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Verizon's $70 Gigabit Internet Is Half the Price of Older 750Mbps Tier (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Verizon is now selling what it calls "FiOS Gigabit Connection" for $69.99 a month in a change that boosts top broadband speeds and makes lower prices available to many Internet subscribers. Actual bandwidth will be a bit lower than a gigabit per second, with "downloads as fast as 940Mbps and uploads as fast as 880Mbps," Verizon's announcement today said. The gigabit service is available in most of Verizon's FiOS territory, specifically to "over 8 million homes in parts of the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Richmond, Va., Hampton Roads, Va., Boston, Providence and Washington, D.C. areas," Verizon said. Just three months ago, Verizon boosted its top speeds from 500Mbps to 750Mbps. The standalone 750Mbps Internet service cost $150 a month, more than twice the price of the new gigabit tier. Existing customers who bought that 750Mbps plan "will automatically receive FiOS Gigabit Connection and will see their bills lowered," Verizon said. It's not clear whether they will get their price lowered all the way to $70. It's important to note that the $70 price is only available to new customers, and it's a promotional rate that will "increase after promo period." Additionally, Verizon will charge you a $10 per month router charge unless you pay $150 for the Verizon router, plus other taxes and fees.

67 comments

  1. It's not $70/mo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "$70" is only the temporary promotional price, plus taxes and fees and other random charges they feel like making up and adding separately to the advertised price.

    Advertisement of internet access pricing is bullshit across the industry and I'm sick of it.

    1. Re:It's not $70/mo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is why you must leave Alabama and go west, young man! $70 in San Jose is a shoe shine.

    2. Re:It's not $70/mo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not just that, but it isn't even fucking gigabit, it's 940MBit

    3. Re:It's not $70/mo by Almahtar · · Score: 1

      Funny Alabama should come up. I lived in Alabama most of last year. The power company was an ISP, and would give you gigabit internet for around $600/month for commercial, upwards of $100 for residential

    4. Re:It's not $70/mo by ohnocitizen · · Score: 1

      This should be modded up even higher. When I see a price from Verizon (or really any internet carrier, RCN is especially notorious for this) I don't trust it. That leads to lack of trust in the company. So then why move to their service when they will bump up the price, tack on random fees, charge me to rent hardware I could buy for cheaper... and the list goes on.

  2. WIthout government mandate? by mi · · Score: 0

    I can't believe, this is happening without the FCC or a similar government organization mandating it — driven simply by the KKKorporate greed and the fear of competition...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re:WIthout government mandate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously, corporate greed has nothing to do with race. Drop the marxist rhetoric already.

    2. Re:WIthout government mandate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, they just want to make Frontier drool, so they can finish selling off all of their non-wireless stuff. Should only take a few months for Frontier to FUBAR this....

    3. Re:WIthout government mandate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Black wallets matter!

    4. Re:WIthout government mandate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      FCC be damned - the FBI should be investigating this for fraud. $69.99? That's fraud - plain and simple. $69.99 does not equal $69.99+$10+$some undisclosed non-insignificant amount after the first few months that they wont even disclose in their slashvertisement. It's going to be well over $100 once all the invisible fees kick in that they can't even be bothered to tell you about.

    5. Re:WIthout government mandate? by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

      statistically, not so much. just like female wallets only matter ~70% as much as male wallets.

    6. Re: WIthout government mandate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh mi, didn't you know FIOS is operating under several franchise accords?

      In New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia...Well, you get the point.

      If you don't think Verizon's board is weighing how to keep those utility regulators happy, then you may think Mexico is paying for Trump's Wall.

    7. Re:WIthout government mandate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is definitely one aspect of American society I didn't enjoy as a visitor.

      Prices are rarely what is displayed: fees & charges (like in this case), state & federal taxes, tips.
      And that's before they try to up-sell you.

      There was a heck of a lot I liked about the US (especially the people, who were warm and genuine) but not commercial interactions.

      Oh well, every country has its up's and down's.

    8. Re:WIthout government mandate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No they don't. Women make up the vast majority of the spending in the marketplace. Men are typically much more frugal.

  3. Correlary to Moore's law, called Edholm's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Edholm's Law of Bandwidth is very similar to Moore's Law, but there is a longer delay in cost reduction due to a longer supply chain in Bandwidth (i.e. you local provider taking more profit before being disrupted by a cheaper competitor)

    1. Re:Correlary to Moore's law, called Edholm's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Core Internet bandwidth was about doubling every 18 months during the 90s and early 2000s, but there was an inflection point for fiber tech resulting in a doubling every 9 months for 5-8 years, then we got a few 10x increases. Over the past 10 years we've had over a 1000x increase in bandwidth per fiber strand. But like you mentioned, the supply chain is long and it takes some time for those benefits to work their way to the end user.

