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Google Fiber to bring 1000 Mbps speeds, TV, free Internet to Kansas City
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Corporate News, Google, Home Entertainment, Internet,
Today Google finally took the wraps off of its long-awaited Google Fiber service. Focusing on Kansas City, Google Fiber is both an Internet service and television service, and Google showed off just how awesome the service will be.
First, the Internet speeds. Google Fiber provides gigabit speeds both up and down the pipe. That's 1000/1000 Mbps (which makes our 35/35 connection look atrocious.) The company detailed how far behind the USA is in terms of speed and pricing, and is looking to invoke some major change. Google Fiber Internet will also come with 1TB of Google Drive cloud storage, and there will be no bandwidth caps or overage fees. But that's not all…
Click to continue reading Google Fiber to bring 1000 Mbps speeds, TV, free Internet to Kansas City
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| Google Fiber
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Comcast Xfinity Platinum offers 305 Mbps for $299.95 per month
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Corporate News, Internet,
If you thought Comcast would let Verizon make them look bad with those 300 Mbps FiOS Quantum speeds, you've got another thing coming, as the company has just announced Xfinity Platinum. Boasting speeds of 305 Mbps down and 65 Mbps up, the new offering will only be available to Comcast customers living in the northeast region, with no details on if it will be deployed elsewhere.
In addition, customers on the lower-speed Xfinity Blast! tier will see their speeds increased from 25 Mbps to 50 Mbps, and Extreme tier customers get bumped from 50 Mbps to 105 Mbps with no price increase. Now, two pieces of bad news. First, the 305 Mbps service will cost $299.95 per month, which is $95 more than FiOS Quantum. Second, if you're a Comcast customer who doesn't live in Boston, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburg, Hartford, Wilmington, Richmond, New Jersey, Baltimore, or Washington, D.C., then you don't get any speed bumps.
Read More | Comcast
Google Fiber to launch in Kansas City on July 26
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Google, Internet, Videos,
It's been a long road since the time that the ambitious Google Fiber initiative was announced, but a little over two years later, and the product is ready to launch. This morning Google announced that Kansas City will be set to go live with super-fast Gigabit Internet speeds on July 26th, and we are very green with envy.
Click to continue reading Google Fiber to launch in Kansas City on July 26
Read More | Google Fiber
Verizon FiOS Quantum offers 300 Mbps for $205 per month
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Corporate News, Internet,
Verizon has finally made those FiOS speed increases that we told you about recently a reality, and along with the new speeds comes a new name as well. Verizon FiOS Quantum offers speeds up to 300 Mbps down and 65 Mbps up, and the cost is a whopping $205 per month with a two-year contract (or $210 per month contract-free.) What can you do with those speeds? Verizon tells us:
"With a 300 Mbps speed, consumers can download a two-hour, standard-definition movie (1.5 gigabytes) in less than 40 seconds; and a two-hour, high-definition movie (5 GB) in 2.2 minutes."
If you're in a Verizon FiOS area, you can order upgrade now.
Read More | Verizon
Verizon FiOS Internet speeds now top out at 300 Mbps
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Corporate News, Internet,
Last week we reported that Verizon FiOS Internet users were about to receive a significant speed boost, and today it's been made official. Most impressive is that the download speed of the fastest tier has doubled to 300 Mbps, with a 65 Mbps upload speed alongside it. Here's a look at all the new speed tiers:
- 300/65 Mbps (previously 150/35)
- 150/65 Mbps (previously 50/20)
- 75/35 Mbps (previously 35/35)
- 50/25 Mbps (previously 25/25)
- 15/5 Mbps
On the fastest tier, you can download a 2-hour 1080p movie in less than 22 minutes. The new speeds take effect in June.
Read More | Verizon FiOS
Verizon FiOS to introduce new 50/25, 75/35 speed tiers in June
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Corporate News, Hot Deals,
Looks like Verizon FiOS is about to get a whole lot faster. According to Broadband Reports, the current broadband symmetrical 25/25 Mbps tier will soon be changed to 50/25, while users on the 35/35 symmetrical tier will have their speeds upgraded to a whopping 75/35. The new 50/25 and 75/35 tiers will be available in all Verizon FiOS markets regardless of if the area is on GPON or BPON, and the changes should appear sometime around June 18. If you're a current customer, you may need to call in to get provisioned for the higher speed tier, but it shouldn't cost you anything extra.
