Verizon Announces FTTP Prices

ffejie writes "C|NET News.com is reporting that Verizon has announced its pricing on Fiber-to-the-Premises - it 'will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon's local and long-distance telephone service', and more if bought on its own. The high speed internet service, dubbed Verizon Fios, brings speeds up to 30 Mbps to the home. FTTP could lead to a sweeping change, especially in the television industry. According to News.com: 'Verizon is considered the furthest along with its fiber plans. It reiterated on Monday its goal of reaching 1 million homes and offices by the end of the year...' It looks as if FTTP is coming to the masses."

Comments

Can the backbones handle it?

[digitalvengeance]

From the article:

A 2mbps to 5mbps Fios connection will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon's local and long-distance telephone service. The service will cost $40 if purchased alone. A connection of up to 15mbps is available for $45 a month if purchased as part of the same telephone service bundle, or $50 alone. The company did not reveal pricing for the 30mbps plans.

That is subsantially less than the $210 I currently pay for my 3Mbps/1Mbps small business connection. I wonder how many of these will roll out as people like me jump to them before the major internet infrastructure starts to suffer? I mean, think of it: end point capacity could literally be upgraded by a factor of 10 in some areas. Will the backbones and their major tributaries be able to handle it?

Either way, I am looking forward to it.

Josh.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[neilcSD]

Very good point. Let's hope that their infrastructure is robust enough to handle the swarms of consumers and businesses who are going to sign up for this. It would be a shame for this venture to fail because they didn't think things through. Best of luck to them though, I for one will sign up!

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[G27 Radio]

People bring this up everytime some company announces a large-scale rollout of high-speed like this. My guess is the same thing will happen this time. Their customers will have 30Mbps to the home, but will only see that kind of speed on things cached close by, and get the same speed as the rest of us broadband users on everything else. That is, until the backbones are upgraded. I don't think we'll see the backbones "suffer" though.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[Vellmont]

I think the key is that useage of the added capacity will grow more slowly. Sure some people will have p2p apps that soak up a lot of bandwidth, but the majority of people won't use up all that capacity right away. It'll take time for people to find uses for all the extra capacity. So at least in theory the growth of the backbones can happen more slowly.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[peragrin]

That's like saying the entire internet runs at 56k just cause that's the speed the majority of us connect at.

No If you have a 30Mbps net connection you will rarely use it to it's full strength for some time. Possibly if you are doing Video communications will you use it up. It's more than enough for a small business website. It's more than enough current tasks.

As such ISP's will have time to upgrade the backbones to Internet II when it is needed.

In the future though I see a single communication line coming into your home. Off of abox installed in your house will come TV, Internet, and video Phone. Possibly using interchanged monitors.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[tekiegreg]

Ummmm from my understanding the Internet II project is only a university funded gig...you'll never surf the Internet II unless you are involved with a major university in some way...

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[Senzei]

Yeah, because, you know, all those universities don't have any problems with students finding ways to use all of their bandwidth. Especially on a private computer, people will find a way. P2P apps are agressive enough to do it, and the big fat pipe will make running those nonstop all the more appealing. Unless they start out with budgets for 60-70% usage/bandwidth sold they are going to have problems.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[homer_ca]

"$210 I currently pay for my 3Mbps/1Mbps small business connection"

Are there any restrictions on your small business service like running servers or reselling service? Residential broadband service has those restrictions plus upstream bandwidth is shared with other customers. You know it's shared and oversubscribed because they reserve the right to disconnect bandwidth hogs. That $210 is a third the price of a T1. With that you usually get a block of 15 IPs and no restrictions on servers, reselling service, or monthly usage caps.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[Luke-Jr]

My college is quite small (~1000 students) and still had Internet II. We dropped it for another connection a few months ago, though... Nobody actually used the InetII features (though had I known we had it, I might have).

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[Martin Blank]

What about all the dark fiber that was laid down in the late 90's in anticipation of the big boom? Was that all a myth, or is it just waiting to be used by the creditors that took possession after the crash?

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[cmacb]

"In the future though I see a single communication line coming into your home. Off of abox installed in your house will come TV, Internet, and video Phone. Possibly using interchanged monitors."

Right!

And the game to watch is which of your existing services falls by the wayside. The DSL/Cable battle is just the first round. First company to put fiber in my house wins!

Next phase will be to eliminate current ridiculous bandwidth restrictions on servers because it will be more trouble to measure than the accounting costs are worth. Everyone can finally host their own unrestricted internet server. A lot of the smaller hosting companies will be put out of our misery by this and the only companies remaining will be those that need a room full of equipment to handle the demands of the large, popular domains, Google, MS, Yahoo and the like.

Net-centric computing will have finally arrived, and it will no longer be worth saving video, music, or even your own spreadsheet and text files on your local hard drive as they can be instantly downloaded from a server somewhere that is getting backed up regularly. In other words, current hosting companies will have the chance to transition from points of presence to storage, archiving, and application server facilities.

This will all demand an end to the nonsense of operating systems which can be easily hacked into. Microsoft will replace the Windows underpinnings transparently with something that is standards based (probably BSD variant), but Linux will continue to thrive for those who want to have complete control over what they do with their own hardware.

