Looks like Verizon needs to revise its competitive-marketing materials comparing FiOS Internet with cable’s broadband services.
The “FiOS vs. Cable” page on its site shows estimated download and upload times for various activities for the FiOS 50-Mbps tier and 10-Mbps cable connection — e.g., slurp down a 6-GB movie file in 16 minutes with FiOS vs. 20 minutes with cable.
“Cable — eat our dust,” the telco gloats. You can almost hear the FiOS guy from the Verizon ads exhaling hot breath onto his fingernails.
But there’s a footnote: *Cable speed comparison based on national average of maximum download speeds across providers as of November 4, 2008.
Since then, cable operators have rolled out higher-speed services based on DOCSIS 3.0 to millions of homes, and more are coming fast.
Comcast on its Q1 earnings call said it has deployed DOCSIS 3.0 to 35% of its footprint, or north of 17 million households, offering up to 50 Mbps (and with 100 Mbps on tap). It plans to cover all 50 million homes passed by the end of next year with the next-gen cable modem technology (see Comcast’s Hot Wheels).
Cablevision is two weeks away from starting to offer 101-Mbps downstream broadband to some 5 million homes (see Cablevision To Blast Out 101-Mbps Internet Service) and Time Warner Cable is prepping “D3″ for NYC this year (see Time Warner Cable Queues Up DOCSIS 3.0 In NYC).
A related data point: The industry will be at 99% coverage with DOCSIS 3.0 by 2013, according to a report from Pike & Fisher this week.
So while Verizon has accused Cablevision of pulling off nothing more than a “parlor trick,” the fact is, Cablevision is offering far more bandwidth for less money.
To me it looks like Cablevision is giving FiOS a taste of its own (now outdated) marketing medicine.