Read More | Broadband Reports
Comcast ditching the 250 GB data cap in favor of tiered pricing
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Corporate News, Internet,
Comcast is finally ready to abandon the 250 GB data cap that it introduced in 2008. While this is certainly a welcome change, don't go firing up that myriad of torrents just yet. The company will be testing what it calls a more "flexible" approach--tiered pricing. Comcast will be doing trials of two different tiered approaches over the next few months. One sees base plans that start at 300 GB per month, and when exceeded, Comcast is considering charging customers an additional $10 for each extra 50 GB of usage in a given month. The other is similar, but gives a larger cap to homes subscribes to the 30 MBps Blast package and 105 Mbps Extreme package. Based on those trials, Comcast will decide how to move forward with pricing its network for the future.
Read More | Comcast Voices
Google looking to test fiber Internet at gigabit speeds for up to 500,000 people
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Google, Internet,
Oh, hello there, crazy drool-worthy and inexpensive ultra high-speed Internet from Google! Yeah, that’s right, Google is looking to launch an experimental, ultra high-speed broadband network in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We are talking about Gigiabit fiber to the home speeds here. The only thing that currently comes close is Verizon FiOS, and their current download speed tops out at 50 megabits per second. Gigabit would be 1000 megabits (or, 128 MB) per second, which is just insultingly fast. Even better? They want to launch it at inexpensive prices in the launch/test cities. So, why would they do this, and what would be the benefit?
First, competition. Google wants to bring the price down while bringing the service level up, and they are putting their money where their mouth is and challenging other ISPs right on their home turf. If you had a choice between crazy-fast Google Internet and sucky Comcast, you’d likely end up going with Google in a heartbeat, since it’s like 200x faster, and less expensive. Second, Google is getting into the web apps business hard. It would be ideal for them for web applications and native desktop applications to have no difference in speed, and you can bet that they’d be deploying these tests to optimize the hell out of their web app products. Make no mistake, they want Google Docs to run just as fast in your browser as Microsoft Word runs when you launch it on your local machine.
We love this, and despite having a 50/20 FiOS connection, we want it badly. Google, bring this to Seattle, k?
Read More | Google Fiber for Communities
Follow Up: Verizon makes good on our FiOS privacy woes
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Editorial, Features, Internet,
A little under two weeks ago, we made a long-standing issue that we had with Verizon public. The fact that they had ignored our request to fix a huge oversight that resulted in our private FiOS account info to fall into the wrong hands for over 8 months was starting to upset us just a tad. We knew that if we shared it with you, our readers, that Verizon would have no choice but to respond quickly. At least, that was the hope.
Well, sure enough, after the story was picked up on The Consumerist as well as made it to the front page of Digg, we received a phone call. Then an email. Then another phone call. Then a couple more emails. Verizon Damage Control had stepped in.
Click to continue reading Follow Up: Verizon makes good on our FiOS privacy woes
Our Verizon FiOS customer service nightmare: Why won’t they protect my private customer information?
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Editorial, Features, Internet,
Seeing as we’ve been experiencing a ton of customer service issues with our Verizon FiOS service for the past 8 months, we figured it was time to put out a warning to you guys. After all, we typically hear that the FiOS Internet service is remarkably amazing, and people have been dumping cable in droves when FiOS becomes available in their area. Hey, there is good reason to. Where we are at, right outside Seattle, our choices are slow DSL, Comcast at 8.0 down and 768k up, or FiOS with a max speed of 30.0 down and 15.0 up (which is the plan we are on.)
Now let’s be clear here, we love the FiOS service. It works fantastically, it has never gone down in the 8 months we’ve been using it, and it’s, well, fast.
So what is the problem? To put it bluntly, Verizon has shown that they don’t care - at all - about protecting their users private, confidential information. Now, why would we make a statement like that? Check it.
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