As the rest of the world tries to copy the connectivity nirvana achieved here in the US the world will enter a new era of peace and prosperity, except that all help-desk call centers the world over will still transfer to someplace in India...

And then I woke up.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[secret agent]

FIOS spelled backwards is SOIF, which in french means THIRST. And we know that when the french are thirsty they drink EVIAN, which spelled backwards is NAIVE, which is what you are if you think FIOS will be coming to your home anytime soon, leaving you THIRSTY for bandwidth. .,.By the way FIOS is portuguese for WIRES, which is the wrong name for a fiber network.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[dmayle]

Um... Yeah... Dark Fiber... That's a bunch of fiber optic lines running along railroads (mostly), that doesn't have equipment on either end. The backbone isn't the problem. If one of the major provider's is low on bandwidth, they can just upgrade the current equipment they've got. (Fiber has so much available capacity, that when you want to upgrade, you normally just replace the sender/receiver, and the repeaters, and you suddenly have more available.) It's cheaper to upgrade the equipment than to lay new lines/

As to the dark lines in place? Backbone isn't the problem. It's the fact that no one can afford more than a single twisted pair to the office/home since laying fiber is so expensive. I've got a friend who works at an office where the building is lit up (which means fiber is run to the building and in use), and each company has 100Mbit ethernet to the fiber equipment, and a guarantee that the company has at least that much bandwidth (per customer) to all of it's peering points.

That's the power available with fiber. Once everyone's got that kind of connection, we'll see a sudden leap, from 256Kbps or 1Mbit up to 15, 30, 50, 100. Look at how far we've stretched copper already, and we're at the extreme end of what it can do. We're only at the beginning of fiber, and once you get it to your home, the service levels will increase much faster than lines do today.

Kinda makes me want to move back to the U.S... (though not if I have to live in Texas... ;)

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[Ian Wolf]

I swear I heard trumpets, harps, and the Angels singing. I got all glassy eyed and was begining to think the Messiah had returned and cmacb was his name.

And then I woke up.

Not since my sister uttered the words, "There is no Santa Claus" had five words crushed my hopes and dreams so utterly.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[ces]

Net-centric computing will have finally arrived, and it will no longer be worth saving video, music, or even your own spreadsheet and text files on your local hard drive as they can be instantly downloaded from a server somewhere that is getting backed up regularly. In other words, current hosting companies will have the chance to transition from points of presence to storage, archiving, and application server facilities.

This will all demand an end to the nonsense of operating systems which can be easily hacked into. Microsoft will replace the Windows underpinnings transparently with something that is standards based (probably BSD variant), but Linux will continue to thrive for those who want to have complete control over what they do with their own hardware.

I think the demands of content owners like the RIAA and MPAA for some sort of DRM and policing of copyright violations will keep this from taking off as you predict as well as give me an incentive to keep a local copy of all my files.

In addition there are the privacy concerns, I don't exactly want John Ashcroft to be doing fishing expeditions against data I choose to store simply becuase he feels like it. At least with data on my own hard drives I have a pretty good idea if the FBI has been by to have a look. If I store everything on google's "Gdrive" I may never know until I'm dissapeared to the Gitmo if somebody's been snooping.

Also there is a memory-hole problem. I often save local copies of news stories or other interesting web pages. All too often I will return to a story or site later and find it either gone or altered. My most recent encounter with this was the USGS high-resolution color aerial photograph database. Photos of the White House, US Naval Observatory (the VP's Residence), and US Capitol building are blurred. In addition many road and rail bridges have had small blacked out areas added along side them. Sometimes it is something as simple as someone taking down a personal page for whatever reason.

Thanks but I'll keep the master copy of my data local for now

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[Afrosheen]

What he (the parent poster above yours) was trying to say is what I've seen a million times already. Basically, there's a critical mass speed that the majority of 'big sites' have preset. I was on an unlimited wireless connection before, and could pull down well over 10MB/sec at any given time, with unlimited throughput for uploading as well.

The problem I saw time and time again was that nobody could feed me enough bandwidth to max out my connection. I never knew what top speed it was capable of because nobody could serve me faster than around 10MB/sec which is the fastest I ever saw it, and this was from leeching 15 sites at once.

Generally, most big file shops (fileplanet, gamespy, download.com) have QOS and bandwidth limiting in effect on their routers. They all started doing this when broadband became more common to make more of their measley bandwidth available to more simultaneous users. When you have 100 people leeching from you on cable at 500KB/sec you start sweating, and choke them down. Ultimately everyone started charging for leeching services.

I don't see this attitude changing, and fiber to the curb, with widespread adoption and availability, will only exasperate the problem further. They thought it was bad when people got cable and dsl...just wait until the leechers can leech orders of magnitudes faster.

Then again, those with privileged upstreams tend to serve and share..so maybe there will be a balance point eventually. I still think a sort of Bittorrent-ish webserver app needs to hit the mainstream and run as a background service on broadband-enabled computers to prevent slashdottings.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[mollymoo]

sorry, my hard drive is still gonna be faster than a network connection

Are you sure? Gigabit ethernet is already faster than most hard drives sold today. You need a Raptor or a RAID array to beat it. And that's over copper.

Bandwidth / byte charges

[suckfish]

What terms & conditions?

Is this flat rate, or are there extra costs?

