
Sorry to hear that a. I have the 15/2 plan and while I don't quite get the full upload rated, my download tests come in around 16. Downloading through rapidshare I actually get a full 2MB/s. I'm definitely not complaining and the increase is very welcomed. Upping my upload from 2 to 5 should definintely be noticeable. I also have no issues gaming and that includes the PS3, 360 and my computers. We have 9 machines in our house on the network and there's no issues with our FIOS. Thanks Verizon.
This is great now if that guy in the picture can just do that to my house, I'll be in buisness! lol......no but seriously Verizon needs to get to my town ASAP
It's a shame in the near future you'll be taxed on downloading content in addition to your $140 a month,"access" fee. Then on top of that you'll be billed for a bandwidth usage fee. Hello commercialized interwebs!!
DUde, 50 MBPS is screaming. Sweet. That is much better than anything around here. Wow. www.iurlz.com/datools
I been wanting to switch to FIOS forever. Verizon has had their lines in my area ever since 2000, but Comcast has something different to say. They been running a monopoly in my area and now allowing Verizon to pick up any customers. :(
Fuck comcast!
right on bro,
I hated dealing w/ those asshats back when Las Colinas had no competition in Texas.
Finally on the FIOS bandwagon, currently 15mbps and it has been bliss ever since
Here's a perfect chance to do an availability Roll call, respond to this post with the location (City, State) if you have FIOS.
Umm, no, that's a bad idea. Why choke up the comments with stupid "we get it here" posts? ;-)
Much more useful would be if someone could find and post a link to an actual service map that shows where FIOS is actually available across the country. Something along the lines of the cellphone coverage maps AT&T and Verizon offer up on their websites.
In my part of Los Angeles, Verizon is tight lipped about when FIOS is coming. Even in more affluent areas, where you'd think the market would be larger, they won't say when they're coming. But hey, they'll give me their crappy DSL service in the mean time. LOL. Hate Time Warner if you will, but around here it beats Verizon DSL.
Save everyone the trouble
http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios
Just outside of Philadelphia, PA. Installed in April.
Currently 5/2 but may upgrade and add TV later this year. A coworker has the TV service and he said the quality is FAR superior to Comcast's HD service.
$139.95 per month for internet? holy smokes. Thats a lot of money.
ever seen the bill for a T3 line? $140 for 50MBps is _NOTHING_
This would totally excite me if my area had Verizon. Currently AT&T only offers speeds up to like 4 Mbps, while the Cable company is giving me a steady 15 Mbps, not bad, but 50 sounds better.
I'll stick with Optimum Online Boost. me thinks that 30 Mbps is good enough for gaming. Not that I'm home enough to justify paying for it but its nice to know its there when I want to noob some pwns at call of duty 4.
"being deploying in varying parts of America"
nice.
thats what I'm talking about......
but we dont have that here in NC........dammit all..........
not to mention I cant stand Contracts........they can have that.....wut if Time Warner or another competitor ups its speeds and I wanna switch??? damn that......
FiOS is sweet. I have the 5/2 package and it feels A LOT faster than the 3.0 DSL I had.
Is this implying that they are going to upgrade me to 10 for the same price? That would be very nice.
Called and got my upgrade today. No price change, no contract extension, just double the speed!
Yawn.... other countries (supposedly less advance in technology then the US) are already running 20MBps over the phone line and 50MBps over cable. Verizon is doing 50MBps over fiber??? when it can go up to 1GBps?
On the other hand, most of won't even need more than 4MBps I guess... :)
That's completely irrelevant considering no one is going to move to a different country for faster internet.
The 34 states that don't have FIOS give a collective middle finger to this article and to the 16 states that do.
If Verizon had any business sense, it would get a big loan and lay more pipe than Wabasha Plumbing! ;) (Someone please get that...)
I would just like them to hurry up and turn on my neighborhood.
At that price I think it would make more sense to buy a dual-wan router and get a completely separate service provide. At least then you would have failover capabilites in case verizon's service goes down.
Contracts? WTF!
O.o Can I haz more speed?
You might NOT want this wish to come true...
Recall the Verizon Marketing Boobs...
768 kbps plans are currently $20/mo
Recipe for making money for Verizon...
1) Reduce rate on 768kbps plans to $15
2) Introduce 10 Mbps for $35
3) The next year, remove 768Kbps plans and offer the 10 Mbps plan as the lowest entry point stating "The customers really wanted the 10Mbps plan so we consolidated."
Beware of Verizon, this is what they've done on all their cell-phone plans when they didn't have competition. I'm still wishing for my $20/mo- 200 min plan that I had 7 yrs ago but I guess I'm in the "minority" and nobody really wants a phone with only 200 minutes... oh yeah, if you ignore all those pay-as-you-go folks which is exactly what I became.
than you verizon thank you! destroy all your competition, I dont care if you monopolize the business! as long as you are not Time Warner or some other horrible satan spawn cable company!
