Verizon Offers 20/20 Symmetrical FiOS Service

BlueMerle writes with news that Verizon is offering 20 Mbps symmetrical service for current FiOS customers in NY, CT, and NJ. It will cost $65 a month. Cable companies aren't in a position to match this capability.

Decisions, decisions....

[Bongo Bill (853669)]

On the one hand, finally, a competitive level of Internet service.

On the other hand, Verizon.

Well, it's a non-issue for me, since I'm not in any of those states, but it'll give me time to think about it between now and when (if) they start offering it in my area.

Re:

[Shakrai (717556)]

Additional costs : 20$ / Kb (including 10% RIAA preventive fee)

I hate them for reasons beyond this post, but Verizon hasn't shown inclination towards helping RIAA out. They actively fought them back in the day on disclosing one of their customers and you don't see Verizon's name in the news trying to figure out a way to leverage their backbone product into stopping piracy for RIAA.

I'm still not sure if I would do business with them, as I currently have the option and decided not to (could get their DSL at 1.5/384), but fear of them helping the content providers wo

Re:

[smashr (307484)]

If you call verizon you can have them switch your net connection from cable over to Cat5 coming off of the fiber box. You can then use your own router. If you google around you can find more information.

(If you also have FIOS tv then you need to keep the actiontech around, but it can be behind your other router)

Re:

[COMON$ (806135)]

Try having a company routinely have "billing errors" of $10-$20 a month, you have to correct them and watch your bills like a hawk. Makes me wonder how many people Alltel has screwed over that simply pay their bills every month. Or a company that re-routes your calls in what appears to be circles you just get an infinite clicking sound until you redial. Or voice mail that never picks up, or any of a billion technical issues. Not to mention all of 3 brick style phones to choose from until the contracts o

Heh

[ilovegeorgebush (923173)]

It's only as fast as the server you're connecting to...

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Well, to get the most of it, you'll have to connect to a bunch of different servers at the same time.

Re:

[Kjella (173770)]

The 1990s called, and want their client-server architecture back. Think P2P on hubs with a 10Mbit minimum, they've been around for some years (mostly outside the US) already. Having a symmetric connection means that P2P will become a lot more dominant than it is, not less. Who needs a server when your home connection can feed 20Mbit/s?

Re:Heh

[Rolgar (556636)]

Installing Debian from the MIT or Indiana mirrors, I peak about 20Mbps on my Cable line, and can get sustained of about 15Mbps. There are servers out there that can provide bandwidth. Also, when I hit my Morning Coffee button in Firefox, my 30 pages load in about 30 seconds. There are ways to benefit from higher caps.

Re:

[b1t r0t (216468)]

Important nitpick: You don't have FIOS [tm], you have Fiber. FIOS is a trademark that specifically refers to Verizon's fiber offering.

One word:

[Tastecicles (1153671)]

Bittorrent.

Obligatory AYBABTU reference

[DrYak (748999)]

Narrator: In A.D. 2007, war was beginning.

MPAA/RIAA: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bittorrent.
Operator: We get signal.
MPAA/RIAA: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
MPAA/RIAA: It's you!!
Pirate: How are you gentlemen!!
Pirate: All your files are belong to us.
Pirate: You are on the way to distribution.
MPAA/RIAA: What you say!!
Pirate: You have no chance to stay in business make your time.
Pirate: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
Operator: Mafiaa!!
MPAA/RIAA: Take off every 'LAWYER'!!
MPAA/RIAA: You know what you doing.
MPAA/RIAA: Move 'LAWYER'.
MPAA/RIAA: For great suits and settlements.

Re:

[marcello_dl (667940)]

I was thinking more like: one server in the office, a colocated or virtual small backup server for emergency, LAMP or equivalent (i prefer postgres and rails) and be done with the google model of "all your data are belong to us".

Still you're not free, until you stop depending on one ISP alone.