Are you allowed to run servers at home?

Re:Bandwidth / byte charges

[wpc4]

These would be the same questions I would want to see answered. I have 1.5mb/384kb for $60 a month from speakeasy, but as long as what I do isn't illegal they let me do whatever, including selling my service via wifi to my neighbors.

Re:Bandwidth / byte charges

[the_bahua]

Yeah, I am always skeptical when I see deals like this. On the surface, it looks wonderful, except that I live in SBC territory. What I wonder is what kind of contracts there will be. I wonder if the service will require some kind of privacy outrage. I wonder if the service will have any kind of SLA, considering they seem to be aiming this at business and home office.

I will watch this very closely, as I would love these kind of numbers, but I unfortunately don't think it'll be without more cost than the purported amount.

30mbps down....

[redhat421]

....and a whole 128k up!! :)

Re:30mbps down....

[ffejie]

Actually, it's 2 Mbps up for the 15 Mbps and 5 Mbps up for the 30 Mbps. According to this article.

Re:30mbps down....

[aldoman]

This is actually a really, really good point.

Will Fiber stand the test of time like copper has... copper has been on the go for over 100 years. Copper is now being used over 1000 times it's specification when it was designed (3kHz back then, way over 5MHz for VSDL etc).

To acheive the same result with fiber it would have to run at 622Gbps. Before you laugh, in 100 years we will probably be downloading the latest 'holographic DVD' off suprnova.org which will be 1PB ;).

Business class...

[NeoSkandranon]

I wonder how badly they'll rape businesses for the same class of service? ( thought triggered by another poster's mention of 210$ for business DSL)

Re:Business class...

[Ath]

They may "rape" one part of their business (i.e. the $210/mo subscriber) but if they get an additional 10 people who were not going to sign up because of the pricing, then they are way ahead. Excess bandwidth generates $0.

Not $35 for 30mbps

[AsnFkr]

quoth the artical:

A 2mbps to 5mbps Fios connection will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon's local and long-distance telephone service. The service will cost $40 if purchased alone. A connection of up to 15mbps is available for $45 a month if purchased as part of the same telephone service bundle, or $50 alone. The company did not reveal pricing for the 30mbps plans. ...misleading headlines. *sigh*

Humbug

[Jahf]

I can't get *DSL capabilities from Qwest or Cable modems where I live ... and Verizon isn't anywhere near my area ... I would guess that for most people FTTP is WAY far out in the future, if it happens at all.

I'd definitely pay for it ... hell I'd double that ... but I don't presume to see it.

"FTT"P sounds like...

[JessLeah]

...the bastard child of FTP and HTTP.

Re:"FTT"P sounds like...

[ezzewezza]

those aren't eyes, those are tees.

Monthly Bandwidth Limit

[umrgregg]

Does Verizon throttle your connection if you use a certain ammount of bandwidth a month? I ask because I can see subscribers hitting any limits fairly quickly with 15Mbit/s. pr0n servers beware.

A note to everyone:

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

This FTTP setup sounds great - but realise they're talking about fiber to the *HOME*. You want business usage? Static IP? Be prepared to pay out the @$$ for it just like with any other business ISP.

going to smoke cable

[havaloc]

Let's face it, cable companies can offer one thing that the phone companies can't, and that's television. If this FTTP thing works out, things are going to be great. More choices is always a good thing. If they build their own fiber, they won't have to share, which I think is one of the things that are holding things back. I realize that regulation got us into this mess, but it's time that the phone companies grow up and do something about it, instead of whining about it.

How much for a static IP?

[sonofagunn]

As a Tampa-area resident I am stoked. I just hope they can offer static IPs for a price competitive with RoadRunner's cable-modem static IP ($60).

Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[Anomalous Canard]

First, I don't like this bundling of services. I want lockin in one area to constrain my choice.

Verizon already restricts people using Verison DSL. SMTP traffic is filtered unless it goes through their server and if it does go through their server, you can only use a verison.net email address.

Plus Verizon is the local telephone monopoly in this area, I don't want to voluntarially give additionnal business to any monopoly. They've sucessfully challanged the law which requires them to share their wires with competitors.

So, while FTTH is an excellent idea, bundling it with a lot of services I don;t need isn't.

We need a regulated monopoly to bring IP to the home and then allow companies to compete in providing services over that wire. The regulated monopoly *must not* be allowed to compete in ancillary services.

Re:Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[Mistah Blue]

My personal opinion is that deregulating any sort of utility is bad. This includes the breakup of AT&T, electric deregulation, airline deregulation, etc. All of these companies price to the point where they are eating their young, so to speak. Are we really any better off? And before you go ranting about airline deregulation, my point of view is the weekly business traveler. I don't care about discount rates (although my company does to an extent) because all of my travel is to customer premises where I have to be there at a specific time (so I normally book full fare). I would rather have airelines that are financially healthy, and not cutting service to the bone.

Re:Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[athakur999]

I have Verizon DSL in Dallas, and I have no such restriction on outgoing SMTP, so that seems to be a regional thing. I also use DHCP instead of PPPoE.

Re:Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[Moofie]

So as long as your needs are being met, the rest of us can go fuck off?

I would rather have airlines that have to compete in a marketplace, evolving their business models to the most efficient ones possible. That's what a free market is for.

