The Best Broadband ISPs in America

Fiber: The Future

Earlier this year, David Heyman of Bethesda, Maryland, signed up for Verizon's Fiber Optic Service (FiOS), which replaced his Verizon DSL line. For everyday Web surfing, his 5-mbps (downstream) FiOS connection is quite a bit faster than his DSL one (which offered 3 mbps downstream), and Heyman notices the improvement especially when moving large files. "If I'm downloading something, it's definitely very fast," says Heyman, who works in AOL's marketing department. "And it's 2 megabits upstream. So once a year when I get back from vacation, and I'm uploading pictures, it moves a whole lot faster." By comparison, his DSL connection had a slow 128-kbps upstream capability.

Today's top DSL providers are spending billions of dollars to upgrade their infrastructures to fiber-optic technology, which utilizes thin strands of glass fiber to carry massive amounts of data. A fiber-optic connection to the home can easily transmit all of your data--Internet, telephone, and TV--with room to spare for applications not yet imagined. "If tomorrow you come out with new electronics that can do ten times the speed, the fiber doesn't have to be replaced," says Chris Pizzirani, Verizon vice president of broadband product management.

Verizon is running fiber-optic cable to homes in its 30-state territory; FiOS could easily bring 100-mbps broadband to the home, Pizzirani says, though its current version of the service is more modest. In Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, for instance, FiOS customers can get a 30-mbps downstream, 5-mbps upstream connection for $55 a month with a one-year contract. Verizon plans to have FiOS wiring installed in 3 million homes in 16 states by the end of this year. But the technology isn't yet challenging the cable/DSL duopoly--in fact, just over 1 percent of our survey respondents get their broadband via fiber optics. Respondents who use Verizon's fiber-optic service--the only service with enough responses to rate--ranked it much higher than the people who were using the company's DSL and dial-up services.

In 13 states AT&T is running fiber-optic lines to neighborhoods, and then using existing copper wiring for the last leg into the home. (The company is conducting fiber-optics-to-the-home tests in Houston and northern Nevada as well.) The technology, dubbed Project Lightspeed, brings fiber optics to within 3000 feet of customers' homes, on average; though much faster than today's DSL, it is not as fast as fiber optics going directly to the home. In tests, the company says it is seeing speeds of 20 to 25 mbps per second. "This gives us more than enough bandwidth to provide four streams of high-quality video (including one high-definition stream), high-speed Internet access, and, in the future, consumer Voice-over-IP services," states AT&T spokesperson Brad Mays.

Expect high-definition television programming delivered over the Internet to gobble up a big chunk of the new bandwidth. Using current video compression methods, "a high-definition stream already takes up about 16 mbps of bandwidth," says Jeff Heynen, broadband and IPTV analyst for research firm Infonetics. Add two standard-definition TV streams (for watching television in other rooms) at 4 mbps each, and that raises the total demand to 24 mbps. Tack on a 6-mbps link for browsing, e-mail, online gaming, and other Internet uses, and you've reached 30 mbps. Heynen points out, however, that MPEG-4 compression technology, which providers will start using in the near future, should cut video bandwidth requirements in half.

Click the image below to see survey results on the speeds people report they are getting.