Re:

[jandrese (485)]

A lot of companies don't block any ports, but if you read the ToS you'll find that servers of any kind are generally prohibited. Frequently it is worded to include even port (not passive) FTP, bittorrent, and almost always VPN like connections. The typical industry boilerplate TOS basically says that you are allowed to surf the web and read email (preferably webmail), anything more is grounds for termination without warning or reimbursement. Luckly ISPs don't actually enforce their TOS unless they need a

Cable Companies can match or exceed this in 2008

[ctrl (49474)]

With the advent of DOCSIS 3.0, cable companies can "bundle up" upstream channels for up to 120 Mbits. Standard DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems will have 4 downstreams and 4 upstream channels, for a total (theoretical) throughput of 200 Mbit/s DS and 120 Mbit/s US.

While the throughput is shared, there's something to be said about PowerBoost as well - they may be able to offer a 20/20 service with boost capability up to 40/40 or 80/40... or if you pay to download movie they may allow you to download that movie @ the full 200 Mbit/s.

Cable companies will be able to compete - but only if they don't keep shooting themselves in the foot with things like BitTorrent filtering.

Re:Cable Companies can match or exceed this in 200

[Laebshade (643478)]

To use DOCSIS 3.0, not only would you need new modems that are compatible with this standard, but the network itself also needs to be upgraded. Lines need to have higher bandwidth and the CTMS has to be upgraded/replaced with DOCSIS 3.0-compatible hardware. Some MSOs still use DOCSIS 1.1, which is scary considering how long DOCSIS 2.0 has been out.

DOCSIS 3.0 has only been out for less than a year. Cable modem networks have significantly less upstream bandwidth than downstream bandwidth -- analog tv is to blame for this.

I'd rather have FiOS anyways; I drool over a symmetrical connection.

And yes, IACMT (cable modem technician) (though not a field tech).

No love for Socal?

[sqrt(2) (786011)]

I pay almost that much already for Charter high speed cable that's a fraction of those speeds. My upstream is half a meg. With 20/20 I could actually keep my BT ratios positive. I might need to buy some more HDDs though...

I doubt charter will ever improve in my area until they have some real competitors. Right now they're the only game in town if you want the fastest connection.

Re:No love for Socal?

[speaker of the truth (1112181)]

With 20/20 I could actually keep my BT ratios positive. I might need to buy some more HDDs though...

How many Linux ISOs do you download that you can't get your ratio back into the positive in a relatively small amount of time? Also why aren't you burning the ISOs onto DVD or CD? Surely it wouldn't be that expensive?

Re:No love for Socal?

[speaker of the truth (1112181)]

Why else would a home user need 20/20 if they aren't uploading torrents? Surely Verizon realizes this, right?

Ummmm... to run a little web server.

[Joce640k (829181)]

I could definitely use a little web server for my work - sending files to clients, etc. 20Mbit would do the job nicely.

At the moment I have to upload files to a third party server with my slow upload then send them a link. With my own connection they could get the files directly from me, no "wait while I upload it..." delay.

Re:No love for Socal?

[MLease (652529)]

There's a subtle implication there that uploading torrents is automatically an illegitimate purpose. However, many Linux distributions are available that way, as one example of a legitimate purpose for uploading a torrent. Torrent != piracy.

-Mike

Re:

[sqrt(2) (786011)]

I guess with all the problems with charter, at least they don't do any of that. I max out my connection (upstream at least) nearly 24/7 all month (Google says that's about 148GB) and have never been charged more or gotten so much as a warning. If I ever did get a connection with a company that limits it, I'd be sure to find out exactly how much I can safely use and get as close to that as possible every month.

Re:

[Port1080 (515567)]

I had FiOS for a few months (granted, it was their 5mb/2mb package) and ran BT more or less 24/7 and never ran into any problems. Verizon has a whole host of other issues (their billing department, especially, is a joke), but as far as using your bandwidth goes they really don't seem to care if you max it out. They also don't make any serious attempt to block P2P, although they do block some of the common web services ports (i.e. you can't run an http server on port 80, ftp server on 21, etc).

Re:No love for Socal?

[Rogerborg (306625)]

To my knowledge, Mel Gibson has never fellated a baboon, but I'm not clear on how espousing my ignorance contributes anything to thread. Perhaps you could explain that to me.

Yeah but what's the service level?

[cerberusss (660701)]

It's a very nice speed, especially it being symmetrical, but the question is: is this still consumer-grade stuff? Is it best-effort quality, i.e. may drop out any time? No redundancy whatsoever?