Airlines aren't de-regulated. You're not allowed to fly from Love Field on Southwest to a state not contiguous with Texas, because of a thirty year old law against healthy airline competition.

I say if American Airlines is in such bad financial straits, let Southwest take them over and run them profitably.

Re:Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[mattkime]

I'm in verizon country and I have MCI for local phone service instead. I also have DSL through MCI. Both have been excellent despite Verizon being responsible for the line.

Re:Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[renehollan]

Verizon already restricts people using Verison DSL. SMTP traffic is filtered unless it goes through their server and if it does go through their server, you can only use a verison.net email address.

This is misleading. I have Verizon service (POTS and DSL) in Monroe, WA, and they don't touch my traffic and don't give a fig about what servers I run.

See I have DSL service from Verizon, but they are not my ISP, so I don't have to put up with assanine ToS. I get my internet connectivity from blarg.net. Verizon just provides the backhaul from the DSLAM to Blarg! And, to their credit, Blarg! doesn't use MTU-mangling PPPoE. Just one long virtual circuit private "electonic highway" onramp for me (well, a dedicated lane on that onramp, if you really want to push the analogy -- work with me here :-)). My "always on" connection is very much always on.

Verizon sucks rotten eggs, as far as serivce is concerned (took 'em forever to acknowledge that, yes, I had an international long distance plan, and no, my calls to Canuckistan were not to be billed at $0.75/minute), but I'm stuck with them as a telco. So, I subscribe to what little I can. In this case, that means just the data pipe from me to my ISP.

There is a bit of a downside, of course, and that is price. But, it is not unreasonable: instead of some $30 a month for neutered dynamic IP access, I pay them closer to $40 a month just for the pipe and another $35 a month or so to Blarg!. Static IP? No problem (well, it costs a bit extra, included in the above price). NATed hosts? No problem. Inbound SMTP? No problem (but don't relay please: the IP address is ours and we like to keep a clean anti-SPAM reputation). Inbound telnet? Hey, it's your security, do what you want. Sure. Inbound HTTP? It's your box you're Slashdotting, not ours.

Now, of course, there are a few things I shouldn't do that'd hurt Blarg!, like run a busy site at the end of a DSL link, but those kinds of things would be bad to me too. Still, no one is going to cut me off for opening up port 80 for a day or two of private testing.

So, yeah, sure, sell me a fatter cheaper pipe Verizon. If all you can do with a modest degree of competence is sell pipes, do that.

sounds good...

[aberant]

Having done tech support for ADSL i'm always hesitant about phone companies offering new technology. I wonder how long after someone gets it, that they realize all the hidden fees and other random charges making it much more then advertised. But then again, with all that dark fiber lying around allready, who knows? I'll still prolly sign up for it if i can to avoid that silly upstream cap on cable modems.. 8)

they could add p2p...

[jpellino]

so you could use p2p with ftp and http and call it "pffft"!

Why does stuff go to middle of Noplace first?

[haplo21112]

Why is it that Cable and Telcos always luanch these things in the middle of No place...

Wouldn't make more sense to launch it in MA where nearly the entire Easteren half of the state is sreaming for this kind of thing... or in the Valley In CA...

Tech savay places that could really take advanage of things like this...

Re:Why does stuff go to middle of Noplace first?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Why is it that Cable and Telcos always luanch these things in the middle of No place...

When the inevitable FUBARs happen, there are less pissed off people and less stuff to fix. Then when they've worked out the deployment bugs, they can try a larger market.

Re:Why does stuff go to middle of Noplace first?

[Kentamanos]

Just FYI, Keller is not in the middle of nowhere. It's a pretty nice suburb in the D/FW (Dallas/Fort Worth) metroplex. Based upon the average income of the area, I'd say it's a pretty good idea to try it there.

There's a lot of tech types who live out there (who work in Dallas, etc.), so they probably figured that makes it a nice place to start as well due to demand.

Re:Why does stuff go to middle of Noplace first?

[dragmorp]

Noplace?

Tampa bay has very high population density (Pinellas county being one of the most densly populated areas in the country). A small geographic rollout will be able to service a very large population of people.

I am sure that Tampa has lower regulatory overhead than other large population centers like New York, etc.

We were one of the first areas to get cable modems as well (Road runner) for this reason.

Re:Why does stuff go to middle of Noplace first?

[ffejie]

Verizon had to roll this out in "nowhere" Keller TX because of regulation laws. They wanted their first roll out to be out of their landline footprint so they wouldn't get tangled up with the FCC too much. However, Hopkinton MA (eastern MA - home of EMC) is one of the top 10 towns on the list (also, in VZ Footprint), and so is most of So Cal. Expect it in the 150 biggest markets in 8~12 months, or so says the buzz.

FTTP

[vxvxvxvx]

2x the transport of FTP

Re:Article text for the lazy

[akeyes]

Darn! For once I read the article, then read the first post.

Last time I do that.

Bandwidth is unnecessary for 1 way connections

[vijayiyer]

I'm sure that they'll have clauses that it's for entertainment only and give you a dynamic IP with most ports blocked. What's the use of that kind of bandwidth then? I'd rather get 1.5 mbps from a place like Speakeasy which allows me to get work done. (Note: Not a plug, not even a happy customer - more of a customer-to-be)

Fine Print..

