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Verizon Speeds Up FiOS To 150Mbps
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."
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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I've had 35/35 for a while, and I could have 50/50 if I wanted to pay another $30/mo for it.
If speeds don't scale like I think they do, then someone explain it to me please.
In Japan they pay like $40 for 100 Mbps. As usual the US is so far behind it's not even funny.
Now if only I could get 19$/month gigabit ethernet into my house like my boss's mother in South Korea. I know the country is a fraction of our size, but honestly our lackidasical approach to increasing bandwidth is infuriating.
with FIOS. jsut saying
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?
I have 1.5/384 because I don't want to pay a bunch for internet. $30/month is pretty much my price limit.
Gone!
$195 per month ? That's WAY too much.
Move to Romania:
http://www.ilink.ro/rezidential/internet/
100/100 mbps 70 Lei/month =~ $20/month
or even cheaper:
http://www.rcs-rds.ro/internet-digi-net/fiberlink/pachete
100/100 Mbps 39 Lei/Month =~ $12/month
And there's no transfer cap.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Pity about the continuation of the 20th century pricing. I live in Japan and my 1GB fiber costs me $20 a month.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
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.
That is what my Verizon router reports as the WAN link speeds on each reboot.
Looks like those FIOS connections have always had a bit of headroom built in for higher tiers.
Why can't we be as fast as South Korea?
What's the big hold up?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Verizon FIOS has nothing on "Fi-Internet" in Chattanooga, TN. 1000 Mbps to your house for $350/month.
https://epbfi.com/internet/
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
$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.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Projected date of availability at my locale: Never
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.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
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 . . .?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
wet my pants.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I honestly can't believe that people bitch about paying $200 a month for speed comparable to an OC3 ($20k/month).
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Ironically, living in the Research Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham, Cary, NC) means some of the slowest choices available for home internet access. There are some places that can get AT&T Uverse here, but otherwise it is all DSL or Cable. I would definitely sign up for this access if I could get it. Then again, Time Warner cable has been buying legislators to pass laws restricting municipal broadband plans like the recent one in Wilson, NC.
help fill in hidden movie endings @ End of the Credits
Why do we still have such a huge disparity between up and down speeds? Is this helping to destroy the end to end nature of the internet that made it so successful? Discuss...
I was an early adopter of FiOS in 2006. Had the 5/2 plan for $29.99. Since then the price has slowly increased. Last year they doubled by download speed and started charging me $49.99 for 10/2. If I had it to do over again, I'd have stuck with DSL. I don't need anything faster than 5/2. Now I'm stuck with a minimum price of $50/month. Lame.
Because in most other advanced countries, those speeds would run you a quarter that price or less.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
With a connection like that it's about latency, not just pure speed. Also you usually get an SLA. Not so with residential FiOS.
i'd much rather they work on availablity than speed.
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)
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.
OC3 is unlimited, guaranteed, bidirectional 155Mb/s...
FIOS is... Well... Not.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
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 disposable income lying around.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
isn't this the company that threatened if their customers used their internet too much he would "hunt down and throttle them"?
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 Internet for everything else.
3) Uploading stuff to client FTP sites would be orders of magnitude faster.
4) software distribution would be faster thus people would do it more.
Nobody will be saturating their Internet, but the fact that everybody will be able to burst to speeds approximating that of a LAN will open many new doors and enable things that were not feasable before. I don't understand what is so hard to imagine about that.
Which I already addressed in my first comment.
Why don't high density American cities have cheap superfast connections?
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.
Probably because with that $20 thousand dollar connection, you actually get the speed. But with the home internet services, you get a burst of speed and then you get slowed down or cut off altogether. You're getting charged hundreds of dollars for a connection that flakes out.
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 the issue is not Verizon's speed, but that of the junk on Netflix's end. Netflix currently doesn't have the capacity to serve the number of subscribers using instant view. Especially now, with the growing number of net-enabled TVs, set top boxes, and blu-ray players it's you'll get freezes and grainy/jumpy pictures during peak hours. They plan to move to provider that'll be able to give them more throughput in the near future. I hope it's damned soon.
