I’d been looking forward to the rollout of FTTP (fiber to the premises) from Verizon here in Keller.  They were promising truly high-speed internet access.  Well, they’ve announced the pricing scheme, and it’s the same old tired crap with upload caps (and I’ll bet a bunch of restrictive terms about what you can run).  Further, they’re bundling all the same useless content that they do with their DSL service (MSN Premium content; Verizon’s new Broadband Beat entertainment portal).

Here are the announced prices:

• 5 Mbps/2 Mbps for $34.95 a month as part of a calling package, or $39.95 a month stand-alone
• 15 Mbps/2 Mbps for $44.95 a month as part of a calling package, or $49.95 a month stand-alone
• 30 Mbps/5 Mbps at pricing to be announced later

I guess I must not be the core market, but all I want is the damn pipe, and I want one without a stupid upload cap.  I don’t need (nor do I want) their content.  I don’t need their email or web hosting or any other stuff.  I work from home and I frequently need to upload large files.  Upload caps get in the way of that.  Given that this is for work, I’d be willing to pay a little more per month for a service without an upload cap. 

15M/2M or 30M/5M is still a lot better than what I get now (3M/128Kbps), but it’s kind of disappointing to find these stingy upload caps after all the hype about what they were touting as “true high speed” access.  Don’t get me wrong—I’ll probably still sign up, but I’m not as enthusiastic as I was about this when they first announced it.  Yes, I know the equipment itself isn’t symmetrical, but the technical capabilities of the equipment should at least allow something like 15M/15M through bandwidth shaping techniques (the tech specs are 155M down and 100M up and they’re likely using bandwidth shaping/throttling software in the routers or the modems to limit the bandwidth to the contractual amounts). 

I almost forgot to mention that they’ve named the service “Verizon Fios”.  I think I’ll stick to calling it FTTP.  I absolutely despise the current corporate trend of making up nonsense words as names for their products.