Verizon Speeds Up FiOS To 150Mbps 314
wiredmikey writes with a snippet from MacWorld offering some welcome news for Americans sick of 20th-century broadband speeds "Verizon is adding a new tier of service to its FiOS fiber broadband service, offering 150Mbps (megabits per second) downstream and 35Mbps upstream for $195 per month. The carrier has begun to roll out the service to consumers in the 12 US states, plus the District of Columbia, where FiOS is available. Small businesses will be able to get it by the end of the year, Verizon said on Monday. The fastest service offered so far on FiOS has been 50Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream."
Great - now put FiOS here please (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll probably be waiting a long time. It's only been three years since they upgraded my phone lines to handle DSL. It'll probably be a long time 'til they upgrade them to fiber.
I think Congress could help too. Simple mandate, through the FCC, that phone companies MUST provide DSL (or cable or fiber) to any customer that requests DSL. And then give them a one-year-limit to do the upgrade. No person should have to be stuck on 50k internet.
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Re:Great - now put FiOS here please (Score:5, Insightful)
The telecoms promised us fiber optic networks nationwide in 1993. They charged us for it, and never built it. They've had 17 years to do it, giving them one more year is more than generous enough. The heads of the various ISPs involved should be sitting in jail on fraud charges. They've stolen more than Bernie Madoff ever did.
Re:Great - now put FiOS here please (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great - now put FiOS here please (Score:5, Informative)
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>>>the DSLAM needs to go in a cabinet on a roadside somewhere
And you don't think if I lived in Cow Corner Iowa, and requested a phone to DSL upgrade, my local company could get the DSLAM Cabinet installed within a year's time??? I think they could. And no you don't really need planning permission out in the middle-of-nowhere (no planning boards) and/or if the cabinet is attached to the phone company's pole (they have right of way).
I know people who are stuck on 50k and they'd be THRILLED if congr
Re:Great - now put FiOS here please (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great - now put FiOS here please (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but they've been charging government mandated fees (totaling in the billions, literally) to deliver on that promise. We've already paid them for it, as an involuntary tax on services provided. So they should indeed deliver to you. They work around it be defining "broadband" as some tiny number like anything over 33kbps (don't recall exactly, anyone can google for the details).
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In one thread people talk about congested spots for terrorist attacks, and in another... a petition to prevent people from spreading out.
Because broadband internet is an essential service (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Because broadband internet is an essential serv (Score:5, Interesting)
If we followed this argument earlier in the 20th century, much of the US would still not even have electricity service...
That is absolutely right. It was government intervention, and government subsidies that created rural electricification (and also brought in telephone service). The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was abolished in 1994 after having completed its task of extending these two services to all of rural America.
Ironically it is that same rural America, which is also currently being heavily subsidized by the more industrialized blue states, that is raging against "socialism".
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It is kind of annoying how these things work.
I moved into a new place just at the end of August here. I was with Telus for my internet service before - and my room mate works at Shaw, the other big ISP in our city, and he was always going on about how it was so much better and faster and he never had lag playing Halo and what not. So I called them up. Got to the machine, navigated to wanting a new setup, please hold for an agent. On hold for 20 minutes, hang up.
The next day at work, I decide to try again, e
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I'll probably be waiting a long time. It's only been three years since they upgraded my phone lines to handle DSL. It'll probably be a long time 'til they upgrade them to fiber.
I think Congress could help too. Simple mandate, through the FCC, that phone companies MUST provide DSL (or cable or fiber) to any customer that requests DSL. And then give them a one-year-limit to do the upgrade. No person should have to be stuck on 50k internet.
If you want DSL or fiber how about you pay for the lines to be run I'm sure no company would object to that. The problem with people in the boonies is that the cost to run the line will not be recouped, think initial cost and maintenance, pricing it to cover the cost would be too expensive for most people, the only way everyone could get DSL is if the price were subsidized, I'm overcharged enough with out having to pay for someone else's service.
Re:Great - now put FiOS here please (Score:4, Interesting)
That blog is LYING to you.
If you read the Actual 1996 Bill it says companies must upgrade to 56k Digital lines (which was considered very fast in the mid-90s). It says almost nothing about fiber. So the companies did *exactly* what Congress told them to do.
Blame Congress not the corporations.
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In my state, Verizon was bought-out by Frontier. If you live in Western Washington, and you don't already have FIOS-- you're not getting it. Ever.
50/20 isn't the fastest (Score:2, Informative)
I've had 35/35 for a while, and I could have 50/50 if I wanted to pay another $30/mo for it.