Most countries offering 1GB to the home have 4M people in an area the size of Most Small towns in Canada or the States. Most of it is population Density. Not to mention other countries anti monopoly laws or customer protection laws. Some countries have been known to sue Apple or MS or even outright ban GSM locking of cel phones. Some countries believe consumers have rights. Until USA and Canada do the same we will never see "fair pricing" we will see "fair market value" which means whatever they think the market will handle not what the reasonable price for service is
I honestly cant believe that people bitch about paying $200.00 a month for PROMISED speeds comparable to an OC3, with throttling and bandwidth caps as well as a raft full of conditions that are NOT on a OC3.
There, I fixed that for you.
Honestly, it's a marketing gimmick. An OC3 is a specified bandwidth I can saturate 24/7/365/1000 That OC3 has 150meg UP and DOWN. No bandwidth caps, no ports blocked, no throttling, etc.....
Plus, if you think that slashdot will load faster on 150M compared to even a 768K entry DSL, then you need an education about the internet. 99% of where I surf and bandwidth I use, this includes Netflix HD streaming movies, uses less than 3mbit.. I upgraded to 7.5Mbit and saw NO difference on anything but bittorrent downloads. Most of the internet is slow as hell, a faster pipe to you will not make anything faster, it just makes it so you can do 10 things at a time at the same speeds.
Problem is, those that can afford this tier typically do not use it at all.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I admit...It would only be geek bragging rights for me. I couldn't justify $200 a month, but if I had a roommate/neighbor willing to split it with me I'd think about it. Yes, disposable income is awesome.
I can get 720p HD movies off newsgroups in around 25-35 minutes on my 20mbit (goes up to 25 at times) connection. Sweet Jeebus how fast would they go if it was anywhere near 150.But that's blatantly just for bragging rights. As it stands it doesn't bother me to fire up newsleecher before I go to work and have it all by the time I get home. Of course, that is a completely illegitimate reason
Now you are trolling
Disagreeing with you != trolling
I'll pull this out of my ass but most of us are lucky to get above 3mbit.
You are pulling that out of your ass. Most cable providers would laugh at that speed. Granted, not everyone can get cable, but MOST people can. Around these parts the only people who are limited to DSL are those out in the rural sticks and they are frankly happy to have access to that comparatively slow DSL because it beats dial-up and satellite.
Here in Seattle, I can't get more though DSL.
Switch to cable then. A properly designed DOCSIS network is always going to be able to provide more bandwidth than DSL, unless you are lucky enough to live across the street from the DSLAM.
better VPN into work. It would be quicker to check the source code repository out.
If you need a 150mbit/s VPN then your employer should be paying for your connection.
The rest of your points are actually valid, but still not worth $200/mo, at least IMHO. If you want to blow that much money on an internet connection be my guest but I'm not seeing the value there. To each their own I suppose :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Netflix HD works great on a 3Mbit DSL connection.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why don't high density American cities have cheap superfast connections?
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.
The Boston - DC corridor is roughly the size of a European country, and every bit as densely populated. So why don't we have high quality, low-cost broadband there? Yours is a good argument for why we don't have good, cheap broadband in Bismark, ND. For Boston-New York-Philly-DC... not so much.
And the world's slowest DNS servers. I have FIOS, and I love my throughput. But it's only usable part of the time because the router is constantly dropping connections or requiring reboots, and the dns servers require several seconds for one lookup. I know there are workarounds for this, but Jesus, how about fixing these problems instead of focusing on raw speed?
If we followed this argument earlier in the 20th century, much of the US would still not even have electricity service. In the 21st century, not having low-cost, reliable, quality internet service is just as big a handicap - it seriously affects our national competitiveness. While I'm not sure that the GP post is the right solution, at the very least the government should be encouraging the development of internet cooperatives in underserved areas... not, as now, shutting down such organizations at the behest of Verizon, et al.
Quick search for OC3 will return ISPs that charge $10k-20k per month plus data fees which are per GB.
I'm not sure "unlimited" fits.
