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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.
It's only as fast as the server you're connecting to...
ilovegeorgebush
Bittorrent.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
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.
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.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
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.
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.
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.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
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."
My page.
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?
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 $2 less for FiOS.
That's roughly what I pay for Comcast Internet at 3 meg down and 250K up. As a bonus, they protect you from Media Sentry and RIAA lawsuits by preventing them from downloading anything from you as evidence. Unfortunately, nobody else can download from you either. Your torrent uploads are mostly limited to 0.0K for max transfer sizes of about 0.1 Meg. I guess it's hard to be sued if you don't upload and provide evidence of sharing. I got Gutsy on a torrent and my DL was over 600 meg of data. My upload to support others was 0.1 meg.
I'll be glad when serious competition shows up here.
The truth shall set you free!
I'd like to share my experience with a similar service I've been using since year 2000 in Italy. I have a symmetrical 10 Mbits fiber optic connection from Fastweb http://www.fastweb.it/. Their offers that can compare to the Verizon one range in the 50-60 Euros per month, so Verizon is definitely cheaper. :-) but otherwise I'd have waited some month and read what the other customers said.
The question somebody asked, directly or unspoken, in this forum is: do you really get all that speed? In my case the answer is yes. I FTP at 1000 kB/s (kilobytes) with the other guys in the Fastweb network and it's common to download files at more than 400 kB/s from US servers. CDNs usually bring that figure in the 700-900 kB/s range. That bandwidth isn't guaranteed by the contract but it never shrunk noticeably in these eight years, despite the fact that the customer base grew 100 times or more. On the other side, none of the 10 or 20 Mb/s ADSL connections I saw here in Italy (with other ISPs) were faster than one tenth of their nominal bandwidth, when downloading files from the same services I use.
So, if you trust your provider to invest in its interconnection with the Internet at large, those 65$ 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
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.
Cable companies aren't in a position to match this capability.
I doubt Verizon really is either, but it sure sounds good.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.....
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.
I was once a horse.
SlashdotUser: I'd like the 20/20 symmetrical Fiber Optic Service
VerizonOperator: Sorry, we don't offer vision plans sir.
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).
20918 kb/s up, 8181 kb/s down