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Hmm, I'm actually afraid to say I'll pass. Been pretty happy with the 25/15 service. My WRT54Gv4 router just barely keeps up with that as it is, and only then because I updated from HyperWRT to Tomato [polarcloud.com]. (HyperWRT couldn't push past 20Mbps on my hardware)
Would rather spend money on additional mobile bandwidth for the wife, or maybe even the car :-P T-Mobile's HSDPA on an HTC slide runs pretty sweet at 1Mbps with much lower latency than the 3G connections. Still waiting for a decent Android tablet (or ev
So why is my lower tier so expensive? (Score:3, Informative)
If speeds don't scale like I think they do, then someone explain it to me please.
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I think by "fixed costs" you mean "fixed profits". Even $5 a month would recoup the cost of your equipment/service to Verizon for cable. $10 would make them a tidy profit.
The only reason they charge $50 is so they can guarantee that the top 1% of employees (read: executives) and their shareholders get that $10 Million bonus they were promised.
This is the problem with the 'Freedom' we get in America, and the way the government regulates business as a whole. It's criminal, but allowed and acceptable.
Re:So why is my lower tier so expensive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because speeds don't scale like you think they do. If you have lots of little pipes going into a fat one, you can manage contingency and plan easily. If the little pipes are 10x the size, it's harder - especially as the actual point where service is impacted (around 80%) can go from 'ok for next 6 months' to 'upgrade now' due to a single customer changing usage profile.
It's like the difference between driving trucks, and driving cars - yeah, they are 3 times the length, but they cause 10x the traffic slowdown.
Service providers work of graphs that measure peaks (and 95%s), and if a single customer can move the peak from 85% full to 100% full, then it's hard to plan a good service - the only way is to have more contingency, which means more equipment/fibre/lambdas.
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That is only true if your SLA promises you can saturate that sweet ass gig link you have in your home. A business class account might have that kind of thing, but a residential account does not. If 100 residential people download something at the same time, combined they might saturate the backhaul, but their downloads would each be 1gb/100=10mb. And 10mbit is still better than what most of us shmucks get.
Basically, they charge $200 because they can. It has nothing to do with the actual cost of service
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Why does 15 Mbps down cost $50? but 150 Mbps only costs $195?
If speeds don't scale like I think they do, then someone explain it to me please.
It likely has nothing to do with scale, and all about persuading you of the "value" of spending $200/mo for internet service.
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Fixed cost? Canle maintenance and repairs, rack space, billing, customer support etc. are all pretty constant. Here in Norway I consider it to be quite decent competition but they all pretty much flat out at 40$/month for the really low end, whether DSL or cable. 60$ is normal and 80$ high-end, often giving you 10x the speed for 2x the cost.
Personally I predict that the usage pattern changes too. My 2 Mbit line was maxed almost 24x7. My 25 Mbit line isn't. A 150 Mbit line would be even better, but my averag
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Meanwhile (Score:2, Informative)
In Japan they pay like $40 for 100 Mbps. As usual the US is so far behind it's not even funny.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:5, Informative)
At my apartment in Osaka it's $20 for 1GB, actually.
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That makes me angry. I am paying $60 for 8mbit/1.5mbit
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Our best bet is Google coming in and fixing the situation, it's been years since Verizon and Qwest have supposedly been upgrading their equipment, but they've yet to actually get here. And Comcrap was such a joke when we had them years ago that whatever they're offering we
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Whyd oes that make you angry.
Would you want a 5% federal tax on all goods to get that service? And this is in addition to current rates, not instead of.
Frankly, if it went into education and digital infrastructure I wouldn't mind a 5% fed tax on goods.
OTOH, I would much rather there was a .006% tax on all financial trades, buying and selling. thats 6 cents for every 1000 dollars. we would have plenty of money to pay down are debt and get a first class world education for all children, and real government h
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I don't get angry, I make my carrier give me a better deal, or I start switching around. I'm in central California and pay about $30/month for 6Mb, which is outrageous, but cheaper than the current alternative. I first had Comcrap, and they had to come out and install a brand new coax line into my house, at CONSIDERABLE expense to them, and I own it so there's no "next customer" at this node. After their deals ran out, I switched to the local carrier SureWest, and when their deals ran out and they wanted
Re:Meanwhile (Score:4, Interesting)
You're lucky enough to live in one of the few areas in which there are several broadband providers. In most areas this isn't the case and you don't have anything to bargain with. You can't threaten to switch to another provider because there aren't any. Where I live there's only two. Comcrap and Quest. Both suck and have almost identical prices.