Or can we expect some guarantee concerning the uptime of the line? Looking at the price it's probably a best-effort thing so that makes it useless to host servers on such a line.

Re:Yeah but what's the service level?

[flynns (639641)]

I, uh. I really don't care, not for 20MBit up AND down for what it costs to have 12MBit down / 1Mbit up.

As a consumer, only one FiOS drop thus far

[WidescreenFreak (830043)]

You're joking, right? You know very well that at that price it's going to be a consumer-grade. I can't believe that you actually bothered to ask that question.

I don't know about others but in my experience the number of problems with my consumer-grade FiOS is minimal. I've had FiOS 15/2 for about a year now, and I've only experienced one drop where I lost both Internet and voice. I called to report the issue via my cell phone and was told, after a few minutes of investigating, that there was indeed a

Verizon FIOS customers in other parts of country

[linuxguy (98493)]

I am a Verizon FIOS customer of their 5/5 service in Portland,Oregon and pay $209/month for it. I wouldn't mind being able to get the 20/20 service in my area. When is Verizon going to show us some love? Verizon reps if you are reading this, the FIOS customer base in the rest of the country is really feeling unloved right now.

The NY/NJ/CT customers already had the higher 10/10 service available and you went and upped them to 20/20. While the rest of the country is stuck with pokey (relatively speaking) 5/5.

Re:Verizon FIOS customers in other parts of countr

[tigerd (890439)]

damn you guys in the states have it hard. My connection was just upgraded from 8/1 to 20/2 for free. 50 dollars per month. Welcome to Denmark :) And its even cheaper in Sweden.

Re:Verizon FIOS customers in other parts of countr

[Technician (215283)]

I pay $67/mo (including modem rental) for internet-only "high-speed" cable in Whatcom County, Washington. I get 10Mb/sec down and 900Mb/sec up.

I'd gladly pay $2 less for FiOS. :)

That's roughly what I pay for Comcast Internet at 3 meg down and 250K up. As a bonus, they protect you from Media Sentry and RIAA lawsuits by preventing them from downloading anything from you as evidence. Unfortunately, nobody else can download from you either. Your torrent uploads are mostly limited to 0.0K for max transfer sizes of about 0.1 Meg. I guess it's hard to be sued if you don't upload and provide evidence of sharing. I got Gutsy on a torrent and my DL was over 600 meg of data. My upload to support others was 0.1 meg.

I'll be glad when serious competition shows up here.

Sigh...

[Cyno01 (573917)]

Just paid my monthly $170 yesterday for 3/1.5meg internet, an HD DVR, 16 HD channels and digital cable with everything but showtime. Its expensive because i live in the boonies sort of, but its also worth it because theres nothing to do out here.

Re:Sigh...

[djupedal (584558)]

"Its expensive because i live in the boonies sort of, but its also worth it because theres nothing to do out here."

Shit, man - print tickets, throw up some chainlink, projector that stuf on the side of the barn, put on a t-shirt that says "No Head - No Backstage" and go nuts...

I live in Sunnyvale, the heart of Silicon Valley

[MichaelCrawford (610140)]

You'd think I could get some kind of fiber service, but no, and when I googled for it I found this huge long thread on Usenet that was all about how Silicon Valley doesn't have good Internet because the phone company won't invest in upgrading their infrastructure.

We have Comcast cable, but I didn't opt for a cable modem because I found Comcast in a list of ISPs that block BitTorrent [azureuswiki.com].

Not that I was looking for warez: no, I operate a legal BitTorrent tracker and dedicated seed to offer downloads of my own music (see sig). I need free access to BitTorrent just to monitor them, as sometimes the BitTorrent seed software (btdownloadmany.py) falls over.

Just my luck that I live beyond the range for DSL. After a lot of research I came across Stephouse [stephouse.com], which offers something called "ISDL", or DSL over ISDN, which can go somewhat farther than regular DSL.

It works, but I pay $99 a month for 144kbps. At least I'm able to monitor my torrents, but I'm not able to watch videos on Youtube.

I'm very happy with Stephouse as a provider though, they have a remarkably permissive TOS, and their support people have been great.

What's in a name?

[doyoulikeworms (1094003)]

I really wonder if Verizon could offer, say, 25/25 for the same price, but chose 20/20 because it's a "better" name.

