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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."
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
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
Ever compared the size of Japan with that of the US? If Verizon only had to cover the size of, say a single state, I'd like to think it would be a fair bit cheaper and we'd already have it.
Not to mention the population density difference...
It's not size, it's population density, and South Korea is king. Just wiring Seoul alone would give them very fast speeds in comparison with the rest of the world.
SSC
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
Yeah? Then why does it cost $40 a month for 1.5 mbit service in Los Angeles? It's a county with 10 million people, and a population density twice that of South Korea, and yet I'm paying the same amount for service two orders of magnitude worse.
Face it, population density is not the determining factor here. The determining factor is the lack of meaningful competition, the fact that, despite the lack of explicit franchise agreements, the telcom and cable companies have collaborated to form a Nash equilibrium, to siphon as much money as possible for as little service as they can get away with.
The telecoms promised us fiber optic networks nationwide in 1993. They charged us for it, and never built it.
Citation needed