Neither I, nor a single person I know that wanted it has ever had FIOS; Verizon always says it won't be available for six months. This has been for years, since they first announced it. And I'm not in the boonies, I live near Boston. If I didn't hear tell of people that actually have FIOS, I wouldn't think it exists, but is rather some elaborate joke. Maybe they got a deal from regulators for their "ambitious" plan, took the money, and then only delivered to a very limited number of customers.
>> Because in most other advanced countries
And a few not so advanced countries. Actually , "not so advanced" would be taking it lightly.
Romania is still under recession , has some of the worst possible education and healthcare systems and the entire economical sphere is built on derailed socialist values (ie: prices increase on holiday instead of decreasing due to more sales , natural gas and petrol have some of the highest prices in the EU , basically everybody thinks ripping everybody off will actually benefit them)
Yet still we have one of THE BEST wan networks around , almost all cities are covered with FTTB , 100mbps for everybody @ 20$/month.
What's your excuse now USA ?
This is a true statement, but when you read slashdot posts, this is what people expect out of a residential internet connection, even though this expectation just isn't realistic. "zOMG, Comcast is throttling teh bittorrentz!!!!11one" is a common refrain, and we hear about how over subscription is immoral, should be illegal, etc.
Take away these limitations, though, and you're left with the idea that people want the performance and class of service of an enterprise grade circuit, and want to pay peanuts for it. I stand by my statement above: I cannot understand why people find this "expensive."
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Even here, there are better deals. I'm in a small town in Iowa where $70/mo gets you 100 mbit up and down.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Ehmm... Verizon had been offering the amazing top speed of 3mbit to our company for $80/month in the middle of Manhattan until recently (we relocated, so I don't know if they managed to get Fios over). For years it was the fastest we could buy at any price (5Mbit/384 cable alternative was actually slower, T1 was much more expensive for slower download). Then, 1-2 years ago, I see Speakeasy is offering "up to 12Mbit" adsl2+ in our area. I call them up and they would not guarantee speeds of course (they said we were at an average distance and it would depend on our building since we were on a high rise) and wanted $160/month (note I asked for residential rate, but it included static IP - they offered no dynamic) for the CHANCE to get something faster than 3mbit (potentially, if the stars align apparently, up to 12).
So IF you can get 150Mbps at $195 it sounds to me like an amazing deal for the US - those who need it will gladly pay.
Now if you compare to other countries it might feel steep, but again for the US you should not complain.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
The triangle isn't Raleigh, Durham, Cary...it's NC State, Duke University, and Chapel Hill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle
I want unfiltered ports. I run a small family website and home mail server, and have to jump through all these stupid hacks to get stuff to work. Verizon, I'll take even 1 Mbps if you give me raw access. Be a utility provider, not a content provider please.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Yeh but is it unrestricted? I bet you they are blocking ports or in the T&C's they are blocking you for running home servers etc. I use Time Warner (NYC) and they have never flagged my email or web servers running on my servers at home on the end of my cable service.
You do not know the meaning of the word "pain" if you never attempted to get ISDN hooked up. The approximate timeline: sometime in the mid-90's ISDN became available in my area. The company involved was GTE (now absorbed into Verizon). It took me at least 5 or 6 calls over a period of a week or so before I could even find someone at GTE who knew what ISDN was, then some transferring around before I finally got to someone who could actually sell me the service. So we set a date to get the ISDN "modem" installed and service turned on. The earliest available date was in like 25 days, and they couldn't specify the time at all - I had to take the entire day off work. So I wait around all day, the installer never shows.
I place an irate "WTF?" call to GTE the next day. More transferring around to find someone who has the first clue about what's going on. Finally, get the "we're so sorry" routine, and they reschedule. In another month. Grrr. So on the appointed day I take another day off, and the installers actually show up. I bring them up to the office where I need the outlet. They begin tinkering around, I go off to do other stuff around the house. I'm in the kitchen doing something, I hear them coming downstairs. They go out the front door. I went to the door to see what was up, and they're driving off! Go up to the office, and there's a chit with instructions on using the service and a completed service ticket. Try to follow the instructions. Needless to say, the service is not working.