      Core Internet is now in the tens of terabits per strand with petabits on the horizon.

  4. Re:Yeah....No. by Guspaz · · Score: 1

    I wasn't aware that Project Fi, TMobile, or Sprint offered fibre fixed broadband services.

  5. Wait... by SeattleLawGuy · · Score: 1

    They charge you for owning a router that connects to it? Isn't having a router and plugging stuff into it kind of the point of having the service?

    That's like the phone company charging you rent if you rent a phone, and charging you rent if you plug your own phone in.

    --
    Real lawyers write in C++
    1. Re:Wait... by See+Attached · · Score: 1

      I like how some companies put a power switch on your set top box that lights a really bright blue LED.. and when you are done, you turn it off. and ... in theory save power!! Check yours. Mine draws 40W when its running with the blue LED. and when I turn it off. it draws 39.9999W.. so that LED is off. the rest of it is on. Tmes 4 set top boxes, it adds up. Plus.. is it possible that my STB is the wireless access point advertised on TV? I heard of 10,000 access points in the area, and wonder if its the set top boxes??? All for the price of 240/Mo. Plus there is no competition... the next ISP is VErizon with "high speed" DSL at 3 Mbps. HAH. This is crap and we have to take collective action to get this out of monopoly status... lets add some competition.... right?

      --
      Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
    2. Re:Wait... by Cyberpunk+Reality · · Score: 1

      It's a "because we can" charge. Most huge ISPs have them. Their chief use seems to be letting them legally quote lower prices than they otherwise would be able to.

      --
      Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
    3. Re:Wait... by AF_Cheddar_Head · · Score: 1

      Kind of like the satellite and cable TV providers charging you rent for the device necessary to decode the signal. Dish will charge you the same amount whether you own the receiver or they provide the receiver. Still trying to figure out that one.

    4. Re: Wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's funny! I'm sure it's not if your paying for it. You're probably a wireless access point like you wrote.

      You should seek a class action against your cable company.

    5. Re:Wait... by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      They are using your access point. That is why you see xfinity/etc access points everywhere in residential neighborhoods.

    6. Re:Wait... by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 1

      That's like the phone company charging you rent if you rent a phone, and charging you rent if you plug your own phone in.

      Maybe you are new here, but Verizon is the phone company.

      The rental fee is for a verizon supplied router, usually 10/month. Unless you are lucky and still have the deal where they provide it free of charge, which they used to do years ago.

    7. Re:Wait... by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      It makes it easier to drop support for older equipment if they can just provide you a replacement rental unit. Over the long haul, the cost savings might actually add up to more than the cost of the hardware.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    8. Re:Wait... by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Well they charge you a rental fee for a router (including a Wifi), or they let you purchase it for $150. In abstract, I think that's totally reasonable.

      The problem is, they won't let you just supply your own router or operate without a router. You have to rent or buy their router. If you just want the Internet (not phone or TV), you can replace their router with your own once service is installed, but they still force you to purchase their router.

    9. Re:Wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Incorrect. You can specify during the order that you have equipment already and not pay for it. They just can't help troubleshoot much without their own equipment in case the problem is YOUR router.

    10. Re:Wait... by R.Mo_Robert · · Score: 1

      They charge you for owning a router that connects to it?

      No. The summary says, "Verizon will charge you a $10 per month router charge unless you pay $150 for the Verizon router." So, you can pay $10/month to "rent" it indefinitely, or you can pay $150 to buy it once. This setup is pretty common for cable and DSL providers in my area and presumably througout the US, though the option to buy your own is usually not as clearly advertised (especially for cable, in my experience), probably so they can keep making money off you long after you've paid off what an outright purchase would have cost. Not sure how other fiber-optic providers work (we don't have much where I live for residential customers), but the fact that Verizon is doing this for theirs doesn't surprise me, nor does it seem particularly sketchy given that it seems to be the norm.

      --
      R.Mo
    11. Re: Wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $150 seems pricy for a router. How much profit do you think they make on that?

    12. Re: Wait... by chrisautrey · · Score: 1

      New models are available on Amazon for under $100 and you can find used older models that supposedly still work for as low as $33 (though they will cap out at the WAN port speed of 100MB).

