Verizon pushing FiOS internet to 50Mbps throughout US
By Darren Murph 
posted June 18th 2008 7:54AM
posted June 18th 2008 7:54AM
[Via Reuters]
Update: Here's Verizon's official release.
posted June 18th 2008 7:54AM
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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).