I mean, what are the chances that the cost effectiveness sweet spot just so happens to be 20mbps up and 20mbps down?

Set your own ratio?

[Brit_in_the_USA (936704)]

I would certainly be nice for those of us stuck with cable to be able to adjust or choose our own upload / download ratio. Perhaps with a simple web interface on the cable company support site, or even dynamically do it for us.

Benchmark data

[pmontra (738736)]

I'd like to share my experience with a similar service I've been using since year 2000 in Italy. I have a symmetrical 10 Mbits fiber optic connection from Fastweb http://www.fastweb.it/ [fastweb.it]. Their offers that can compare to the Verizon one range in the 50-60 Euros per month, so Verizon is definitely cheaper.
The question somebody asked, directly or unspoken, in this forum is: do you really get all that speed? In my case the answer is yes. I FTP at 1000 kB/s (kilobytes) with the other guys in the Fastweb network and it's common to download files at more than 400 kB/s from US servers. CDNs usually bring that figure in the 700-900 kB/s range. That bandwidth isn't guaranteed by the contract but it never shrunk noticeably in these eight years, despite the fact that the customer base grew 100 times or more. On the other side, none of the 10 or 20 Mb/s ADSL connections I saw here in Italy (with other ISPs) were faster than one tenth of their nominal bandwidth, when downloading files from the same services I use.
So, if you trust your provider to invest in its interconnection with the Internet at large, those 65$ can be worth the expense. If you think that it will somewhat cap your bandwidth, stay with what you have. In my case I got a six-months-for-free offer and I jumped in at the very beginning of the offering :-) but otherwise I'd have waited some month and read what the other customers said.
Finally, do you really need all that speed? My answer is yes: you find a way to put it at use once you got it and you don't want to go back.

Verizon?

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

Cable companies aren't in a position to match this capability.

I doubt Verizon really is either, but it sure sounds good.

Off-site...

[evilviper (135110)]

This is extremely impressive, and may well be a game-changer...

When Verizon finally rolls-out FIOS here (they've said it's coming "soon" for a couple years), I'll probably sign-up for TWO connections... One for my home, and the other for a family member (within driving distance) or perhaps a friend. In exchange for free ultra-high-speed internet access, all they have to do is leave my back-up server running. rsync will finish pretty damn fast over a 20Mbps connection...

This really opens the possibility of a lot of online file-hosting services going out of business... It's no longer special that they have high-speed upstream, so why pay so much for an over-priced, terribly-limited, managed file hosting service?

Now if somebody could just convince Verizon to enable multicast on all their routers...

20 Mbits is fine, but the backbone needs updating

[twfry (266215)]

I very recently moved to Seoul and finally setup the internet yesterday. First thing I did was to test the speeds and here are the results.

Speed test in Korea: 94.7Mb down - 11.4Mb up
Speed test to Japan: 11.4Mb down - 7.8Mb up
Speed test to USA: 2.7Mb down - 0.9Mb up

My DSL in the US is working at ~630Kb up (have ATT which promises between 512Kb - 764Kb up). So even if I upgraded the service, my slingbox would barely perform better.....

20/20 how far?

[Organic Brain Damage (863655)]

Think we could get 20/20 all the way to the backbone for $65? That'd be nice, but somehow I'm guessing it will hit a bottleneck.

no servers, period

[m2943 (1140797)]

http://www.verizon.net/policies/popups/tos_popup.asp [verizon.net]

3.7.5 You may not use the Broadband Service to host any type of server whether personal or commercial in nature.

Re:

[finkployd (12902)]

That is where this comes in: http://www22.verizon.com/content/businessfios/ [verizon.com]

Only way to get staticIPs and not be hassled for running servers.

Finkployd

Competition is Great

[Yeef (978352)]

I've been using Optimum Online for about five years now and it's always been a pretty bad service up until recently. My connection would drop for fix or six hours at a time with no explanation a few nights a week. I'd call the support line and they'd fix something on their end and get it working again, but then it'd just drop a few hours later. It got to the point where it wasn't worth all the time spent on hold calling them every time it happened so I just began to work around it. On top of that my upload speeds were capped at about 17 kB/s which was a lot less than other people with the same plan as me were getting. Unfortunately, it was the only broadband service available to me so it was either learn to deal with the annoyances or switch back to dial-up.