[asdfasdfasdfasdf]

It's all well and good until you read
A 2mbps to 5mbps Fios connection will cost $35
towards the end of the article. It's not exactly $1 per mbps.

Still, exciting.. More competition is good. Lets hope the upstream capabilites are very good as well.

Re:Article text for the lazy

[gcaseye6677]

If they do things correctly, they can offer television packages that give customers a real choice, as opposed to the cable monopoly. For example, have a no-ESPN package that costs significantly less than standard cable. Google on ESPN and cable TV for more info on how ESPN is the single most expensive channel on your cable bill. Then it will be possible to get a decent TV package for less than $50 a month. Whatever they do, it's about time somebody breaks up the Comcast monopoly over cable TV in most of the US.

Pricing

[Mistah Blue]

I'd be curious what the uplink speed is. I pay about $50/month for Comcast cable. This price includes all taxes and a fee for a separate bill (from my cable) so I can expense it. My speed is 3Mbps/256Kbps. So, it is definitely competitve if it is an async type connection, and very competitive if it a sync type connection.

I'll never see broadband out in East Bumble.

[TwoPumpChump]

It's all well and good that Verizon is offering Yet Another last-mile solution, but for us insensitive clods out in the rural areas, we'll still never see any of it in our lifetimes. I live right on the border of two counties, which do not share some sort of necessary agreement to share cable providers. (I don't know the details other than Comcast telling me "We can't cross that line.") But all my other lines (Power, phone) come in from the adjacent county because there is no right-of-way cut alongside the road coming in from county I actually live in. So I'm stuck in some sort of mythical no-man's land of can't-get-cable, can't-get-DSL and I know ain't no way in hell Verizon or anyone else will ever lay cable out to us rural folks. What Verizon needs to push is not this damn fiber that'll only be deployed in the major cities and 'burbs, but their own wireless broadband option which could work anywhere. (And while I'm complaining, make it competative to DSL in pricing, at least.)

Re:Article text for the lazy

[nelsonal]

The problem with that is that cable companies would each have to charge considerably more (ESPN gets about $2/mo from everyone others get up to $1 or so CSPAN and the house version get about a nickel). They survive with pricing like that because the cable company bundles them together. With full ala carte pricing ESPN would be one of the cheaper channels (due to it's higher popularity) and niche channels would probably be more like $5-$10 each. Meaning that you could only pay for the channels you watch but you would still pay $50 per month.

Did I miss something?

[Pii]

How come everyone in this thread is under the impression that this is an Asymmetric connection?

I read the article, and don't remember seeing anything that implied to difference between upload and download speeds.

Is there any reason to believe that this isn't a plain old 30Mbps pipe? (2/3rds of a DS3?)

Further, it there any reason to believe that this will be anything other than FastEthernet over fiber, with some rate limiting?

Re:Did I miss something?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Could be because every time a service provider has come out with a "better, more powerful" connection, that's the way it has been? History, and all of that sort of thing.

What's going on here is that they want to attract more consumer business, not cut into business business. The average consumer is not interested in high uplink rate, because what they are doing is downloading (pr0n?).

This is intended as a consumer product, to get consumer accounts. If it is used on the business side, you can assume because of past practices, that the uplink rate will be reflected in the cost.

Not any time soon...

[SuperBanana]

Either way, I am looking forward to it.

Don't get too excited. It's only coming to one town in Texas, then California, then Florida- and "2005" was in there somewhere- and rarely do those dates, especially when given that vaguely- mean anything. It most likely won't hit most major population centers until several years later, if at all; fiber gear is even more expensive than DSL gear, and with the US's low population density, even less likely to be profitable.

This is what I like to call a Trophy Rollout. DSL was the same way for me; I live about 25 minutes west of Boston, next to one of the richest communities in the state(thanks to all the execs, doctors, lawyers etc from Boston living there), but because AT&T Cable is in town, Verizon didn't want to compete against them, or they had a gentleman's agreement- but our CO has been wired for at least 4 years for DSL. We also don't have a choice in cable companies- it's cable, or satellite.

Within the last year or two, Verizon is finally offering service- but ONE plan, and no other ISPs save Verizon are offering service. 1.2Mbps/128kBit. Yes, 128kBit upload. Ie, useless for "sharing photos" or "sending files to work" etc. All this costs MORE than 3Mbit/384kBit offered by AT&T, which Verizon makes up for by marketing as "a line you don't share with all your neighbors." Sorry, but AT&T actually has plenty of capacity now, and I routinely get things like OS X software updates -at- 3Mbit/sec, on the dot(a friend and I theorize they set the cap a teensy bit over 3Mbit to account for protocol overhead). Yay, wonderful- except AT&T is draconian with their acceptable use policy, and can't keep their mail servers up worth a damn.

If I lived ONE town over, Framingham, for example- I could have my choice among about 5 different major providers/subproviders, including Speakeasy, Covad, Megapath, and a couple of Worcester based ISPs..and about 10 different residential and business rates.

How sad is it that I live right next door to the technology center of the east, but I have next to no choice in high speed internet access?

Re:Not any time soon...

[jrmann1999]

It's coming to Keller TX . As we speak they are pushing conduit down my street.

