Verizon FiOS "Is" the fastest thing around. Cable companies can mock DSL all they want. Verizon is trying to get rid of it. But Cable Companies won't compare it against Fiber. They know this, I also used to work for them. "Get out of copper and get into glass". Light travels a lot faster through glass. That's why Verizon's bandwidth cruises at maximum accurate speed 24/7 at 365/yr, not fluctuate like cable's(they forgot to mention that). In internet super highway technology, Cable would be using the 'school zone' vs Verizon using the 'Autobahn'(that is 'true Quam).Cable can keep squeezing the speed and Verizon will keep 'turning up the light'. It's IT preferred if you're bandwidth hungry. Yes there is no server that will upload to you at that speed. It's like having a Ferrari and you can't push it to maximum speed,.. but it's nice to know you're capable. Fios vs Cable is like color TV vs. UHDV/HD TV, the difference is the outcome. Having the services, I don't even feel how fast I'm going until I use someone else's internet without it. Everything's is like in slow motion. 15 to 20 megs per sec. at $45/mo w/free a industrial strength wireless router. By the way, Verizon and France Telecom are using GPON (Gigabyte per sec.)What's funny is what feeds cable companies on their super head end?--Fiber Optical Carriers, hmm-go figure

150 Megabit Cable metered like your electricity and water. It's so on it's way.

At the rate things are going, eventually, our descendants will be paying a monthly bill for piped-in air also.

Verizon spent 8 months laying FiOS through our neighborhood last year. Breaking power and phone lines along the way. Paying fines. Re-digging. Delayed repeatedly. Horrible mess.

Then they finish and go around hanging cards on door knobs with their offer: same speed as Cox provides (approximately), fewer TV channels, higher cost for multiple TV connections and in the end, less bang for more buck. I was seriously hoping they would make a loud shot across the bow of Cox. I'm tired of Cox having a monopoly in this region. I'm still waiting for Verizon to improve their offer. Right now, I have no incentive to switch though.

Where I live (just outside a city with a population of ~250,000) the whole DSL vs. Cable is a non issue. A couple of years ago our only cable company decided to suddenly impose upload/download limits. That leaves DSL as the only choice. It's sad they allow just one cable company to monopolize the cable lines here. While there are many DSL providers here, they're all just reselling Bell Sympatico's bandwidth. We have DSL from Bell Sympatico (unlimited, but slow and not available in all areas) vs. Cogeco Cable (bandwidth quote, but fast and available in almost all areas). Sad really.

What's amusing is the fact that our cable company introduced bandwidth limits soon after they upgraded from 4MBit to 6Mbit connections. Since then they moved to 8Mbit and recently to 12MBit speeds, while leaving the same restrictive monthly limits. What is the point of having such a high speed if you can't use it? They could raise the speed to 50TB/s, it wouldn't make a difference if people can't use it.

Let the BD and HD-DVD torrents fly......

First of all I think they mean 150 megaBITS. It's a little different from megabytes trust me...Second of all I have FIOS and it costs me 29.99 a month for 5 megabits download and 2 upload no interruptions...I'm not saying cable is bad or anything. 150 megabit cable would force Verizon to raise the speed of their FIOS Network which is capable of SO much more. I estimate that they're using maybe 1 percent of the capacity FIOS is capable of...

[sarcasm]Wow, i cannot wait!! 150mb downloads!! now all they have to do is fix there 20k uploading!!!
[/sarcasm]

I don't know that this will matter all that much to users.

As a person who has his own site and pays for it by bandwidth - I would need to start restricting how much bandwidth I would want my server to dish up (or have my ISP restrict it) - otherwise I could blow through my allotted amount in a REALLY short amount of time.

Maybe MS could afford to allow people to hit their sites with that kind of pipe, but my pockets aren't that deep. :)

This is a great idea however, most users are unaware that even at todays speeds, if you upload too much the cable company will "Cap" your speeds with no mention of this to you. This had happened about 3 times with Cable visions Optimum service and when I called to inquire as to why, I was told this was done to protect the integrity of their network. So what will faster speeds do? Get a user capped that much more quickly?

With cable's refusal to be competitive in the basic (a)DSL market space, why am I not holding my breath for their additional offerings.

They don't need to offer bells and whistles, they just need to be competitive with other major (s)DSL offerings of $12.95-16.95 a month.

