Under competitive pressure from local cable competitors like Cablevision, Verizon is fighting speed with speed. The company just announced that it is now offering connection speeds of up to 50 Mbps (megabits per second) downstream and 5 Mbps upstream over its FiOS network.
The previous top speed was 30 Mbps/5Mbps, on the high end. In the medium tier, Verizon upped the speed from 15 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream to 20/5 Mbps, and the top-tier service was increased from 30/5 Mbps to 50/5 Mbps.
The higher speeds were available in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey previously. Massachusetts and Rhode Island were added to the list recently. Verizon had 522,000 FiOS Internet customers across 16 states at the end of the third quarter of 2006.
Though the company did not announce any more specifics, one has to note that the high end service is expensive, like really expensive. The 30 Mbps service costs $179 a month. There was some talk that this service is going to cost $90 a month, but not sure what price Verizon is offering. In comparison, Cablevision’s 30 Mbps service is a third of that price.
Pssst.. hey Verizon, guys at HK Broadband are selling these kind of speeds for like $20 bucks a month. Come on, how about cutting us all a deal here?
