IP Democracy: Verizon Rolls Out 20/20 Mbps Symmetrical Service

As some people guessed yesterday, Verizon's "big" announcement today is that it is rolling out a 20 Mbps symmetrical FiOS high-speed service. This means the connection offers 20 Mbps rates in both the upload and download directions, perfect for video gaming or video sharing or otherwise sharing large files.

It's something that cable operators can't do, or can't do very easily on a wide scale. And Verizon clearly aims to hurt cable with this new service. During a webcast to discuss this new product Susan Retta, Vice President of Broadband Solutions for Verizon said "cable modems simply don't have upload speeds that come close to this service."

The timing is also really, really good for Verizon. Comcast is enmeshed in a controversy about limiting its customers' ability to upload content at the exact same time that Verizon is expanding upload capacity, a fortuitous contrast that is no doubt not lost on the telco (or Comcast). I even suspect that Verizon moved up its announcement to strike at its main rival while the iron is hot.

One of the first questions posed during the webcast is whether Verizon will ever cap the amount of content that customers can upload. "We don't impose caps on our subscribers," Retta said. "We intend to give them the bandwidth that they ordered and expect."

The service, priced at $64.99 per month, about $20 higher than Verizon's 15/2 Mbps FiOS service, comes with a few value-adds including an Internet security suite and 1 GB of network-based backup. It's currently available in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut but will roll out across the company's FiOS footprint eventually.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 23, 2007 2:52 PM to IP Democracy