Another irate phone call to GTE. They claim the guys couldn't find me so they left. Rather than get into an argument about that, I ask for a service call to get it fixed. Which it turns out can't be scheduled for another three weeks. So I wait impatiently for yet another three weeks, take yet another day off, and the service guy shows up. It turns out that the line is working fine, but the modem itself was dead. "I can't understand why this wasn't caught at installation - the installers are supposed to test the thing before they leave". My reply was that apparently a lot of things that were supposed to be happening, in fact, were not. So then I ask if he's got a replacement modem. "Oh, no, we're out of stock - they'll be back ordered for at least a month!".
So by this point I've been at this for almost three months already and I'm no closer to having "high-speed" service than when I started. And I'm looking at at least another month before it can be made functional. I called GTE the next day and cancelled the entire thing, as I had lost confidence they were ever going to be able to deliver. Luckily, Cox cable came out with high speed cable internet soon thereafter, so it became a moot point.
So, yeah, DSL rollout was a picnic compared to that. And (obligatory) you kids get off my lawn.
The point is the service they're delivering. I really don't care if my TV/phone/internet comes in over copper wires or glass ones. And I really have experienced Cox and Verizon competing very intensely for my business, which is both holding down the price and improving the service. I used Cox for many years, but Verizon recruited me very diligently, and when I ultimately switched to FiOS, Cox fell all over themselves trying to keep me.
Right. Overcharge one area so you can make another cheaper. Damn socialists. ;)
My broadband 100Mbps/100Mbps costs about US$19.00/month (It is actually cheaper if I include the signing rebate.) Verison is just an amazingly expensive service that perfectly fits world's richest country? :-)
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.
True. Also consider that there could be multiple users at home so they might need to do several of those things at the same time.
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.
Yes, low density areas exist. So? What about that fact prevents the Verizons of the world from offering high-speed, low-cost internet in high density areas? They're already providing the different categories of service - on the spectrum of dialup (rural)/DSL (or cable) (intermediate density)/FiOS (high density). The answer is that they can get away with high prices because there's insufficient competition and regulation.
I'm getting 50Mbps symmetric, including digital TV and VoIP for 57 euros a month here in NL :-)
Maybe people should bitch about $20k/month for OC3.
They dumped all the low density markets to Frontier......they took away some of our features, can't make others work correctly, and seem to just turn stuff off at random times for "unscheduled maintenance" I'd hapily pay to have Verizon back.
"We" are a big country
That's awesome. It's one thing to not be able to stack up to Japan. But to cite a former eastern block country as a benchmark to aspire to... ouch.
Everyone who is comparing to Japan or South Korea needs to STFU now. We know we're out-nerded by South Korea, but Romania... Fucking Romania! If you want to hit Americans with a punch to the ego or mess with their preconceptions, that's the one to use, at least until someone finds some superior figures from Uganda or something.
It's worse up here in Canada. In Toronto there are basically two ISPs, Bell (DSL) and Rogers (cable) and they charge ridiculously high rates. The speeds have improved in recent years (Rogers offers up to 50/2 Mbps for $99.99 with 175GB and Bell has 25/7 for $67.95 but with only a 60GB cap, $5 extra for 100GB, but the highest speeds are only in big cities.) Throttling of P2P is rampant and overage charges are high to encourage people to use Rogers and Bell TV services. Fiber to the home is unheard of. And don't get me started about our wireless data rates...
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-mandated through lack of oversight. I live in NYC, surrounded by the equivalent of one quarter of the entire UK population, and have, essentially, two options for broadband. I can either get Time Warner's offerings, or the offerings of a provider who pays Time Warner to use their lines, or I can have Verizon's offerings, or use a provider who leases Verizon's lines. That's it: two, in a place with an average of 27,000 people per square mile. And if I want a blazing 3 Mbps, I'd better be willing to dole out $50/month.
It's not about the tech, it's not about the density. It's about unregulated corporate greed. If you don't believe me, look at the outcry over even the idea of net neutrality.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
the fiber optic cable is used to join two tin cans together. To be charitable, it does have symmetric up/down speeds.