What's highspeed when you're restrained by the amount you can download every month?
We, in Belgium, have 20 Mbps, but we can only download 12 gig/month. Otherwise you have to pay more.
Brings it to about 47 dollar per month for I-net.
Besides, more speed only means more connections, not actual faster speeds. The speed you get is mostly depending on how fast the host can upload. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Yes, if they charge your for the amount of bandwidth you use, then there's no real point to high speed. This is talking about Verizon in the US though (not whatever company you have in Belgium), and here it's unlimited.
yesssss.....upgrade my crappy basic service I COMMAND YOU!
There are only 2 pins in the 4th largest city in the US (Houston). WHY AM I GETTING SCREWED?!?!?!?
As a symmetrical 25 Mbps FiOs user, I have no inclination to upgrade (it would double my monthly).
After about 8 Mbps the ROI is very slim. Only Bittorrent and parallel download managers (like Internet Download Manager) can saturate my bandwidth. A few well-connected sites can.
Whats interesting about my FiOs is that it came with the slowest name servers on earth - browsing (depending on my dns cache) was actually *slower* than my previous cable connection!
Once I debugged that and defined different name servers it worked fine.
Yay......faster porn....zing!!!
Japan isn't all that small. Neither is any European country. Anyway, a larger country isn't all that more expensive to fiber than a small one, because finance scales to match. Fiber is cheaper elsewhere because the governments stepped in and regulated. Also, economies of scale kicked in as it is cheaper to build a mandated countrywide network per capita than to have a few mega corporations trickle improvements while Haliburtoning profits to the limit. And let's not forget that we've ALREADY PAID for the fiber to our homes in 1997, when the Federal government gave billions in tax breaks to the major telecoms with the express earmarking to provide high speed internet to all our homes. They stole the money, and now or gouging us after we've already paid. Yet somehow, South Korea makes it cheap and profitable. The problem isn't size, or time, or money, as size is defeated by scale, time has been 11 years and counting, and they have already been paid by our taxes to build these networks. The problem is lies and greed.
Nice to see you trying to keep up, America! We've had 100 Mbps up and downlink here for a few years for about $20-30 a month. If I moved into any house in my town built 2006-2008 I would have the choice of a 1 Gbps (both up and download) for more, maybe $100 a month. I'm satisfied with 100 Mbps though, since my harddrives can't keep up with more =).
here being Lund, Sweden
I'd be more excited about this if FIOS didn't cost the same as Time Warner.
It would be nice if it was actually available and not just advertised on TV...
South Florida doesn't get any FIOS love unless you're on the West Coast. I've been on their "notification" list for over a year. Get down here already!
I doubt it will be coming to my neighborhood anytime soon. I'm still waiting for Verizon to install DSL! What a worthless outfit they are.
Also know that Verizon is about to restrict newsgroups to the "Big 8" hierarchies, which includes the elimination of their customers being able to view the entire "alt" hierarchy. Even legitimate groups like alt.binaries.pictures.scenic. This is apparently being lauded by the New York AG and Verizon as a way to limit child porn.
I would suggest rewarding Verizon with fewer customers as a result.
Okay, it looks like there's a lot of commenters here (and the writer as well) who didn't read the whole press release.
First off, I'm glad I live in Virginia, because the release states that in VA and NY the 50/20 service is going to run $89.95. I don't think that's too unreasonable AT THIS POINT. Technically, with fiber being what it is, those bits should essentially be free, but I respect Verizon for their $1K investment per household to get this stuff going.
The one thing that confuses me? So in the press release it states that NY and VA get 50Mbps for $89. Everywhere else gets it for $139. If you go to the FIOS website, right now the 30Mbps plan is at $139. I'm surprised that Verizon would lower the rates for their other plans accordingly. Perhaps they expect that consumers will only pay so much for access...
And when they put a 50GB/month cap on you usage, you'll be able to use an entire months of internet in just over 2 hours. YAY!
Might actually be the first time I've ever sincerely wished I live in the states.
What's the point? I have 20mb FIOS right now and I have never even used it all up. Max speed I ever get is 4mbps. The lines currently out there connected to all of the sites we visit aren't up to par. The entire system, the backbone of the Internet, isn't capable of fully supporting these high speeds. When I switched from 8mbps to 20mbps it made zero difference. My game speeds, my downloads, torrents, all the same. Sure it's fast, but we've reached the point where you don't really NEED faster. Not until the entire network of America gets new wiring.
Nathan - I agree, but it is useful when you are doing multiple things at once. I have the 5/2 service and there are plenty of sites that can't offer files at 5 Mb/sec. But I can download something from those sites at 3, stream audio at 1 and still have 1 leftover for regular browsing.
Don't forget that US corporations haven't used the funds given to them by the gov to upgrade the infrastructure, some of them are total sleazepiles that will screw you for every dime and not even give you service (throttle and block P2P).