  6. Awesome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too bad it's still not available in my neighborhood, which is a half-mile away from a major interstate highway in Fort Worth, Texas. Guess I'll keep paying Charter $210 a month for ~60Mbit and a bunch of crappy TV.

  7. Re:Yeah....No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This isn't wireless internet...this is FiOS.

  8. Internet should be free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    'Nuf said.

    1. Re:Internet should be free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. I say we start by having an open SSID (say, "Neighbornet") on our APs. Limit it to 5Mb down/1Mb up. Good enough for passers-by and general browsing. Let our neighbors connect to them but send them to a captive portal first, explaining that you are providing this as a free service to your neighbors and how and why they should share their internet with their neighbors. If you connect to Neighbornet once, you auto-connect wherever else it is found.

      If it takes off, we could have a mesh network that would allow anyone to talk to anyone else on the Neighbornet, without ever hitting the real internet.

      In the meantime, we can just bitch about it on /.

  9. Suspicious by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I get the feeling that they want people to switch out of their old contracts to a new one because the new contract is missing any mention of privacy. Someone should compare the terms of the contracts as this may be the start of them selling your info.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Suspicious by sexconker · · Score: 1

      I get the feeling that they want people to switch out of their old contracts to a new one because the new contract is missing any mention of privacy. Someone should compare the terms of the contracts as this may be the start of them selling your info.

      They're selling your info regardless of what any "contract" says.

  10. Keep trying by Gabest · · Score: 1

    This is still FOUR times as much as I pay for gigabit/tv/phone package.

    1. Re:Keep trying by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 1

      Where are you paying 17.50 ?

    2. Re: Keep trying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      His mom's basement.

  11. The Verizon Router is crap by NormAtHome · · Score: 1

    I don't have Verizon myself but I've worked at lot at houses where Verizon forces you to use their crap router, the wireless on them is not nearly as good as most other major brands and a lot of the functionality like port forwarding etc doesn't seem to work properly. They say you can't replace it because if you do the program guide on their cable boxes doesn't work.

    It's really a bad situation and Verizon tech support doesn't have a clue how to fix things or be helpful in any way.

    1. Re: The Verizon Router is crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't have to use their router for wifi. You just have to leave it connected to your access point in front of your own router. This is indeed to allow the guide information to download. AT&T'a Uverse is the same. They will set it up to feed your router if you ask, at least at AT&T.

  12. Actually, mi, with a government mandate I had it f by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But I live in Chattanooga, where the government owned and controlled utility started providing fiber about a decade ago.

    We got gig speed for 70 bucks in 2012.

    Thanks government, thanks.

  13. Cap by neghvar1 · · Score: 1

    My big question would be What is the data cap?

    1. Re:Cap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As with the older, 750 Mbps tier, a "soft" 10 TB usage cap is affixed to the service. Users need to cross this threshold three times before Verizon begins bothering you about "excessive" usage.

      See: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Finally-Offers-Gigabit-FiOS-Speeds-139421

  14. Speed is nice I guess but I don't really need it by movdqa · · Score: 2

    We have Comcast at 25 Mbps. My friend has it at 200 Mbps for the same price. Comcast offers up to 2 Gbps at my house. My estimate is that we'd be fine with about 15 Mbps but Comcast nor Fairpoint (DSL) offer that. I don't think that it makes a difference on performance on what speed they offer you (to a point) - it probably costs them the same amount.

  15. But most of their FiOS areas were sold to Frontier by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, they now only cover a very few people. I live in the Seattle area less than a block from where Frontier (who they sold to) FiOS supports, and as far as I know, they haven't expanded their supported area since 2008. That's almost ten years ago. I'm still stuck on dial-up despite being able to literally see a house that they're connected to.

  16. Re: But most of their FiOS areas were sold to Fron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Same here. My neighbor got FiOS almost a decade ago, but I'm still stuck with ISDN and per minute charges.

  17. Re: But most of their FiOS areas were sold to Fro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Same here. Some of my neighbors got FiOS nearly a decade ago, bit I'm still stuck woth dialup. The Seattle area sucks.

  18. Re:But most of their FiOS areas were sold to Front by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just checked on Yelp, and Frontier has a one star rating. That's pretty sad.

    CAPTCHA: blackout

  19. Re:Speed is nice I guess but I don't really need i by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know what you mean. I have 100Mbps through Wide Open West, but I use an old WRT54GL so I'm limited to 802.11g speeds (about 20Mbps). Meh, it's fast enough.