FiOS is the real threat. FiOS providers tend to not be in fear of losing local phone services. The DSL market has been more hurt by fear of losing high profit services (voice mail, extra phone lines, etc) than they have by competition with Cable.

Any improvements you see in existing cable service is repeatable to other services like DSL and FiOS. FiOS is "new customer" driven unlike DSL and will out pace adoption of the other two services in the coming years (before 150mbit cable is available).

Just my predictions. :)

How do you say that Cable is NOT competitive, I don't understand.

Considering these facts:
A) The great majority of DSL connections top off at 1.5mbps while most major distributors of Cable give customers 6.0mbps-12.0mbps.
B) DSL is only available at most 10,000'-25,000' from the DSLAM. My own experience has shown me that DSL signals also degrade considerably with one's distance from the DSLAM.
C) Cable is available almost univeraally in the greater metropolitan areas of most major cities.
C) The "high speed DSL" in many areas is usually far from "High Speed". Consider "Verizon High Speed Internet for Business", which is in the little box next to this form. While it is offered "for as low as 29.99/mo.), the speed offered at that price is "up to 768Kbps)".
D) The fastest connection speed DSL offers is around 5mbps, IF the line conditions are "right", AND lines in your house are new or recently installed (within the last 5 yrs.) AND your house is visible from the DSLAM, AND the resident witch-doctor is on duty at the NOC.
(NOTE that the last clause was added to provide comic relief, though I sometimes wonder...).

All things considered, you are welcome to your DSL. I will stay with my "expensive" ($49.95/mo) 12Mbps Comcast Digital Cable.

Why? Because I am positive that the "pros" of having a Cable connection more than out-weigh the "cons" of having a DSL connection, no matter how "cheap" one might think it is.

Compared with Dial-up and ISDN, DSL is a good, cheap alternative, IF all you are doing on-line is doing a little light browsing and downloading e-mail. Anything requiring greater bandwidth, such as downloading large programs and media files, streaming hi-res graphics, or Web2.0, will definitely need Hi-speed Cable.

If all one wants to do is increase his cash-flow, then by all means he should go for DSL (or even Dialup). Otherwise, he should spend a few more dollars, and receive the immensely greater value for the moderately higher hit to his cash-flow a Cable connection will provide.

Donald McDaniel

A) A brother who was living in town was getting 11mbps from Qwest DSL. I get 3mpbs from Charter (now Baja Broadband).
C) Cable should be available anywhere cable TV is available.
D) See the first comment. If my brother was getting 11mpbs, then your statement is false.

IF all you are doing online is doing a little light browsing and downloading email, then dialup is fine. Anything requiring greater bandwidth, such as downloading large programs and media files, streaming hi-res graphics, or Web2.0, will only require broadband.

My (20 MBPS dl rate and a 750kbs up rate) connection is about $50.00. I could just imagin what this will cost! Dear god FiOS has a good idea, but I would chop off my left nut to avoid FiOS.

At those speeds you can just have a terminal and the cable company can be your computer. Which to be honest that is my vision of the future. Screen, Keyboard, Mouse and blazing fast connection with your ISP is your computer with software bought on the fly (i.e. kills software piracy too).

You have never used a thin terminal before, have you? try getting good video performance on that bandwidth. Hint: you never will.

I look at it more like a remote desktop situation.. over 150 connection it should be almost real time no?

Almost, but it depends what you are doing. Lower graphics and only desktop applications without animation and you are good to go. Running Windows Vista desktops with all the bells and whistles and you still have too much latency to make it work, even with high bandwidth.

yeah ive tried it over gigabit ethernet, and that still doesnt quite cut it well enough for basic software use, let alone trying to use games or watch a video with any quality.

I support a massive network connected over 100mbit+ with lots of remote desktop connections ongoing. Let's just say I tweaked my RDP settings quite a bit to enhance performance. Sub 8ms pings from coast to coast doesn't mean a thing when you animate every GUI widget.

yeah, but on the other hand i can get vista to run flawlessly if i turn off all the useless features and only do what i actually need to do for work. but then again, if i had a laggy home terminal connection for entertainment i would not be a happy camper.

We don't have Vista in the environment so I'm just talking about disabling animations in sliding or fading menus... Add in the enhanced GUI of Vista and this sort of remote desktop management would be a nightmare.