Cell phones, same thing. There's really only 3-4 carriers in the US. Add to this the fact that they're allowed to lock you into 2-year contracts and we start to see why all phone service sucks.
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And at my house in rural Virginia: $95 for 768k/512k with a FAP of 600 MB/day. Within a year I'll have fiber passed within 1000ft of my yard and I will likely still not have anything better than I have right now...
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You'd like to think it, but you'd be wrong. Let's look at it from another perspective. The urban centers of the U.S. have a population density about 1/3 that of Japan or South Korea. We're now comparing apples with their cousin the pear. Same area to cover but the US has 1/3 fewer customers trying to push data through the pipes. For $40/month in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area you can get 1.5Mbit/384Kbit service. Would you please explain to me what justification one could have for charging twice a
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And now watch your argument fall to pieces when you compare the size and population density of the cities.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:4, Insightful)
yet some large cities in the USA rival some of the less dense cities of Japan in population density, yet the less dense cities of Japan still have magnitudes better i-net service.
Nice (Score:2)
i get 50/50 as a small business (Score:2)
with FIOS. jsut saying
Clap clap clap. (Score:2)
Good news for some small sect of the US. Wake me when I can finally get more than 3mbit in the middle of Seattle up on Capitol Hill.
Qwest has been promising "OMG mega-fast Internet" for years now and they have yet to deliver. What gives?
Course I remember it being the same way when DSL was the new kid on the block. Took years before that was deployed everywhere. Remember trying to work out your distance to your central office to see if you would ever qualify?
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But the reason why it's taking them so long is that they're run by a bunch of incompetent assholes. They sold their wireless unit off about a decade or so ago, and that's where most of the other companies have been getting the pocket change to upgrade their network. The price for life thing isn't doing them
Kinda pricy (Score:2)
I have 1.5/384 because I don't want to pay a bunch for internet. $30/month is pretty much my price limit.
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Damn, internet is pricy for the US people. I'm paying 15 euros for 20mbit/1mbit.
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Yes. Because investing in your nations infrastructure is a form if socialism. Well, at least according to enough tea party idiots in the US to block any attempt.
Well, that and the telcos have their hands far up the asses of our government. But doing away with that is messing with the free market, and thus also socialism. Basically, making things better==socialism. The only people who should have it good are corporations, which are also people—anything else is socialism.
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I'll pay actual use if it is reasonable. Better would be to pay the same way Internet providers charge each other—95th percentile billing. Charge something like 50/mo for 1mbit. Give me a gigabit port, and 95% of the time I and most people wont go anywhere near that amount.
The problem is anybody but people who buy "real" Internet know what 95th percentile billing is—and even if they did they wouldn't understand it (nor should they need to, honestly). That is why most consumer grade Internet i
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Just to beat some American to it:
"blah blah blah TSA blah blah blad"
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While I'm no fan of the telecos here, I do recognize that my price is subsidizing their expansion into rural areas, where there are only a couple of houses every mile. I lived in one such rural area. Without the regulators making rural broadband a requirement, those houses will never have broadband. And without me subsidizing th
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Ouch. I'm paying $35/mo for 6mb/768k on AT&T.
$195 per month ? (Score:2)
$195 per month ? That's WAY too much.
Move to Romania:
http://www.ilink.ro/rezidential/internet/ [ilink.ro]
100/100 mbps 70 Lei/month =~ $20/month
or even cheaper:
http://www.rcs-rds.ro/internet-digi-net/fiberlink/pachete [rcs-rds.ro]
100/100 Mbps 39 Lei/Month =~ $12/month
And there's no transfer cap.
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It's paid through taxes. Just an FYI.
Not that I'm against that, and quit frankly It's as important as roads. SO Inwoudn't mind paying a bit more in taxes for it. That's a different discussion.
Faster Speeds Still in Chattanooga! (Score:2)
Verizon FIOS has nothing on "Fi-Internet" in Chattanooga, TN. 1000 Mbps to your house for $350/month.
https://epbfi.com/internet/ [epbfi.com]
Monopoly pricing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly pricing... (Score:4, Insightful)
$195/month is the sort a price that only a monopoly can get away with demanding. Too bad nobody bothers to enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act these days.
Take a look at the areas where FIOS competes with the cable companies. I live in such an area, and you will find that prices are down and features are up. Both Verizon and the cable companies try to one-up each other with internet speeds, tv packages and discounts.
While far from perfect competition, FIOS vs Cable really works out in the consumer's favor. In non-FIOS areas, the cable companies have far less of a motivation to compete.