  20. Re:But most of their FiOS areas were sold to Front by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 1

    That's 2 stars higher than I'd give Comcast.

  21. Use a moca bridge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Verizon's cable boxes need network access - which you can provide using your network equipment if you use a MoCA bridge like this one:

    https://smile.amazon.com/Actio...

    The caveat is that you need to ask Verizon to provision your ONT Ethernet not MoCA.

    1. Re:Use a moca bridge by chrisautrey · · Score: 1

      Verizon's cable boxes need network access - which you can provide using your network equipment if you use a MoCA bridge like this one:

      You actually don't even need your own box if you just want the internet side and not TV. Since I am moving to an area with Fios I started looking into it, and all you really need is to have Verizon cut you over to the Ethernet port on the demarc box instead of the COAX. This site walks you through the basics.

      https://www.loganmarchione.com/2015/07/use-your-own-router-with-verizon-fios/

  22. Re:But most of their FiOS areas were sold to Front by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So you would give Comcast -1 stars? LOL

  23. Re:But most of their FiOS areas were sold to Front by gweilo8888 · · Score: 1

    That'd be +10 stars more than they deserve, on a 1-5 star scale.

  24. Should be about 4 watts, not 40 by raymorris · · Score: 1

    40 watts? Should be closer to 4 watts.
    http://www.tpcdb.com/list.php?...

    What's the maximum power rating marked on the wall wart?

    1. Re: Should be about 4 watts, not 40 by See+Attached · · Score: 1

      It's a set top box from cableviz. It's 120vac all the way. It's industrial. Probably also s wireless access point for people driving by... Sounds like s class action lawsuit waiting to happen??

      --
      Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
  25. well la-de da by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    lot of fucking good if they don't service your area, excuse me state, no scratch that quarter of the country

  26. Come On Comcast Offer 1GB For The Rest of Us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Come on Comcast offer 1GB for $70 the rest of us in the USA that cannot get anything but Comcast at maybe 75Mbps for $100 a month. Just because you are the only game in town doesn't mean you have to give us no speed and extreme pricing. If Comcast won't do it we welcome Verizon to the rest of the USA to force Comcast to lower prices and upgrade the speed. This would be especially helpful in non urban areas.

  27. Re: Actually, mi, with a government mandate I had by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But your communist un-American bytes are setting a terrible example to the corporations and rotting the moral fiberglass of the nation.

  28. 94% of 1000Mbps != 1000Mbps. by sabbede · · Score: 1

    I can't see that as being anything but false advertising. +/- 5% would be one thing, but -6% can't be called gigabit.

    1. Re:94% of 1000Mbps != 1000Mbps. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's already a grey area because all of the standards advertise the raw rate and not the logical rate. Depending on the Layer2 in use, the overhead could be different and you could still be getting "gigabit" but with more framing overhead.

  29. I call B$, again by bbsguru · · Score: 1
    This is the same crap we always get, with a "New and Improved" sticker pasted on the front.
    In this case, it's more of the same we got from Comcast a couple of years ago. Remember that? "Gigabit Internet for $70 / month"?
    Right.
    For two customers in Philadelphia.
    In the same building.
    Eventually.
    Unless you are offering the service to at least the majority of your existing customers, just shut the hell up.

    I'm talking to you, Mr. ISP

  30. Meanwhile in Canada by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I pay about as much for 12mbps down, 1 up, 250GB monthly limit. Or I could switch to 25/5 but with a 80GB limit. I can't even BUY a tenth of what they offer.

  31. Can't Wait! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I, for one, am really excited about this. I've found my Verizon FioS to be super reliable and I'm a happy customer (I can't believe I'm saying this about a telecom company). I'll definitely check the new Terms and Conditions, as has been suggested here. I think that the reason you won't see full 1Gb speeds is that the terminal on the wall is a 1Gb link and there's some overhead involved. We'll see that the speeds turn out to be, and how much this ends up costing. I checked with Verizon today and they say that they'll be starting to offer existing customers the upgrade on 4/30. Here's hoping all turns out well, because I've been waiting many years for this.

  32. At least it's not copper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We don't have Verizon, but we do have others. Charter is $90/m for 60/4, but the local fiber ISP is $80/m for 250/250 or $100 for 500/500. Could also get 70/70 for $50. These are non-special prices for both. The fiber ISP is also all dedicated bandwidth. My ping to Chicago has not fluctuated more than 1ms over the past month and 0 packets lost, and that's with a rate of 10 packets per second.