No, the real reason is that in most of these areas, the company - verizon, comcast, cox, etc - is a FUCKING MONOPOLY. In 90% of the US, you have your choice of either one ISP, or dialup, and that's it. In major metro areas, you might have a competition between the DSL guys and the local cable TV monopoly, but that's a fucking joke in itself since they all have side collusion agreements not to let their prices get too far apart.
No competition = no reason for prices to come down.
If the Democrats really cared about broadband penetration like they were lying about, they'd have crafted equal-access laws to force other carriers to be able to get into the market like they did for local and long-distance phone carriers ages ago. The fact that they haven't shows you just how much hot air they spew whenever they talk about it.
I'll pull this out of my ass but most of us are lucky to get above 3mbit.
You are pulling that out of your ass. Most cable providers would laugh at that speed.
Mine sure would. They have no plans to ever offer speeds that high.
I love the comment from the guy from Sweden.
Yep. Sweden is roughly equivalent in size to the US Eastern Seaboard. But 80+% of their population is only occupying about 1/4th of the country's total landmass (about the size of North and South Carolina) with roughly the population of North Carolina. Population density even compared to that single state is laughable.
I'm certain it's MUCH easier to cover so little landmass and so few customers with such an even population distribution.
Currently the FIOS service ALREADY has more customers than the entire population of Sweden.
People griping about how great other countries have it have exactly ZERO grasp of the scale of what they're yapping about.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We pay $100 a month for 100meg down an 10 up. It's a fiber connection.
150 Mbps down isn't really interesting. What would a normal person use it for? Even with 20 Mbps (current FIOS consumer tier) the limiting factor will almost always be the upload speed at the other end. If you're thinking of buying this, first take a long hard look at your current peak usage. Most people don't use a fraction of the lowest tier bandwidth (for broadband).
And yes, I know, one word: Torrents. To which I reply, two words: Geeks only.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Uh, hu... and why do you have a really fast CPU that sits idle or throttled back 99% of the time?
Maybe its because when you want to use something you don't want to wait for it. Instead of waiting 10 seconds to open firefox it opens in 2 seconds, instead of it taking 30 minutes to get the latest openSuse you get it in 1 minute..
Let's be honest...
DSL and Dial-Up are barely competitors to low latency broadband.
I've had to join a support group just to get through the days of using Qwest DSL.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Charging depending on peak achievable data rate? How quaint.
My ISP charges the same regardless of peak data rate is achievable.
Oh wait a minute, North America you say? Well that explains it then.
If the Democrats really cared about broadband penetration like they were lying about, they'd have crafted equal-access laws to force other carriers to be able to get into the market like they did for local and long-distance phone carriers ages ago.
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. Then they'd have crafted some sort of program that enables local municipalities to install publicly-owned FTTH which broadband companies can all use to deliver broadband.
The fact that any one company can own infrastructure that precludes other companies owning the same type of infrastructure should be the first clue that privately-owned infrastructure will inhibit the free-market Capitalism that's so important to so many people. If a small amount of Socialism can actually increase competition, shouldn't we be in favor of that?
Once all companies have the ability to sell service using the publicly-owned last-mile infrastructure, we'll see real competition in the broadband market. Things like network neutrality legislation will be completely unnecessary since consumers can avoid non-neutral networks if that's an important consideration for them. Once there's true choice, I think non-neutral networks make a whole lot of sense. You could have a provider that's targeted specifically at non-technical home users. Web and email would be lightning fast, BitTorrent downloads could be given the lowest priority and the ISP could have direct peering agreements with Netflix-like services to allow extremely-high quality video without saturating the upstream bandwidth. It's not a service that many Slashdot readers would choose personally, but I would gladly choose that service for my parents.
I cannot understand why people find this "expensive."
Because, despite how much people use they see people in other nations paying far less for more speed. The US can't be much of a leader with higher costs.
Who would ever need more than 640K RAM?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Great, we need bigger not smaller government. NOT!!!
The federal government already gave cable and phone companies $200 Billion to upgrade their infrastructure. What did these businesses do? They padded their pockets.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
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.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
They don't offer regular speed Fios to their Small Business clients already. I work in NYC in an area labelled Silicon Alley and you can't get Fios. Nothing to do with the wiring but more with the money loss. My company currently has 2 T1 and we would drop at least one or both in a heartbeat for Fios which means less money going to Verizon. Note: Fios is available in a residential building on the same block just yards away.
