Verizon went one up on the cablecos this week by announcing download speeds of 150 Mbps and upload speeds of 35 Mbps over its fiber FiOS network. It said the speeds will be available by year-end to small businesses and most of the 12.5 million homes that the FiOS network passes, mostly in the Northeast, Texas and California. Unfortunately that’s not to most of the US’ 110 million or so homes.
Verizon VP of product management Eric Bruno called it the fastest broadband in the US and said it ‘establishes a new benchmark for high-speed Internet in America, and paves the way for a flurry of emerging bandwidth-intensive applications to reach mainstream status.’
The download examples he gave were:
– A two-hour, SD movie, typically 1.5 GB, in less than 80 seconds.
– A two-hour HD movie, typically 5 GB, in four and a half minutes.
– Downloading 20 high-resolution photos, typically 100 MB, in less than five and a half seconds.
– Uploading the same number of photos took less than 23 seconds.
It’s a bit pricey at $195 per month for consumers but is certain to come down in price as the rival cablecos ramp up their DOCSIS 3.0 speeds. The $195 a month requires a one-year service contract and a wire line voice service. Verizon’s competitor Cablevision offers up to 101 Mbps for $100 per month and Comcast has a 105 Mbps plan.
The speed is faster than most consumers need now but Verizon listed the usual bandwidth-intensive applications that will need higher speeds such as streaming and downloading HD and 3D videos, real-time video conferencing and online data backup. In the future telemedicine and live video monitoring will become major applications.