View this article at: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/12/05/verizon.fios.100mbps/
Friday, Dec 05, 2008 10:20am
Verizon FIOS to top 100Mbps in 2009
The speeds of Verizon's FIOS fiber-optic Internet access should double in less than a year, the company's technology head Vincent O'Byrne has said at a media event on Thursday. Although the telco has already boosted its service to 50Mbps US-wide just this past June, its plans now have a trial 100Mbps service expanding to an official service sometime in 2009. The increase will be necessary as many services beyond ordinary computer-borne Internet access, such as HDTVs with direct video downloads and network-attached storage drives, will demand a large amount of bandwidth on their own.

"A lot of these different TVs will have inordinate demand on the bandwidth that’s required on the network in order to support them," he says.

The added speed will be made possible largely by upgrades to equipment over the past two years, such as the GPON (gigabit passive optical network) nodes that manage the data traffic for neighborhoods as well as a new set of FIOS home routers that increase the in-home network's speed from 75Mbps to 175Mbps, letting home users get the full bandwidth available from future versions.

While the upgrade is justified for additional services, the expansion plans have been made known just as Verizon's rival Comcast is growing its 50Mbps cable service and as a result will all but close the gap with FIOS in those areas where both services are available.