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Splitting regional monopolies into local monopolies isn't the answer. The answer is to make the telecom infrastructure publicly owned. Any business that wants to offer net service may do so as long as it contributes to the maintenance and improvement of the network. Ensure through regulation and appropriate penalties that the government does not abuse the public trust by spying on the network without a warrant.
Yes, I know this sounds like socialism, but I'm tired of caring.
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Obviously you are not familer with what other companies charge for these speeds. Check around. Many companies charge anywhere from $300 a month up to $1000 a month or more for a business-fiber 100Mbps line (of course, that is 100 up as well). Shoot, T1s cost about that much in some areas. $195 a month for 150down/35 up is going to be a deal for many companies who need a lot of speed.
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Hell, I could probably get more bandwidth at a cheaper price in Canada or Australia.
Uh, no. Canada has a worse population density than the US, and we pay for it. I'm paying $50/mo [cogeco.ca] for 14/3 cable internet. Add 13% sales tax to that. Oh, and don't get me started on cell phone service.
All the speed you can't have (Score:2)
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Speed is great, but what about coverage? (Score:2)
The speeds that FiOS provides for the price is really stunning in comparison to many alternatives, and the increases they are rolling out is amazing. But what about coverage? My neighbors, family living in the same subdivision, and I have been requesting FiOS for a couple years now, and I doubt we'll ever see it any time soon. I guess the reality is that increasing the speed over existing an infrastructure is far cheaper than building out the infrastructure.
Not Fair! (Score:2)
Small orifices will be able to get it by the end of the year, Verizon said on Monday
Why do they need quicker access to porn . . .?
I just (Score:2)
wet my pants.
Triangle? (Score:2)
price (Score:2)
Availability (Score:2)
Sounds great, when can I get it? I live in a major US city, and it has been unavailable for a long time. Verizon keeps taunting me with FIOS offers in the mail, and then fails to actually deliver.
Finding a place where FiOS is available (Score:3, Informative)
FiOS has always sounded like one of those things I'd love to have. It's not ever going to be available where I currently live.
A couple of years ago, when it looked like I was going to be moving out of state, I thought that, all other things being somewhere near equal, I'd sure like to move to an area that had FiOS service. So, I tried to find out where in the general area of my possible destination it might be available.
No one at Verizon was willing to talk. I could randomly stab in the dark with a street address and get a yes/no answer, but no coverage map. "Trade Secret" or something. That was annoying.
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Look at the price. The ISPs continue to believe they deserve hundreds of dollars for connections like this even in a major city where population density is extremely high.
Re:Nice, now why (Score:4, Insightful)
I honestly can't believe that people bitch about paying $200 a month for speed comparable to an OC3 ($20k/month).
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Which I already addressed in my first comment.
Why don't high density American cities have cheap superfast connections?
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Because the same company, Verizon in this case, also has to service the non-high density parts. Yes, they have different pricing for different areas. But the probably can't/don't want to price it too differently.
85% of the American population lives in, or near, a densely populated urban area. Over 21 million people live within short driving distance of New York City. 17 million live in and around Los Angeles, 10.8 million around Chicago. . . and you get the idea. Most Americans live in population density very similar to what we see as Europe's 'high density', more than enough to pay for the relatively few who don't.
There is only one reason why US broadband sucks: we have telecom monopolies which are federally-manda
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If the Democrats really cared about improving the broadband situation, they'd have grown a sack, told people flat out that Socialism makes sense in a certain situations and that last-mile infrastructure is one of them.
Right! Unregulated big business naturally tends to monopolies and cartels where competition is extinguished. This happened in the Nineteenth Century Gilded Age, and just over 100 years later here we are The New Gilded Age awash with its new robber barons.
I can't believe people still trot this one out (Score:4, Insightful)
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What's your excuse now USA ?
You have three times the population density that they do?
Here in Canada our service is far worse than in the US, and the population density is even lower. Meanwhile Japan, with the highest population density, has the best service. Now, I'm no statistician, but I'm sensing a trend here.
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Because people who buy an OC3 are actually using the capacity of their link. The end user—us Joe Shmoe's in our apartments, we barely use it at all. But when we do use it (say to watch an HD Netflix movie) we want it delivered fast.
So really, per gig used, $200 is very, very, very expensive if you pull down a dozen gigs a month (which is probably within reason for a netflix user)
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But when we do use it (say to watch an HD Netflix movie) we want it delivered fast.
You don't need a 150mbit/s connection to watch Netflix in HD. I watch it just fine on my 10mbit/s cable connection. The HD streams from Netflix run around 5-6mbit/s in my experience.
