Verizon Announces FTTP Prices

ffejie writes "C|NET News.com is reporting that Verizon has announced its pricing on Fiber-to-the-Premises - it 'will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon's local and long-distance telephone service', and more if bought on its own. The high speed internet service, dubbed Verizon Fios, brings speeds up to 30 Mbps to the home. FTTP could lead to a sweeping change, especially in the television industry. According to News.com: 'Verizon is considered the furthest along with its fiber plans. It reiterated on Monday its goal of reaching 1 million homes and offices by the end of the year...' It looks as if FTTP is coming to the masses."

Not $35 for 30mbps

[AsnFkr]

quoth the artical:

A 2mbps to 5mbps Fios connection will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon's local and long-distance telephone service. The service will cost $40 if purchased alone. A connection of up to 15mbps is available for $45 a month if purchased as part of the same telephone service bundle, or $50 alone. The company did not reveal pricing for the 30mbps plans. ...misleading headlines. *sigh*

Re:Bandwidth / byte charges

[wpc4]

These would be the same questions I would want to see answered. I have 1.5mb/384kb for $60 a month from speakeasy, but as long as what I do isn't illegal they let me do whatever, including selling my service via wifi to my neighbors.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[tekiegreg]

Ummmm from my understanding the Internet II project is only a university funded gig...you'll never surf the Internet II unless you are involved with a major university in some way...

Some more details

[spludge]

http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/r elease.vtml?id=86053&PROACTIVE_ID=cecdcacdc7cdcbc6 cdc5cecfcfcfc5cececacccccac9c8cfc8c5cf [verizon.com]

5 Mbps down /2 Mbps up for $34.95 a month as part of a calling package or $39.95 a month stand-alone.

15 Mbps down/2 Mbps up for $44.95 a month as part of a calling package or $49.95 a month stand-alone.

30 Mbps down/5 Mbps up , pricing will be announced at a later date.

Next stops on the rollout after Keller, TX (which is already rolled out) are Huntington beach, CA and Tampa, FL.

Re:Why does stuff go to middle of Noplace first?

[Kentamanos]

Just FYI, Keller is not in the middle of nowhere. It's a pretty nice suburb in the D/FW (Dallas/Fort Worth) metroplex. Based upon the average income of the area, I'd say it's a pretty good idea to try it there.

There's a lot of tech types who live out there (who work in Dallas, etc.), so they probably figured that makes it a nice place to start as well due to demand.

Re:30mbps down....

[ffejie]

Actually, it's 2 Mbps up for the 15 Mbps and 5 Mbps up for the 30 Mbps. According to this article. [x-changemag.com]

Re:Why does stuff go to middle of Noplace first?

[dragmorp]

Noplace?

Tampa bay has very high population density (Pinellas county being one of the most densly populated areas in the country). A small geographic rollout will be able to service a very large population of people.

I am sure that Tampa has lower regulatory overhead than other large population centers like New York, etc.

We were one of the first areas to get cable modems as well (Road runner) for this reason.

Thats not the future, thats the present.

[tgd]

My parents have had that in their development in Scottsdale, AZ, since the day the development opened.

And it sucks. Badly. Its a fiberoptic line running into their house. Phone, TV and internet come off it.

There's no option for any service other than that, nothing else was installed there. The problem is the telco they use is bankrupt, and hasn't upgraded anything in five years, so they've got horrid picture quality on TV since its all poorly compressed, comparably low bitrate digital, the internet is spotty, and they have the honor of paying for it all even if they choose to get satellite.

FTTP vs. FTTH

[Doc Ruby]

Verizon promises Fiber to the Premises, while many in the broadband biz talk about Fiber to the Home. The difference is unclear. But here in New York City, the literal premises could be one of our millions of multihome premises, some of which house thousands of homes. FTTP of 30Mbps shared by more than 10 homes, which is common even in the ubiquitous 5-storey apartment buildings, would offer the same bandwidth per home as the current cablemodem service of 3Mbps. Some premises might get a fiber bundle, but there's no guarantee. So cablemodem service seems likely to remain competitive, at least for a while.

Re:Why does stuff go to middle of Noplace first?

[ffejie]

Verizon had to roll this out in "nowhere" Keller TX because of regulation laws. They wanted their first roll out to be out of their landline footprint so they wouldn't get tangled up with the FCC too much. However, Hopkinton MA (eastern MA - home of EMC [emc.com]) is one of the top 10 towns on the list (also, in VZ Footprint), and so is most of So Cal. Expect it in the 150 biggest markets in 8~12 months, or so says the buzz.

