Verizon To Deliver High-Speed Fiber To Homes

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-19-2004/0002212741&EDATE=' target='_blank'>http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/s...02212741&EDATE=</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Verizon customers in Keller, Texas, soon will be the first to receive groundbreaking high-speed Internet services over Verizon's fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. The company is raising the bar on consumer broadband today by introducing data speeds of up to 30 megabits-per-second (Mbps) in Keller later this summer and in other markets later this year. Prices start at $34.95 per month."</i><br /><br /><b>30Mbps</b>? Fiber!? Wow. Suddenly my ~ 2Mbps cable modem at home feels really slow. 8O

[arnage2]

man. 10x faster than comcast. I wonder how long it will take for them to bring it to the chicago area?

[OSUKid7]

30Mbps? Fiber!? Wow. Suddenly my ~ 2Mbps cable modem at home feels really slow. 8OYeah but what's it capped at? No way they will allow 30Mbps transfers.

[bkerrins]

Palo Alto Ca is running tests on FTTP also. The only problem is that it will have to be voted on by the City Council which is famous for taken a 10 minute decision and turning it into a 5 year committee/project.

[Mark Johnson]

Yeah but what's it capped at? No way they will allow 30Mbps transfers.

That's the problem for sure. The real-world throughput will be much lower. However, this is still a very good thing if only because it will beat the pricing down on the "plain vanilla" DSL and cable broadband service.

[corphack]

Verizon to run fibre to my home in NYC? First they should learn to run and maintain copper correctly. Their line-people (gotta use that diversity training somewhere...) are still learning to use punch-down knives without cracking the core.

[beq]

Hey, I'm a Verizon local customer in TX -- gimme gimme :)

Maximum connection speeds and pricing for Fios consumer services are:
* 5 Mbps/2 Mbps for $34.95 a month as part of a calling package, or
$39.95 a month stand-alone
* 15 Mbps/2 Mbps for $44.95 a month as part of a calling package, or
$49.95 a month stand-alone
* 30 Mbps/5 Mbps at pricing to be announced later
That is not bad at all! I'm paying $44.95 a month for Road Runner (I think current cap is almost 3Mbps down, 384Kbps up). And the local access infrastructure should still be point-to-point unlike cable...

Interesting to read about Verizon's MSN Premium bundling which I'm not familiar with. Is it just like the SBC Yahoo DSL co-branding thing where you get Yahoo Plus mail accounts (at least for the primary user)? That would mean Verizon customers will also soon get 2GB MSN mail account...

P.S. Fiber-to-the-curb has been a dream for so long. I even ran several multimode & single-mode fiber from my house demarc to my wiring closet years ago just in case...

[ChuckyRose]

I have to ask, and I'm not trying to be negative, but why is DSL so slow in the states compared to other countries? Over here in Japan, the SLOWEST DSL service you can get now (with many providers) is 8Mbit. Currently in my service area, Yahoo! BB is offering 45Mbit service. Fiber has been an option for quite a while now for those who want it over here. The main advantage of fiber, while not really rated any faster is the latency. Plus, over here, most fiber plans are symmetric data rates (40Mbit up/40Mbit down). While Verizon's isn't, I'd imagine with a 5Mbit outgoing pipe to the internet with very, very, very low latency, you sure could send a LOT of data out, not all necessarily "good." (SPAM, ripped movies, DDOS etc). Oh boy. 1000 zombie computers on 512kb upstream connections is bad enough. 1000 zombie computers on 5Mbit upstream connections.... 8O

But, that doesn't change the fact that I sure wouldn't mind having a nice, high speed, low latency fiber connection at home... :D Yum!

[beq]

^ I think a large factor (just like with cell tower provisioning) is the geographical differences. I mean, the continental USA is just so darn big :) Affecting cost/profit build-out expenditures and such I imagine.

Speaking of latency, hey I used to have a geo-sat connection 8O

[corphack]

why is DSL so slow in the states compared to other countries

I want to say that the phone companies here are simply lazy, but thats too simplistic. I think it has more to do with the status of the phone service suppliers in the US vs those in Europe, etc. In the US, phone service suppliers are part of the private sector, whereas outside of the US aren't most of the phone services provided by extensions of the governmental postal agencies? I can recall having to order ISDN lines in London and Hong Kong via the post office - short-term profitability just didn't affect their work schedules. They had a 5/10-year plan for residential digital line installations; there was no line-item in their project plan labeled "Profits". In the US, if the ROI is longer than 6 months, it doesn't happen.