Why do I want 150Mbps? I don't even think that fast!

people once said that with 56k. Broadband made things like youtube and content rich web 2.0 sites feasable. Try running most common websites on a 56k and you'll see. Imagine what 150 Mbps would allow..... um let's see, 1080p on demand, no need to own physical hddvd/br disks just the rights. You're OS could be mostly web based. I can keep going.

You don't and you won't get it. To offer that much bandwidth in the home they would need a massive increase in bandwidth they have to the backbone providers. Without a huge backbone, the home users hitting the full 150 would slow down those who just want to browse the web or read emails.

Web based OS ? Booting off of the internet ?
No physical media and just pay for DRM unplayable streams/movies.. Then that's just a desire to get ripped off.
Those are not better products for customers but real threats to customers freedom and to the business overall to create more and more monopolies like Microsoft willing to enslave their customers and ask more and more money.

While higher bandwidth has allowed for more video over the internet, not even YouTube is streaming @ anywhere near 150Mbps to each of the 20,000+ people watching a video at any given time. You're have to be moving data from a lot of different sites simultaneously to start to tap that much bandwidth (if your ISP even had the pipes on the back end to support what they're selling you).

A web based OS would be cool! It would save a lot of tax dollars! It'll be so easy for the NSA to spy on citizens that they'll be able to cut their budget in half!

Sounds interesting, though will probably take awhile to reach affordable levels. I hardly watch tv myself so makes sense I think to devote more to the internet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah...I'll believe it when I see it.

That seems interesting. However, with digital signals being mandatory in 2008, that means a lot more bandwith availability. I believe it's 1 analog channel that equals about 4 digital channels.

A standard cable system today has roughly 70 analog channels. Take those 70 analog television channels and multiply it by 4 and you get 280 digital channels. That's a lot of bandwith difference.

i thought it was closer to 8 or so, but i could be wrong.

I don't care what they do, I'm sick and tired of cable and by the end of June when FiOS is available, I'm getting it.

If only FiOS wasn't from Verizon!

I second that.

Yeah, and from my experience, ActionTec makes really bad equipment. And I dunno if thats what they're supplying in all FiOS markets, but I doubt those modems have good reliability.

And did you know FiOS will be cracking down on P2P like never before? They will even be banning most online games from being able to access their service, because you can share files apparently.

But it's fact. FiOS= No more torrents, and no more Limeiwre.

so they gonna block vpn too? cause you can share files that way, and they cant even see them, and since the business sector requires that pretty much i dont think anyone has anything real to worry about. besides shouldn't you be paying for your content anyway? seeing as you didnt make it and dont own the rights.

I'm downloading Anarchy Online via a torrent right now. It's one way they distribute the game client.

For a price. ;]

I'm all for competition in the bandwidth arena, but there are only so many frequencies running down Comcast's pipe. The more they band together for internet, the less available for TV Channels.

I guess this will be great for that shady guy on everyone's street that hasn't seen sun in 18 months and just downloads porn all day. :P

When you get speeds that fast who says the cable company has to provide all the channels anyways. I already watch shows off the internet. Look at things like Apple TV. They already stream movie trailors on demand.

Those that do not subscribe to their Internet service will probably care as they will be affected too.

for real it'd almost make sense, at that speed, to have cable boxes for TV's instead and using the speed solely for internet use, or combine technologies and instead of using COAX, using ethernet instead.

P.S.- *thinks to himself* ... you couldn't hook it into existing hubs and have it work at full speed.

... actually you'd have to have a gigabit ethernet card too! ... while it'd be cool in a sense, the price is going to be outstandingly ridiculous. I'm paying $45 for 7M down/512K up b/c Buckeye Cable stinks. I can only freaking imagine how much 150 would cost (and for those wondering, I think the 10mb is something like $70+ a month). If they went on that price scheme, it'd be $1050/month. I'm sure it's not going to be THAT much, but ... With buckeye, you never know.

I pay $45 for 12Mbps Down & 2Mbps Up on Comcast. I could see it going up to maybe $95 for 150Mbps downloads.

Ethernet itself has a limitation of 100M before needing to be repeated/boosted by some means, that won't work in most buildouts with cable.

you do realize that comcast uses fiber often also didnt you? they even do fiber only loops between corps if you have the money. and guess what their backbones are made of? yeah, wouldn't be too hard for them to offer a Fios variant also.

not to mention more expensive cat5e or 6 if you want any type of good performance out of your network. because yes a large amount of companies still use cat5 or even coaxial for their network infrastructure.