Time Warner would provide us with Cable based internet but they want us to pay to get the lines thrown into the building ($3000) and then $1000 per floor to get up to the 6th floor. WTF! We are just coping with a T1 for data and a T1 for voice until WiMax can be obtained.
Inded, I was about to bring up Romania. As far back as 2007 people in Cluj were enjoying higher speeds and lower prices than what residents of high-population density locations could dream of. I get 300 Mbps for only about $15/month, and my connection isn't throttled to hell like any of the American ISPs I had the misfortune of dealing with.
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
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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".
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Sweden, at place #194 in this list - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density - is a place where one (like I did yesterday) can sign up for 100/100MBit for $25/month or so.
In my other apartment (yes .. ) I have 10/10 "for free" included in the rent.
Actually I wasn't sure about signing up for the fixed connection at all, since my mobile broadband already gives me around 10/4 (real life numbers) - also at $25/month.
it's in my head
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.
Netflix HD works great on a 3Mbit DSL connection.
That would be because it's not very good HD.
I recently encoded some 720p24 material, and although the average bitrate was only around 3.6Mbps, there were peaks as high as 50Mbps, some for as long as 5 seconds. Note that this doesn't include the audio, which was 1.5Mbps by itself, but that's not a problem for Netflix, as I don't think their streams have more than 2 audio channels.
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.
Sure. And Rwanda, at #29 in the list, has dialup. Obviously population density isn't the only factor - it's just an important one.
I honestly cant believe that people bitch about paying $200.00 a month for PROMISED speeds comparable to an OC3, with throttling and bandwidth caps as well as a raft full of conditions that are NOT on a OC3.
I see this sorts of statements a lot, but this comes from people who haven't ever used FiOS.
The only problem that FiOS with a dynamic IP has is port blocking. This problem goes away if you have a static IP. Otherwise, both have full speed available 24/7, with no throttling or bandwidth caps. I do agree that this 150/35 service won't give you 150Mbps upstream, but, then, it doesn't claim to.
I don't keep my FiOS saturated 24/7 because I want to leave room for everyday use. I do average about 50% utilization of my 25/15 line over the past year, with peaks over 100%.
The "higher density" argument is totally bogus, but it keeps getting trotted out over and over.
If that were a valid argument, we'd have companies offering 1GB/s service for $30, but limiting their offer to the large metro areas. They don't, not because it is technically impossible, but because they don't have to. The market is artificially controlled to let a few companies extract a lot of money for little service. Why offer 1GB/s for $30 when you can offer 8MB/s for $30 and get away with it?
The lack of broadband in the USA is not about land area or population density or cost. It's about greed and a total lack of competition.
I live in Silicon Valley, supposedly the heart of high-tech in the USA, and I pay a small fortune for a couple of MB/s. It's outrageous.
There is only one reason why US broadband sucks: we have telecom monopolies which are federally-mandated through lack of oversight.
Agreed. But TimeWarner and Verizon laid the cables. And others are leasing from them. Unless you want every tom, dick, and harry stringing yet another set of redundant lines (I know I don't) either we lease from the 2 or 3 physical owners, or there is an endless line of road and yard digging up. And rewiring NYC is a nontrivial matter.
And if I want a blazing 3 Mbps, I'd better be willing to dole out $50/month.
And I can get 35/35 FiOS for $69, here in JerkWater Virginia. Currently, I have 9/2 via Cox for ~$50, but switching over after the first of the year.
And merely stating that you're not trolling doesn't make it so. My only cable option is Comcast, and I'm boycotting them due to their shoddy service. And DSL is actually throttled to 100kbits/sec due to excessive line noise. Where do I live? In the heart of silicon valley. And this is a pretty common situation.
So yes, you're trolling.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Great...so since the greater New York City metropolitan area has about 600,000 more people than entire country of Romania and everyone is packed into a much smaller area, people should be able to get at least 100mbps for $20/mo, right?
