Verizon broadband prices makes UK look cheap
Tuesday 19 June 2012 17:29:57 by Andrew Ferguson

Verizon while not a UK provider but a provider in the USA, will be known by many for its rollout of a fibre service called FiOS, which provides packages that ran from 15 Mbps right up to 300 Mbps.

What many people will not have seen is the price of these packages, and the distinct premium price they command on top of the standard DSL offerings by Verizon. Verizon does offer speed banding that many in the UK would like, but the banding is very basic, a below 1 Mbps service is available for $19.99 a month, for those wanting 1.1 Mbps to 15 Mbps the price rises to $29.99 a month. Remember to add sales tax (usually around 10%) and other fees that are payable, in the US advertised pricing excludes things like tax, and contributions to run the 911 phone service.

The cheapest fibre service is a wallet busting $69.99 and this gets you a 15 Mbps download, and 5 Mbps upload. An extra $10 a month boosts speeds to 50 Mbps down, and a very good 25 Mbps upload. 150 Mbps is available for $99.99 a month, and for the money no object crowd there is a 300 Mbps service at $209.99 per month.

The services are all unlimited, though it seems that as average usage is increasing the monthly cost for broadband is set to increase. The UK has generally avoided large price rises for broadband services by a mixture of backhaul costs reducing over the years due to regulation and competition, and the very early introduction of usage allowances and traffic management.

Superfast broadband in the UK generally carries a premium of £10 to £15 a month on top of the standard ADSL2+ packages, though BT Retail is managing to absorb the extra wholesale costs currently, similar to what it did in the early days of the ADSL roll-out in an attempt to drive take-up. Virgin Media who offers the closest match in terms of download speeds to FiOS costs £34.75 per month for its 100 Mbps service.