Big news from Verizon today: they've expanded their top FiOS Internet speeds of up to 50 megabits-per-second downstream, and up to 20 megabits-per-second upstream, to ALL of their service footprint. So, anywhere you can get FiOS, you now can get 50 down, 20 up.

But what if you don't know your bits from your bytes and want to know, in plain English, what all that crazy Internet speed really means?...

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: bandwidth, symmetrical, Mbps, internet, upload, download, FiOS | 1 Comments

The recent backlash against certain cable providers compressing their high-def signals has gotten so great that the AP even ran a story on it...

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: bandwidth, compare, FiOS, HD, TV | 0 Comments

You know that nice 250-megabyte batch of digital photos you took at junior's birthday party last week? Yeah, the batch you're now storing on an SD card the size of a postage stamp...

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: bandwidth, FiOS, photos | 4 Comments

Today's the day lots of broadband analysts have been waiting for with baited breath for months...

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: bandwidth, G-PON, upgrade, speed, Mbps, internet, FiOS, network | 0 Comments

It can be almost as annoying as one of those math problems from high school -- you know the ones, where two nimrods with nothing better to do each get on a train, and you have to calculate where and when they meet, or lose their luggage, or something:This file is 12 MB, and my download speed is 15 Mbps, so it should download in... eight tenths of a second?

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: bandwidth, speed, Mbps, internet, upload, download, FiOS | 0 Comments

Franchise Agreements

Whenever a new TV service provider wishes to enter a given market, it must first negotiate an agreement with that market's governing body...

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: fiber, bandwidth, upgrade, compare, rollout, install, FiOS, network | 5 Comments

While it is true that fiber optic networks have been used for long-distance phone service since the 1980s, unfortunately, it doesn't mean that FiOS can be simply "turned on" all over the country at once....

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: last mile, fiber, bandwidth, upgrade, compare, rollout, install, FiOS, network | 5 Comments

Fiber vs. cable: no contest

Besides carrying data at nearly the speed of light, fiber has other advantages over decades-old coaxial cables...

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: fiber, QAM, bandwidth, IMG, speed, internet, VoD, FiOS, HD, TV | 0 Comments

According to the TV spots you've probably seen, FiOS is "the most advanced fiber optic network straight to your home." But what does all that mean?

Posted by Jim 2.0 | tagged: fiber, QAM, bandwidth, IMG, speed, internet, VoD, FiOS, HD, TV | 4 Comments