[qi:114] Verizon is rolling out major speed boosts for its FiOS broadband subscribers across its entire service area. These new tiers offer up to 50 Mbps/20 Mbps or up to 30 Mbps/15 Mbps, depending on the state in which the service is sold, at costs ranging from $89.95 to $139.95 a month. (I seriously want the 50Mbps connection, but sadly the service isn’t available in San Francisco.)
It has also rolled out symmetrical connections in the entire 16-state region it currently serves. The symmetrical connections have up and down speeds of up to 20 megabits per second. The symmetrical services were first launched on Oct. 23 in the New York Tri-State Region. Today, Verizon (VZ) launched the service in the remaining 13 states.
In Florida, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, offers the option of a FiOS Internet service with downstream and upstream connections of up to 20 Mbps. In California, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington, the company has added a new FiOS Internet service with downstream and upstream connections of up to 15 Mbps.
These services start at $64.99 a month. More details are here.
How many people have FiOS and how many people can get it? What does the installation cost?
Installation is free with annual contract and how many people can get it – let me get you this information.
Ah ok here is the info from the link in this article: “At the end of the September 2007, Verizon had passed about 8.5 million homes and businesses in 16 states with its fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. The company expects to pass some 3 million premises annually with the FTTP network through 2010, when the network is expected to pass more than half the homes Verizon serves.
Verizon offers FiOS Internet service in more than 2,000 communities and currently has more than 1.3 million FiOS Internet customers. Verizon’s FiOS TV service is available to more than 4.7 million premises in 12 states, and the company has more than 717,000 FiOS TV customers.”
DOCIS 3.0 come save me!
Yeah how much is it going to cost? Ultimately it would be the cost factor which would make or break this.
regards
http://www.techbanyan.com
comcast and att in san francisco are the two options. i have
covad which is offering ADSL2+ but the speeds are pretty up and down.
I live in Virginia and currently have the Verizon FIOS service, the big caveat to all these services is that most websites, downloading, etc. you are going to be doing isn’t serving information fast enough to keep up with the bandwidth cap.
That being said it has been MUCH more stable and in general faster than COX Cable which is the other predominant high speed access solution in the area.
However, I had significant problems signing up for the service (not installation, which was great, but took about 6 hours), but just finding the right person to talk to within Verizon that I could give my information to to signup. But, once you get through that it’s not too bad.
Ugh. I dream of FiOS. I’m on Comcast Cable, which is fine and certainly better than AT&T’s crap, but FiOS would own me in a heartbeat.
Charbox and others who asked:
We pass 8.5 million homes with FiOS (on schedule to pass 18M by 2010)and have 1.3 Million FiOS internet subscribers (as of Oct 1).
More FiOS data points and links to pricing here:
http://policyblog.verizon.com/policyblog/blogs/policyblog/czblogger1/391/fios-fact-sheet-q307-edition.aspx
I have been a FiOS customer for over a year (I live outside of Boston). While coordinating the install was just short of impossible, once working the services have been nearly flawless and, overall, a substantially better service than Comcast. Specifically:
PROGRAMMING
– The FiOS programming, HD, and reliability is significantly better. Previously, our Comcast service would regularly pixelate (very annoying). Previous to Comcast we tried DirectTV for a while, and while it worked OK overall, we balked at upgrading to a $1000 TIVO DVR receiver (that was about two years ago).
– The guide is somewhat annoying, but does the job.
– DVR is the same quality as Comcast, which is to say not nearly as good as TiVO. For example, it takes way too many clicks to program and/or play. It also seems to have too many “Bad Recording” (that is the error message), which I don’t ever recall happening with either my DirectTV Tivo or Comcast DVR.
– I’ve had to reset the STB a few times by “pulling the plug” but it came back each time (no different than my Comcast experience, if perhaps slightly more often).
HIGH SPEED INTERNET
– At least as reliable as Comcast (I think it has only been off-line 1-2 times in the past year).
– Better access gateway (4-port, 802.11g wireless device). Interestingly, the power supply died, but when we begged for someone to come out, they did and correctly diagnosed and fixed the problem. Never seen that before from a carrier.
– A little pricy relative to cable, but seems to deliver a higher performance (it’s faster than my enterprise network).
PHONE
– No problems yet.
COMPLAINTS
– Getting through to Verizon for any reason is impossible. I was lucky enough to find out a “local” number that has always answered my problems, but if you have to rely on the 800 number…..well, I hope you don’t have a day job or raise kids.
– Notwithstanding the above, the VZ employees that do show up are GREAT. I’m fairly technical (at least curious), and I’ve always been impressed. Not only do they stay and get the job done, they seem enthusiastic and genuinely nice people.
My $0.02.
This reminds me of the old wait for Cable modems.
Interestingly enough, I live in one of the most densely populated areas of Manhattan and the service is not available to us. It seems to be hit or miss depending on what part of the city you go to.
Get your act together Verizon, all my friends in the financial district have huge connections and I’m jealous 🙁
I’m in Brooklyn and still waiting for this to come to my neighborhood. Despite reports that apartments just blocks from my place have it, they say FIOS is not available and there’s no timeframe yet.
I’d prefer having an option period from Time Warner, and deal with the faster speeds later 🙂
I had Verizon FiOS installed the other day. Please see my blog for the report on installation of the triple play package, all the details, and the rundown.
-Fragzem
I have Verizon FiOS before but I am back to the old way.