Verizon Doubling FiOS Speed To 300Mbps

Verizon announced today that it will be doubling the speed of its already blazing FiOS home Internet service. The fiber optics service was boasting 150Mbps downlink and 35Mbps uplink speeds, but soon those speeds will be boosted to 300Mbps downlink and 65Mbps uplink. That's much faster than any other cable offering and faster than many of the wireless routers in our homes.

If you already have the 150Mbps FiOS plan, then you will be eligible for a free upgrade to 300Mbps. The 50Mbps tier actually gets the best boost, tripling to 150Mbps. However, Verizon isn't planning on any major expansions of its FiOS infrastructure, so if you're in an area without FiOS, don't expect to be getting it anytime soon.

The new speeds will be made available starting in June, but Verizon hasn't revealed yet whether there will be any pricing adjustments. Instead, they said that existing users could choose to remain at their current speeds and not upgrade.

Verizon will offer to replace the older slower routers for existing users that choose to upgrade. The new routers can transfer data event faster than FiOS's latest speeds. At the slowest tier of 15Mbps, it will take about 44.4 minutes to download a 5GB two-hour HD video, while at the highest tier of 300Mbps, that same video will only take 2.2 minutes.

[via ArsTechnica]