Re:Not any time soon...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only coming to one town in Texas, then California, then Florida

YEAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Re:Not any time soon...

[Hitmen]

Wow, that really sucks. I live in Framingham, and it was nice to have so many options, but actually making the choice is a bitch when it comes down to it. So far I've been really happy with RCN's service over the past few years though. 5Mbps(which they upgraded me to for free from the 3Mbps service when they rolled out the 5Mbps one)/800kbps for a reasonable price.... I'd suggest moving one town over.

Re:Not any time soon...

[SlamMan]

I'm a freelance photographer. 128K up hurts.

Some more details

[spludge]

http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/r elease.vtml?id=86053&PROACTIVE_ID=cecdcacdc7cdcbc6 cdc5cecfcfcfc5cececacccccac9c8cfc8c5cf

5 Mbps down /2 Mbps up for $34.95 a month as part of a calling package or $39.95 a month stand-alone.

15 Mbps down/2 Mbps up for $44.95 a month as part of a calling package or $49.95 a month stand-alone.

30 Mbps down/5 Mbps up , pricing will be announced at a later date.

Next stops on the rollout after Keller, TX (which is already rolled out) are Huntington beach, CA and Tampa, FL.

Finally....

[Tree131]

I've been waiting for this for so long and it's finally here!!!

Pr()n at the speed of light... literally!!!

Thats not the future, thats the present.

[tgd]

My parents have had that in their development in Scottsdale, AZ, since the day the development opened.

And it sucks. Badly. Its a fiberoptic line running into their house. Phone, TV and internet come off it.

There's no option for any service other than that, nothing else was installed there. The problem is the telco they use is bankrupt, and hasn't upgraded anything in five years, so they've got horrid picture quality on TV since its all poorly compressed, comparably low bitrate digital, the internet is spotty, and they have the honor of paying for it all even if they choose to get satellite.

Re:Thats not the future, thats the present.

[Carnildo]

Sounds to me like the problem isn't the FTTH. I think the problem is the bankrupt telco.

Too Bad Verizon is Evil? You pay for the fiber!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

First, I don't like this bundling of services. I want lockin in one area to constrain my choice.

Yes of course. This is obvious. But remember that Verizon is out there as a publicly traded company to make money. So while "lockin" may not be so hot for you if you like to shop a la carte, it is a necessary evil if you want to big for-profit company to pay for the infrastructure.

FTTP vs. FTTH

[Doc Ruby]

Verizon promises Fiber to the Premises, while many in the broadband biz talk about Fiber to the Home. The difference is unclear. But here in New York City, the literal premises could be one of our millions of multihome premises, some of which house thousands of homes. FTTP of 30Mbps shared by more than 10 homes, which is common even in the ubiquitous 5-storey apartment buildings, would offer the same bandwidth per home as the current cablemodem service of 3Mbps. Some premises might get a fiber bundle, but there's no guarantee. So cablemodem service seems likely to remain competitive, at least for a while.

Re:FTTP vs. FTTH

[ffejie]

Well the truth is that FTTP does about 625 Mbps but VZ is splitting it over 10 homes or so. As a result, everyone can get up to 60 Mbps (when they need to roll out that service). In New York where there are large scale apartment buildings, expect a ton of fiber to be laid to the building, to keep the ratio correct. Verizon's dream here is to do television offerings, not match current cable bandwidth. If they want to stream HD Feeds (which they do) then they're going to need at least 10 Mbps to that one TV, plus whatever you need for internet. If I lived in a metropolis, I would be itching for this stuff. And with any luck, I'll be moving in a year to Boston.

How do you spell "NO!" ???

[Sparkle]

I have only been trying for 4 or 5 years to get something better than POTS from Verizon. Live in service area of a CO that is one outside of Austin metro. Answer?

No, no, no! No DSL, no ISDN, just forget it. I will be taking my eternal dirt nap before Verizon brings me any fiber.

Deployment in Massachusetts

[Willy K.]

On Friday morning, I was leaving my house, headed to work. I noticed that some contractors were digging up the phone pedestal on my lawn next to the sidewalk. I stopped to interrogate them, being a good paranoid Slashdotter.

They said they were prepping the street for Verizon to come in and lay fiber. Now I live in North Reading, and this guy claimed that mine is the first town in the state to be getting Fiber to the home. He claimed that they would be offering service in my area before the end of the year.

Needless to say, I'm very excited. With prices like that, I'll definitely switch from Comcast. I like Comcast, but I like bandwidth more, especially upload, since I work remotely and host a few small websites from my home.

Re:Inducement of copyright infringement?

[Fareq]

Ok, I'll bite.

1: Large-scale distribution of material to which *I* own the copyright. Maybe I wrote a book, maybe I made a movie or a videogame, or maybe I wrote some usefull piece of software.

2: Large-scale distribution of copyright material with the express permission of the copyright holder(s). (for instance, Linux ISOs)

3: High-Speed distribution of files from my computer at home to other computers around the world (kind of like an external hard drive that I dont have to carry).

4: Downloading something that I just bought (software, in the future perhaps a movie) in seconds instead of minutes/hours.