I can't think of any reason that someone would need this much bandwidth at home, other than geek bragging rights or a heavy porn/bittorrent fetish. Perhaps one day there will be a killer app that needs this much bandwidth but as it stands right now I'm not sure why anybody would pay for it. Must be nice to have that kind of
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Now you are trolling. I'll pull this out of my ass but most of us are lucky to get above 3mbit. Here in Seattle, I can't get more though DSL.
If you can't see why people would want to burst to 150mbit and beyond, you have a serious lack of imagination. Here, I will use mine with tangible things i could do better if I could burst above 150mbit:
1) better VPN into work. It would be quicker to check the source code repository out.
2) faster online backup, and more important, backups that down slow down the Int
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Because people who buy an OC3 are actually using the capacity of their link. The end user—us Joe Shmoe's in our apartments, we barely use it at all. But when we do use it (say to watch an HD Netflix movie) we want it delivered fast.
So really, per gig used, $200 is very, very, very expensive if you pull down a dozen gigs a month (which is probably within reason for a netflix user)
I've got a 25/25 FiOS line ($104 minus a $25 package rate * 24 mo.) with a static ip and could easily use the whole thing. I have to throttle my server to keep it down to 15 up.
Before I throttled the server, I was seeing long-term averages of 35M and bursts to 85M. I've only had a couple users notice the throttling, so for the most part I'm thrilled with my FiOS.
I'm not a verizon fanboy, but man, this is a damned nice line.
Also, for netflix viewing you need 2.5M to have a nice HD picture. You'll find that t
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OC3 is unlimited, guaranteed, bidirectional 155Mb/s...
FIOS is... Well... Not.
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If you compare apples to apples (i.e., business FiOS to an OC3), then you're wrong.
Business FiOS is guaranteed speed (both directions), with an SLA. Now, like every other ISP, they'll only guarantee the speed to the edge of their network. Once off their network, they obviously don't have any responsibility.
In my personal experience, though, the limit that Verizon claims as your fastest possible speed for your FiOS line is lower than the actual peak speed you will see.
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I honestly can't believe that people bitch about paying $200 a month for speed comparable to an OC3 ($20k/month).
I honestly can't believe it's not butter.
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The parent post is most certainly not Flamebait. This does happen and has been documented many times.
FCC analysis shows that average (mean) actual speed consumers received was approximately 4 Mbps, while the median actual speed was roughly 3 Mbps in 2009. Therefore actual download speeds experienced by U.S. consumers lag advertised speeds by roughly 50%.
Source (Warning: PDF): http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db0813/DOC-300902A1.pdf [fcc.gov]
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Infrastructure, distances, money.
We started first, that means we have previous generation systems still in place. We need to roll out over vast distances, and telecoms don't want to spend money to completely revamp infrastructure every 5 years.
If the government rolled it out, we would have had 150Mbps 10 years ago.
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The counter to that is that wireless technology has been taking off so, my guess is that if they hold off long enough, Verizon doesn't have to even worry about hard lines.
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Because most people only want to download (watch TV, listen to music, read emails, browse the web) and most uploads are comparatively small (game data, emails, photos, requests).
Yeah, some people do big uploads (home-mad music, podcasts or videos), but it is like complaining that 90% of the ticket gates are set to only allow people in to a station during morning rush hour. Yeah, you might not like the delay for being stuck behind someone else when coming out of the station, but you're SOL if you think anyth
Re:Keep in mind (Score:4, Interesting)
They're just not true. They look true, based on Japan and Korea, but look at European countries. Norway and Denmark are even less dense than the US, and they still kick our asses in broadband speed. We have shitty internet because of monopolies lying their asses off to the FCC and the public about how people "don't want" better internet than they already have and it would be prohibitively expensive to upgrade anyway. Population density doesn't mean shit, and if it did they would focus more heavily on WiMax or any of the half dozen other solid wireless broadband technologies that mainstream providers avoid like the plague; last mile problem solved.
The US has plenty of very dense areas (Score:3, Insightful)
The US has plenty of areas - San Diego/Orange County/LA county, the Northeast Corridor - that are every bit as dense as a European country. Yet we don't have low-cost, high quality broadband service anywhere. Why is that? I think the second part of your post is the true answer.
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You mean like South Korea? Population density: 1,271/sq mi
Los Angeles County: 2,427/sq mi
New York City: 5,435.7/sq mi
Why are our cities, with double or even quadruple the density, still stuck with speeds two orders of magnitude slower with higher costs?