Verizon on Monday announced its FiOS Internet service is getting a speed boost. Instead of upping download speeds (which are already plenty fast over the fiber connection), the company is tackling a facet that's often overlooked - upload speeds.
In a rollout that begins today, Verizon is matching its upload speeds to its download speeds for new and existing customers at no extra charge. For example, customers with a 50 Mbps connection previously had an upload speed of 25 Mbps. Following the update, their new upload speed will also be 50 Mbps.
FiOS is rolling out symmetrical upload speeds for customers across the board up to the top 500 Mbps speed tier. At the top speed, a customer could upload 200 photos (1GB) in four seconds, a 1-hour HD movie (3GB) in under 50 seconds and 10GB of data to the cloud in just 2.7 minutes.
While services like Google Fiber may have FiOS beat, that's still a ridiculously fast connection.
Robert Mudge, Verizon's president of consumer and mass business markets and the top FiOS boss, said the upgrade to offer symmetrical upload speeds required an almost insignificant investment on their part. Traditional cable operators, meanwhile, would need to spend a lot more green in order to offer symmetrical upload speeds.
Mudge and others believe that upload speeds will become increasingly more important over the coming years as video chat services and large file sharing in the cloud becomes even more prevalent. Verizon even expects upload traffic to double by the end of 2016.