Then about two years ago Verizon started rolling out their fios plans around here. A couple of my friends got it and loved it. It was a lot faster than cable and about 10 dollars cheaper to boot (or the same price for an even FASTER plan). So of course, I wanted to switch myself. So I looked at their site for details and started to get a little worried when I saw that they needed to install fiber in the ground. I knew it'd be a problem because I live in an apartment building, but their site claimed my address was eligible, so I figure it can't hurt to schedule an install. Of course the day the installer comes he tells me that I'm not eligible which was no big surprise.

But something great happened. I don't know if it was a coincidence or if Optimum had somehow found out that I tried to switch, but a few days later I noticed a huge increase in my speeds. Ever since then I've been getting down speeds in the range of 12~13 MBps or so and up speeds at about 2~3 MBps. My connection very rarely ever drops and when it does it's only for a few seconds.

If that's the effect that a single competitor has I can't help but wonder what sort of service we'd be seeing if we all had half a dozen or more broadband choices.

Now If Only They Weren't Dicks

[internic (453511)]

I would jump on this in a second (FIOS is available in my area) if only it were a true internet connection offered by a real ISP. But (at least if this is a residential plan) if you look at the TOS you will see that it contains weasel words that you can get kicked for, you know, actually using the bandwidth you're ostensibly buying or for running any type of "server", which is really not clearly defined and certainly could include P2P apps (like maybe Skype). So, when you think about it, what you're getting is not really a true internet connection but some limited internet service package that only allows you to do a certain (ill-defined) subset of what can be done with an internet connection.

Finally, in my experience with Verizon (as a phone company) they treat their customers like dirt and their techs are incompetent. At one point they even screwed up our phones then came back to fix that and screwed it up worse. Eventually we had to draw them a damned diagram of how to do it correctly. I also talked to one of the FIOS guys at a kiosk they had in the mall. He couldn't give a straight answer about whether they do traffic shaping, have data transfer caps, or block certain protocols. As a test, I asked him about running a server on a residential connection, and he lied to me and told me it's permitted, which is directly contradicted by the TOS.

I'd love to get a cable or fiber connection that's much faster than my current DSL, if only there were a provider I could tolerate giving my money to.

Wow! This'll make for great botnets!

[Wdomburg (141264)]

Not that I don't appreciate the potential, but as a mail service provider I have to cringe at the prospect of infected machines with fat upstream pipes.

Wasn't Verizon blocking outgoing email?

[Xthlc (20317)]

A few years ago I dumped Verizon DSL when they switched to a policy of blocking all outgoing SMTP traffic, except that which went to Verizon's servers. And Verizon's servers didn't accept a FROM that wasn't a verizon.net email address. Goodbye personal domain! I went to Speakeasy and never looked back.

Does FiOS have similar ridiculous restrictions? If not, you can bet that they will soon. All that speed is useless if your ISP has a proven track record of screwing over their technically savvy customers.

Upgraded this morning. Speed test results

[EVil Lawyer (947367)]

20918 kb/s up, 8181 kb/s down [speedtest.net]

Re:Availability

[johncadengo (940343)]

I called the 8xx-get-fios number and they hadn't even heard of the plan.

Knowing the average slashdot user, it's probably because you requested the "Twenty-twenty symmetrical fiber optics to the premises internet service." Next time, just ask for the "really, really, really fast internet. Please."

Re:Availability

[by Anonymous Coward]

SlashdotUser: I'd like the 20/20 symmetrical Fiber Optic Service

VerizonOperator: Sorry, we don't offer vision plans sir.

Re:

[pinkocommie (696223)]

LOL Thats actually exactly what I did when she tried transferring me to Fios TV. I had to explain that it was new internet package and established credibility by saying it was on CNN!!!. Anyways calling the local offices was the tech's recommendation b/c neither she nor her boss had any info about the plan

Re:

[kharchenko (303729)]

They only look good on paper. Two years ago they set up a FIOS service in a town next door (under a mile away from my home). I still can't get FIOS at my house and they don't know when I might. Pathetic.