5: Downloading something free in seconds/minutes instead of hours (Linux ISOs, patches & updates for various software applications)

6: Network no longer a consideration or limitation in the implementation of video games, this also decreases the need to waste CPU power compressing & reformatting the data for network transmission.

7: Set up a media streaming service that allows me to watch any movie or listen to any song that I own from anywhere around the world (authentication required so that its only me)

8: Run permanent servers for all your favorite games all at the same time (one or two per computer, times how ever many computers you have)

9: Infinitely many fascinating new uses for global-scale networks that nobody ever thought of because the amount of data generated was so absurd that it was dismissed as "try again in 2150"

10: Really interesting new types of distributed computing, such as the SETI project, which can have individual machines on the network communicate with each other during processing. It will now be possible to send both to the initiating server and to other clients, large quantities of data generated from whatever the current "work unit" is.

11: Name anything that a business might want with high-speed internet service, add the words "home-based" in front of the word "business"

12: This message would post to slashdot in nanoseconds instead of milliseconds, or something like that.

I need to get back to work, so I will leave this list off here, but if I had to I could go on.

I'm dead serious about this too... It'd be really cool to have my external hard drives with me wherever I go without having to lug 7 pounds of crap with me, just because I have 200 GB of stuff that I might want. Just because people would use the item to commit crimes does not mean that it is a criminal device.

Consider: A crowbar is used for more than just theft.

A gun is used for more than just murder.

A camera/photocopier/scanner/printer/... is used for more than juist making illegal copies of printed materials.

A computer is used for more than copyright infringement.

The internet is used for more than copyright infringement. In fact, it is used for legitimate businesses all the time. (see Amazon.com, or iTunes Music Store, or eBay, or ...)

</rant>

-- Fareq

Just called

[jarito030507]

I just called my local Verizon office and they really had very little idea of what I was talking about. The manager told me that it would be available in a month or two and put me on a waiting list to be called when the order was available. This is in Bethlehem, PA. No more information about the pricing or upload or anything, though.

Re:Just called

[LinuxHam]

YARDLEY!?!?!? Me too! My development off Heacock can *never* get DSL b/c they ran fiber from the CO by the duck pond to our distribution point and then copper to the units. The Verizon CSR suggested that I walk up to the Verizon truck with a $20 bill (or a sandwich) if I see some guys working and ask them to try to track down any unused pairs that may have been run straight thru for some now-unused ISDN.

I didn't need the $20 when I asked, but the guys couldn't find any pairs. My Comcast cablemodem has been doing fine for a couple years now, and work pays for it. Is that your Saturn I've seen around town with all the /. stickers all over it?

Re:Just called

[jratcliffe]

Initial trials are in Keller TX, Huntington Beach CA, and Tampa FL. They didn't say aye or nay on doing anything in PA this year on the conference call, but they did say that NJ will _not_ be included this year. Looks like they're starting out with the old GTE properties, since there are fewer potential regulatory entanglements there.

Property prices

[catalupus]

I can't help wandering how this sort of connection will start effecting house prices, ie cheaper areas in a town because they are without Broadband. Incidentally, I live in Campbell - next door to San Jose, as in Silicon Valley, and I can't even get DSL or Cable modem. Dial up speed is about 28k, and it's not my modem - that gets 48k at work.

To put it in more useful units...

[LesPaul75]

30 Mbps is like having a hundred thousand 300 baud modems!

Hmmm... You know, that's actually an interesting milestone. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was actually using a 300 baud modem. This is a five-orders-of-magnitude increase in something like a decade and a half.

Advantage: CA

[gphinch]

So we get nice weather, beautiful beaches, hot women, AND FTTP? Suckers!

long distance

[zogger]

why break them up? Because when they were monopolies they got to be price gougers and slowed way down on the innovations and upgrades and just wallowed around in profit slop for years, and masses of people complained about it, and finally they got broken up. I remember paying at and t LD rates , sheesh o rama, you didn't talk long to grandma, tell ya whut... you didn't own your own phone either, you leased it from your telco, and paid it off over and over again for years. Electric deregulation, no idea, I never saw it go down ever, just gradually goes up. I don't think it was really deregulated, I think they just made it easier for hordes of new middle men commodity trader skimmers to cut out lucrative slices of it. City gas, don't use it,I use propane and get it in the summer when it's cheaper. Last I used natgas in a house it was allegedly deregulated,so I checked out the so called competition, and all the prices were almost identical, there was no practical difference that I could see so I stayed with the same company.

As to airlines, I don't have to fly really, last time I flew was a long time ago, like 10 years and I (would potentially) boycott them now since 9-11 turned everyone in the nation but the government (the real crooks) into a terrorist. I am not digging on "you are guilty by default" by those bozos, just the thought of it is abhorrent, the airlines and big bro can byte me, I'll drive. I know some people like ya'all and other business folks *must* fly, oh well, guess that's what you will put up with then. I thought by now everyone would be telecommuting anyway, maybe this fiber to the house idea will catch on and a lot more people will do that. I'll certainly get it if it ever shows up. I know my local phone guys told me (a few months ago when I had POTS installed) there's fiber all the way to the nearest switch box, so I asked them when they were going to offer it to the individual homes down the road,because I was interested in broadband, they said "never, no way, unless they are ordered to by the government". And dsl is out, too far away and they have all the twisted pairs maxed out, I don't know the nitty gritty tech details, something about they "share" the lines or something because of the new houses down the street. So I got fiber a bit over two miles away, and my chances of getting any broadband will be wireless or wireless, that's it.