So why are new yorkers paying 3-4 times that for 30 times less bandwidth? As someone said above, because they will pay that much and there's no competition to offer a better deal.
If you build it, they will come.
I wonder the same thing. Not only does my San Francisco not have "cheap superfast" connections, it has no "superfast" connections. I can get12mbit cable internet from Comcast or 1.5Mbit (not even 3Mbit) DSL from AT&T - there are no other options.
Even though I'm in a residential district of SF, it's not exactly a low-density suburban neighborhood. On my block alone there are 60 - 80 families within 400 feet -- surely that's enough density to provide other options? That density continues for a mile to the east, west, north and south.
In general, I don't like communities running their own utilities, but maybe municipal fiber to the home is the only way to get some real competition and some real first class broadband speeds. Though to be fair, I heard that it's NIMBY's that are delaying AT&T's U-verse rollout -- no one wants the U-Verse telcom cabinets on their street corner.
Err, that should be 100 kbytes, not kbits.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
30€ per month gets you 100/50 fiber with good quality of service.
now the updates are longer to install than to download on debian.
=]
I love my 100 Mbps (synchronous) socialized high-speed fiber!
Price out dedicated bandwith in a big city sometime. There's plenty of competition and the best you can do in a big city is 2-8 dollars a Mb.
... It Hasn't Been Made Yet..
Now THAT'S fast!
FIOS please come to Seattle!
The broadband market is near dead with no competition. For a place with some major tech companies, Home broadband in Seattle proper sucks!
I'd say that's because our non-coastal population tends to be far more spread out than other nations'.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
I see all these stories about how GOOD FiOS is and all these stories about how many people have switched from their previous crappy service with the cable company and gotten FiOS as soon as it was available yet Verizon has chosen to stop the roll-out.
Is it not as profitable as it appears at first glance?
Are the numbers of people switching to FiOS not enough?
Have the cable companies managed to out-lobby Verizon and get governments to shut them down?
Are old fart NIMBYers kicking up a stink and saying "we dont want Verizon digging up our streets to lay more cables"?
Our population density here in Australia is a lot lower than either Canada or the USA and we have better internet than you do.
Wait, am I doing it right?
Which, you know, mentions nothing about quality. Different encoders, different settings, different [etc]...
Bitrate isn't everything. I've got one or two high-bitrate 1080p Blu-Ray movies that look like shit.
The real question would be: Given your 3.6Mbps video, and the same video encoded by Netflix, which one looks better?
I'm a picky bastard (much to the annoyance of the entire family) when it comes to encoding artifacts, but I'm increasingly pleased with the overall quality of Netflix's streams, which seem to improve as time wears on.
Kid-proof tablet..
Saying FIOS is available in various states is a bit of an exaggeration. It's available in some parts of some states. It's available in some parts of Massachusetts, but not where I live, in North Quincy, minutes from Boston.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Which, you know, mentions nothing about quality. Different encoders, different settings, different [etc]...
All of which make no difference to the actual point, which is that some material is extremely hard to accurately compress to a low bitrate using any DCT-based, motion-estimating compression. And, it's trivially easy to find source material that fits this profile.
It's also quite unlikely that anyone at Netflix is optimizing encodes any better than what has been tweaked by thousands of video rippers out there. In particular, H.264 has literally millions of combinations of settings, but not every decoder implementation can support every combination, and the embedded ones (like those used in the boxes that stream Netflix) are some of the most limited.
I've got one or two high-bitrate 1080p Blu-Ray movies that look like shit.
If these truly contain encoding issues and not source material issues (there's nothing an encoder can do about a source with poor colors, overly edge-enhanced, etc.), I suspect that if you run them through a bitrate profiler you'll find that despite having a high average bitrate, they don't have the peaks that they need for the tougher scenes.
The real question would be: Given your 3.6Mbps video, and the same video encoded by Netflix, which one looks better?
I can pretty much guarantee that any 720p24 source that is encoded with a limitation for smooth streaming without a large buffer (i.e., no severe bitrate peaks) will look far worse on fast motion than my unconstrained profile encodes.
