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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
Part of it is fixed costs - it's expensive to roll out fiber to the home, and that expense doesn't change whether you're buying the 15Mbps tier or the 150Mbps tier. The other part is naked greed; Verizon is a telco, after all.
--- Bwah?
10 euros for 10mbit/10mbit here.
:P
Not US as a big surprise for everyone.
$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
Why does 15 Mbps down cost $50? but 150 Mbps only costs $195?
If speeds don't scale like I think they do, then someone explain it to me please.
It likely has nothing to do with scale, and all about persuading you of the "value" of spending $200/mo for internet service.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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?
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
yet some large cities in the USA rival some of the less dense cities of Japan in population density, yet the less dense cities of Japan still have magnitudes better i-net service.
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.
You mean like South Korea? Population density: 1,271/sq mi
Los Angeles County: 2,427/sq mi
New York City: 5,435.7/sq mi
Why are our cities, with double or even quadruple the density, still stuck with speeds two orders of magnitude slower with higher costs?
Yep. I can concur with the GP. I'm paying $35 for the same connection he has. Like the GP, that's my price limit. I'd love to be paying $20-$25 US for the connection that you have.
While I'm no fan of the telecos here, I do recognize that my price is subsidizing their expansion into rural areas, where there are only a couple of houses every mile. I lived in one such rural area. Without the regulators making rural broadband a requirement, those houses will never have broadband. And without me subsidizing them at least a little, telecos would go broke trying to make that happen.
While they are money grubbing bastards, the US still has a lot of areas where only a few people live, and where the communications infrastructure is spotty. That alone makes it more expensive for ISPs to operate here.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
True, but don't they pay like $2000 USD/month for a 300 sq. foot apartment? Which is better?
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