Point is moot anyway,back to the airlines, we are *one* unpredictable wildcard event away from airline travel being too costly for all but the government and ultra rich. It wouldn't take much for oil to get to 100-150$ a barrel, just another random war (probably happen whenever we provoke iran enough for the next war to start) in the mideast or some massive domestic terrorist deal happening. Probably happen late summer or early fall is my best guess at this point.

Thinking about it,just your situation in general,as it applies to everyone who know travels with the airlines a lot for business, it *might* be a good idea to develop a non travel work around for it "now", as a backup solution so you don't have to scramble to create if something weird hits.

Cynical point of view

[Captain Spam]

Cute press release. I'm waiting for the press release stating their equally enticing terms of service. Like stating you can't host any sorts of servers, they'll cut you off if you're downloading too much, all your privacy are belong to Verizon, etc...

In this case, I take the cynical point of view that, for the power user or system administrator (so, most of the reading audience at Slashdot), it'll turn out to be little more than a speed benchmark. I'd rather hear what you're allowed to do with this line rather than just a speed and cost figure.

"Pedestal" perhaps?

[Migraineman]

"FTTP" used to mean Fiber To The Pedestal - the local distribution point for a community or apartment building. That was an architectural offshoot from things like SLC huts and buried distribution vaults. The "pedestal" architecture ties in to the Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) cost optimization. They run the expensive fiber to a distribution pedestal, then coax or twisted pair for the customer connection.

Granted, "premesis" makes it sound like it's coming right up to your doorstep. I'll bet there's a greasy marketing weasel behind the terminology selection.

Yet More Broadband I Can't Get

[merikus]

With all this talk of new and exciting broadband options available to us, I am still on a crappy dialup account (currently connecting at 31200 bps). I live in Vermont, on the side of a mountain, and not a single broadband provider has offered broadband to myself or my neighbors.

It seems silly to me that Verizon and other broadband providers are simply ignoring broad swaths of rural America. Yes, perhaps due to population density it doesn't seem so profitable. But I know quite a few people (including myself) who would jump at anything which is priced lower than satellite.

Much of rural America was simply ignored during the digital revolution. And there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

Bah.

Don't hold your breath

[CBob]

A few random grouchy points...

To quote Verizon " Verizon Online DSL Is Not Available" when my phone number is plugged in.

Fiber was run down my street 4 years ago and remains as accessable now as it was 5 years ago.

DSL is a vague 80's concept that has had "Great Promise" for all that time with almost no delivery. Anyone remember Popular Electronics?

Comcast took 4 years of "Coming Soon" and I knew it was online before the account reps did.

Comcast's initial success in this area of internet access nearly crushed it and did crush its zombie spawn/mate/??? @Home.

These firms seem to some survive despite thier best efforts not to. Verizon wanted to dump the "small" T1's in this area of NJ (AC-ish) just a few years ago. The co I work for promptly began looking for microwave links as a response.

Long term planning/plans? Don't expect that from any big biz today, they lack the ability to plan 90 days ahead, let alone a few years for a rollout.

Re:Quantum Leap?

[Eric Smith]

When you purchaes that lightning fast 2400 baud modem you were making a quantum leap from that clunky 300 baud modem because the speeds had been predetermined for you.

A switch from 300 bps to 2400 bps dialup modems does not qualify as a quantum leap, because the 300 bps was not an inherently fixed rate. The "300 baud" modems did not actually constrain the bit rate arbitrarily. They used Bell 103 FSK modulation, most commonly at rates of 110 and 300 baud, and less commonly at 134.5 and 450 baud. The modulator didn't care what the bit rate was, but if you raised it too high the demodulator wouldn't work. If you wanted to use the modem at 271.828 bps, it would work fine as long as the other end also wanted that bit rate.

Bell 202 FSK modulation did the same thing, typically at 1200 bps (half-duplex).

On the other hand, the 1200 bps full duplex modems (Bell 212, V.22) used synchronous PSK modulation, so they truly did have discrete bit rates. Technically they are 600 baud modems, with two bits per symbol.

A 2400 bps dialup modem (V.22bis modulation) is also only 600 baud, using QAM modulation with four bits per symbol (16 constellation points).

So a switch from a Bell 212 1200 bps modem to a V.22bis 2400 bps modem would meet your definition of a quantum leap.

Most higher-speed dialup modems other than "56K" also use QAM modulation, with a higher baud rate and more bits per symbol.

great service but what about caps...

[zxflash]

badnwidth limits could change my opinion about the service... i'd love to have the fiber but if you could theoretically drain your dl quota in a few days time the service isn't worth it... still, it's nice to see a company building out new infrastructure...

And the upstream will still be 300kbit..

[cbreaker]

Can't be running SERVERS now! That would be a bad little web surfer, yes it would. And make sure you renew your DHCP lease once every 10 minutes!

What about BPL?

[Ice Station Zebra]

What about BPL? Everything I read says BPL is going to save us. That it will even make the electrical grid more reliable. BPL? Anybody? Hello? (crikets chirping)