Re:Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[athakur999]

I have Verizon DSL in Dallas, and I have no such restriction on outgoing SMTP, so that seems to be a regional thing. I also use DHCP instead of PPPoE.

Re:Can the backbones handle it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a home-based business.. I never even *look* at the crap from Verizon, BellSouth etc. The restrictions are enormous. They can shut you off for "excessive bandwidth" which *they* define. They block ports. They don't allow multiple machines, they make you install their IdiotWare(tm) [I don't need it on my FreeBSD/Mac network, thanks], they only give you one IP address (dynamic, usually), sometimes they insert transparent proxies on port 80, the terms disallow VPNs, the customer support treats you like a dumb consumer, etc., etc. To add insult to injury, some folks (like roadrunner) don't even OFFER business class to homes.

My business-class SDSL has a SLA and when I need technical support I get it, and no BS restrictions.

There's a reason business class costs so much more, and believe me, it is worth it... stick with what you have unless you want a long, arbitrary TOS hanging over your head, ready to pull your service at any time for one of 50 reasons.

Re:Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[mattkime]

I'm in verizon country and I have MCI for local phone service instead. I also have DSL through MCI. Both have been excellent despite Verizon being responsible for the line.

Re:Too Bad Verizon is Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

SMTP traffic is filtered unless it goes through their server and if it does go through their server, you can only use a verison.net email address.

I work for Verizon. That isn't true. (By "that," I mean the first part. The second part is true.)

Verizon is evil, though.

Re:30mbps down....

[Anonymous Coward]

FTTP is supposed to be BPON (G.983). That's 622M down, 155M up. Shared media, 32-way split. Counting ATM and scheduling overhead, 20M down and 4M up is about right.

Yet More Broadband I Can't Get

[merikus]

With all this talk of new and exciting broadband options available to us, I am still on a crappy dialup account (currently connecting at 31200 bps). I live in Vermont, on the side of a mountain, and not a single broadband provider has offered broadband to myself or my neighbors.

It seems silly to me that Verizon and other broadband providers are simply ignoring broad swaths of rural America. Yes, perhaps due to population density it doesn't seem so profitable. But I know quite a few people (including myself) who would jump at anything which is priced lower than satellite.

Much of rural America was simply ignored during the digital revolution. And there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

Bah.

Don't hold your breath

[CBob]

A few random grouchy points...

To quote Verizon " Verizon Online DSL Is Not Available" when my phone number is plugged in.

Fiber was run down my street 4 years ago and remains as accessable now as it was 5 years ago.

DSL is a vague 80's concept that has had "Great Promise" for all that time with almost no delivery. Anyone remember Popular Electronics?

Comcast took 4 years of "Coming Soon" and I knew it was online before the account reps did.

Comcast's initial success in this area of internet access nearly crushed it and did crush its zombie spawn/mate/??? @Home.

These firms seem to some survive despite thier best efforts not to. Verizon wanted to dump the "small" T1's in this area of NJ (AC-ish) just a few years ago. The co I work for promptly began looking for microwave links as a response.

Long term planning/plans? Don't expect that from any big biz today, they lack the ability to plan 90 days ahead, let alone a few years for a rollout.

Re:Quantum Leap?

[Eric Smith]

When you purchaes that lightning fast 2400 baud modem you were making a quantum leap from that clunky 300 baud modem because the speeds had been predetermined for you.

A switch from 300 bps to 2400 bps dialup modems does not qualify as a quantum leap, because the 300 bps was not an inherently fixed rate. The "300 baud" modems did not actually constrain the bit rate arbitrarily. They used Bell 103 FSK modulation, most commonly at rates of 110 and 300 baud, and less commonly at 134.5 and 450 baud. The modulator didn't care what the bit rate was, but if you raised it too high the demodulator wouldn't work. If you wanted to use the modem at 271.828 bps, it would work fine as long as the other end also wanted that bit rate.

Bell 202 FSK modulation did the same thing, typically at 1200 bps (half-duplex).

On the other hand, the 1200 bps full duplex modems (Bell 212, V.22) used synchronous PSK modulation, so they truly did have discrete bit rates. Technically they are 600 baud modems, with two bits per symbol.

A 2400 bps dialup modem (V.22bis modulation) is also only 600 baud, using QAM modulation with four bits per symbol (16 constellation points).

So a switch from a Bell 212 1200 bps modem to a V.22bis 2400 bps modem would meet your definition of a quantum leap.

Most higher-speed dialup modems other than "56K" also use QAM modulation, with a higher baud rate and more bits per symbol.