It seems you can’t turn on the TV any more without seeing a commercial for Verizon’s FiOS service, but what is it, and is it truly faster?

While FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) is a brand name, it is a variation on the concept of Fiber To The Home (FTTH)/Fiber To The Curb (FTTC)/Fiber To The Node (FTTN) concept of high speed Internet access.  Fiber optics, due to the nature of light transmission, can handle far more bandwidth than cable or DSL can, resulting in much higher Internet conenctivity speeds.

While common cable speeds are in the range of 5 – 8 MBs (Megabits a second) for downloading and 500+ KBs (Kilobytes a second) uploading, and with services such as FiOS, you can see speeds up to 50 MBs download and 20 MBs upload.  So, yes, you could see download speeds up to 10 times faster than your current cable modem, but it all depends on much you are willing to pay.

While there are other companies besides Verizon offering fiber optic service, they do seem to be the ones currently leading the charge with rolling it out as many placed as they can.  Unfortunatly, as you can see by this handy, but unofficial map, there are still major parts of the United States with no access.  This is in stark contrast to countries such as Japan that passed a law years ago known as “eJapan”.  Under that law, every home in Japan must have access to Internet speeds of at least 30 MBs.  This was accomplished ahead of schedule and most people enjoy speeds as high as in the 60s.  While the argument can be made that they were able to do this due to the size of their country, it does still show how the United States is falling behind in Internet speeds.

If you are one of the people lucky enough to live in an area with fiber optic service, it should certainly be worth your time and money to switch to this service and enjoy Internet speeds unlike any you have seen before.