Speed Trump

Posted on June 18, 2008

Backup Comcast with that paltry 16MBps down and 2Mbps up, Verizon has just tapped you….with a sledge hammer.

Beginning next week, Verizon will make available to more than 10 million homes and businesses the nation’s fastest consumer broadband connections, with download speeds up to 50 Mbps and upload speeds up to 20 Mbps.

Verizon had already offered the 50/20 Mbps and 20/20 Mbps services in its FiOS markets in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. The company is now expanding those offerings to new Verizon FiOS customers in 10 additional states.

Verizon’s 50/20 FiOS connection is the fastest available to US consumers. Verizon is providing the ultra-fast, two-way speeds that are so needed for online activities like conferencing, social networking and fast uploading of photo albums or home videos, as well as multi-player gaming and online work.Here’s some numbers to choke you up - at 50 Mbps, downloading a 5 GB file, such as a full length movie purchased online, takes less than 15 minutes, and an MP3 music file takes the blink of an eye.

Using a 20 Mbps upstream broadband connection, a consumer could upload a 250 MB file of 200 photos in about 90 seconds, instead of around an hour for many ISP uploads. A 3 GB file, such as a one-hour family video shot with a high-definition video camera, can be uploaded in around 20 minutes, compared with about nine hours the old way.

Of course it ouches you pretty good at around $140 a month for the 50 Mbps connection, it just depends on your need for speed and the thickness of your wallet.