[jonathanchoo]

In Japan, they already have 25mbps for more than half a year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3278375.stm

[Janak Parekh]

In Japan, they already have 25mbps for more than half a year.
Yeah, yeah. They're far ahead of us in everything. I know. :P

--janak

[ChuckyRose]

Actually, the big thing now is 45Mbit. That's been available for almost 6 months now too. Yahoo! BB is offering it.

http://bbpromo.yahoo.co.jp/ (in Japanese)

I'm curious. How many people have fiber to their homes in other parts of the U.S./World? I know that a number of years ago, the city of Tacoma, WA (a some-what decent sized city) started a project to lay fiber optic cable to everyone in the city. They've been doing it for I don't know how long now, but anyone else have it?

[theone3]

30Mbps? Fiber!? Wow. Suddenly my ~ 2Mbps cable modem at home feels really slow. 8OYeah but what's it capped at? No way they will allow 30Mbps transfers.Hah! That is the capping. Top quality fiber transmission is capable of a good 1 terrabaud, and transmitters are getting faster every day.A terrabaud will fill your 80GB HDD in less than 1/10th of a second.

I want uncapped :devilboy:

[scargill]

What I've been led to believe (but I may be 100% of wrong) is that in Japan, the phone network, infrastructure and systems were built recently, and with new technology and new technologies in mind, alot of the Japanese phone network is fibre and has been for the last 10 or so years.
In the US (and even more so in the UK where I am) alot of the cabling is copper, thin and deteriorating, it wasn't even designed to carry digital signals of any kind; mind about 10+mbps of data, in fact in some areas people still can't get broadband and can only get 30kbps out of dial up because the cabling is so poor.

[Chucky]

I think the great thing about this is it is essentially future proof. Initally 30mbs, but as was posted above theoretically over 1gbs with ideally no major change in infrastructure (the last mile solution which requires any level of infrastructure change is going to be very expensive).

With a 1gbs you could have HD or higher quality video streamed to over ten tvs. Heaps left over for VOIP, game playing, downloading huge applications (really from a developer point of view making a program with a code size of over a gigabyte isn't really feasible for anything except enterprise applications and operating systems) and pretty much anything else.

DSL is certainly getting very very good (45mbs in Japan sounds very nice) but copper is physically limited because you are using electrons. Photons also have there limits, but they of a magnitude greater than that of copper. Also thinking way ahead, quantum computing anyone? Good luck trying to send qbits in electrons encoded in the spin direction, some are trying...all I can say is good luck. Photons on the other hand can have qbits encoded based on phase, many experiments have shown it, the only question is can it go down a fibre cable without being corrupted?

[Jonathan1]

A friend of mine has fiber in Washington DC. I get this urge to slap the guy silly every time he mentions it. :(

I want my fiber dang it.

[beq]

Quick question, what kind of modem/adapter (router) will be used for this Verizon FTTP fiber connection? Just curious what kind of cabling, connector, and link speed it will be?

Will it just be one of the standard fiber connections like we have on network switches (for example 100Base-FX, 1000Base-SX, etc -- SC/ST/MT-RJ/LC/etc connector -- multimode (62.5/50micron), single-mode (9micron) or other cablings -- etc)?

Or will they just terminate the fiber with a converter at the demarc then run a standard DSL copper connection to your router inside?

[kosmicki]

Agggh, I just know this technologically backwards town I’m in wont get anything like that till AFTER I leave it… Cable here sucks, 1Mbps is the high speed package around here… (Granted it IS better then my 2.5KBps dialup...)


“So Mr. Kosmicki, why did you choose to move here for this job?”

“Fiber”

“What”

“Fiber internet, I wanted it”

“You moved a thousand miles for higher speed Internet?”

“Hmm... Yep. Sure did.”

I already know any house locating will involve the location of cable for internet. Lets not be silly here…

[Kacey Green]

If you use a wirless network now is a good reason to upgrade to 802.11 a or g or later :D