Verizon Weaves Fiber-Based Broadband Offering

Verizon Communications is scheduled to launch its fiber-based broadband service, offering up to 30 mebabits per second to homes and small businesses and starting at a monthly rate of $34.95, the company has announced.

The FTTP (fiber to the premises) service, called Fios, will become available in August to about 100,000 customers in the Dallas area, company spokesman Eric Rabe said. That includes a Keller, Texas, fiber deployment that was announced in May. The service also will become available in two other U.S. locations this year, and Verizon intends to lay fiber past 1 million U.S. homes and businesses in nine states by the end of the year.

Strung Together

Because it runs over optical fiber all the way from the carrier's facilities to the customer's home or business, an FTTP service can offer higher speeds than are generally available today on DSL or cable modem services. However, it requires the carrier to lay fiber down each street and send technicians out to each customer's location to set up the service, Rabe said.

Depending on the neighborhood, Verizon might either lay fiber underground from the street or string it from a pole in place of the customer's traditional copper wiring, he said. Setups should take about two hours but will vary, he added. There may be a setup fee for installation at some homes and businesses, but in initial deployments the fees typically will be waived, Rabe said.

Plan Choices

Verizon will provide three levels of service, the company said in a statement:

• 5 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream for $34.95 per month for customers with a Verizon phone service plan, or $39.95 per month by itself
• 5 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream for $44.95 per month with a phone service, or $49.95 per month by itself
• 30 mbps downstream and 5 mbps upstream for a price to be announced later

Hooking Up

By the end of the year, Verizon will deploy fiber to about 100,000 customers in areas of Southern California, including parts of Huntington Beach and Riverside County, and to about 100,000 customers in Tampa and Hillsborough County, Florida.

Verizon will hook up the service to phones and TV set-top boxes as well as all the PCs in a home or business. It sees voice-over IP, videoconferencing, digital movie downloads, and multiplayer games as popular potential uses of the service. Verizon plans to offer a Fios video service in 2005 as an alternative to cable TV. From the start, each level of service will include the suite of services offered today with Verizon Online DSL, including e-mail, Microsoft MSN Premium content, and Verizon's Broadband Beat entertainment portal.