FiOS Update

Some of you have been asking how fast FiOS is. Just to give you a point of reference, I used to have a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection, which I then upgraded to a 4 Mbps cable modem and finally ended up with a 15 Mbps FiOS connection. All these speeds are "up to" which means that is the max you can get but in real world situations it could be a lot less, depending on network connections.

To be honest I can't really tell that FiOS is much faster than cable when doing everyday browsing. There was a big jump in apparent speed when upgrading from DSL to my cable modem but I don't feel the same increase when I went from cable to FiOS. I think this is due to the fact that most websites are optimized for narrowband (56K) and up to DSL speeds for broadband detected connections.

Not to say that the relatively high speed of fiber isn 't worth it... when I'm downloading large files and/or uploading files I can definitely tell the difference. Just today I downloaded a 560 MB ISO image from Microsoft in under 6 minutes.

From what I hear the US is a bit behind when it comes to broadband penetration to its consumers. I was talking with my Japanese coworker who told me that many people have 100 Mbps connections to their house for the same price as what we typically pay for DSL. Imagine that!