If you haven't done a lot of encoding of a wide variety of source material, you owe it to yourself to try, and see just what you can do in comparison to what Netflix streams. I think you'll be complaining a lot more about Netflix after that sort of experiment.
I have over a decade of experience with both leased lines and "business" broadband, and I can safely say, you're paying a hell of a premium for those extra "9"s. "Business" broadband will have more downtime, but still only an hour a month or so, maybe more on occasion.
Yeah, I know... If you're running e-Commerce sites, and the like, the added cost of the leased line is overshadowed by the potential losses if the line goes down at peak hours. However, pretty much anything short of that, and I'd strongly recomend "business" class broadband. If necessary, from two different providers in a fail-over configuration.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And 35Mbps downstream is ok, but the price seems a little way off. I'm happy with my 100/100 Mbps for $30/month. (And no, I'm not from USA, I'm Swedish.)
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
You just need government regulation that forces anyone that has a cable laid to your house to lease full access to that cable to any company that you hire for a low fixed cost that is barely above the maintenance cost for that cable.
But, naturally, republicans would block all such 'government takeovers of the Internet' and 60% of the sheeple will follow them.
FiOS probably has more usage restrictions than an OC3 line.
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.
Home office. My cable connection starts to get a bit painful when I need to move 4GB of database around.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Don't expect any sympathy from me when you willingly decide to go with a slower service and then complain about said service.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If you're in Manhattan and willing to pay up to $200-$800/month (enterprise class with SLA) you can get dedicated IP-transit of 1Gbps+. This is NOT consumer/small business internet. This is 100% dedicated bandwidth. If it's a High-rise most-likely VZ/Cogentco/XO and a few other Tier-1 and upstream providers probably already have GigE/OC-X fiber termination router in the basement and it doesn't cost them much to hook it up. There are a few carrier hotels with Internet exchanges there (Equinix, 111 8th street, a few others, I frogot.) If this is for a business. Check with your high-rise mgmt. and see what carriers have fiber in the basement. Every single high-rise these days has a fiber-termination gear of GigE/10GigE/OC-X in Manhattan due to business needs of certain firms in certain buildings.
FiOS is not enterprise level, it is small business level though the shared PON infrastructure has a shit-load of b/w.
Yup. Be a business, get a enterprise grade router doing BGP and just buy IP-transit. It's $2-8/Mb. Buy all the bandwidth you want. This is dedicated bandwidth. I've see $895/month Global Crossing Tier 1 bandwidth for a full GigE (1Gbps) port in a co-location/data-center recently.
Shared or dedicated? Who are the IP-transit providers?
They have super-fast connections. It's just ISPs taking profits. Dedicated IP-transit ports of GigE or higher in major US metros are now as low as $895/month for 1Gbps. This is of course in the data-center. You have to find your own way to your location. :-)
People don't understand what we in the industry called dedicated versus shared internet. Dedicated 1Gbps circuits are now going for as low as $895/month or $2-8/Mb in most US metros from Tier-1 carriers now. That just gets you the network bandwidth and port. There is also build-out or getting your business on-to a dedicated fiber ring in the DC (data-center) from the co-location/data-center.
It's because 95% of the USA cant have FiOS. I would pay for it, they tell me that I suck and they have no plans of rolling out around here. I'm in a tiny city of only 230,000 people. so small towns like this have to miss out.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
dedicated
sunset
This is quite late.
It's also quite unlikely that anyone at Netflix is optimizing encodes any better than what has been tweaked by thousands of video rippers out there. In particular, H.264 has literally millions of combinations of settings, but not every decoder implementation can support every combination, and the embedded ones (like those used in the boxes that stream Netflix) are some of the most limited.
You suggest that the thousands (really? thousands? hundreds sounds more likely) of folks doing this stuff are doing a better job, for free, than the paid folks at Netflix who do the same thing.
Which may, or may not be, true.
It takes real people comparing like-to-like source material to make a critical differentiation as to which is actually better. I'm not aware of anyone currently doing so on any diagnostically-useful level.
I, however, am willing to try. I shall take your advice, and do some encoding, and compare the results.
Kid-proof tablet..