Verizon has joined the gigabit trend today, with the launch Fios Gigabit Connection. The service will offer up to 940 Mbps downstream and 880 Mbps upstream to select Fios markets for $69.99/month.
Verizon has resisted the gigabit trend for some time, with a 750 Mbps tier as their fastest offer recently, despite being the first wide scale FTTP service provider. Verizon is also offering a fairly aggressive $79.99 triple play bundle that features the gigabit service.
The service will be initially offered to over 8 million homes in parts of the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Richmond, Va., Hampton Roads, Va., Boston, Providence and Washington, D.C. markets. In addition to gigabit service, these markets will also see a standalone 50 Mbps broadband offer of $39.99.
“Everyone deserves the fastest Internet available,” said Ken Dixon, president of Verizon’s consumer wireline business in a press release. “No cable provider comes close to offering the speeds and power of Fios Gigabit connection on this kind of scale.”
The moves and their aggressive pricing may aim to reverse some of the consumer broadband trends of late that have cable generating most new broadband net adds in the industry. In 1Q 2017, Verizon only added 35K net Fios Internet customers. According to Leichtman Research Group, Verizon lost a total of 47K broadband subscribers in 2016. By comparison, Comcast added 1.3 million.