As many people post every time Om or someone posts about FIOS pricing, in northern Virginia I have 30 down, 5 up from FIOS for $60/month. Verizon’s pricing scheme is very different in different areas, entirely dependent on competition. The prices that they list on their website are the max prices for anywhere in the country, but in local areas, especially those with more competition, FIOS is offered with more throughput and for less cost.

In several places the 50/5 plan is $60/month.

DOCSIS 3.0, as we’ve both been saying, is that good. I predict 50 meg both upstream and down, 95+% of the time. DOCSIS 3.0 is 4-12 times faster than what Comcast has today, making it far easier to handle whatever bandwidth customers demand. It’s also really cheap - Comcast estimates that 100 meg in DOCSIS 3.0 will cost them about the same as 6 meg in the current system. So Comcast can sell it at $30-$50/month and see 60-80% margins, better than their TV service. That’s already the price at Numericable in France, which throws in free phone service across the country.

The bandwidth will make it harder to breach net neutrality, especially as 3.0 is designed to speed up three more times, up to a gig when needed. On any decent network, that will handle likely demand until 2015-2017. That’s great news. Comcast is smart to discourage customers with a high price until the bugs are out, then bring it down. If the U.S. had 4 strong competitors, like France, the 50 meg price would drop 70% over the next two years. That should include 50 meg upstream as well, which should be part of the package in 2009. (The upstream bonding is already at CableLabs for certification.)

Which leads to my conclusion that the next battle will be to get a fair price and availability for all. 80% of North America is served by other cablecos, nearly all moving more slowly than Comcast. The gear is new and guaranteed to have problems at the beginning, so most will let others solve the inevitable bugs. 96% of the U.S. can get cable, and there is no technical reason not to offer it to almost all of them in the next 2-4 years.

Let’s make it so. It will change the Internet. db

Brian Roberts dropped the bomb: 50 megabit DOCSIS 3.0 to 20 million homes in two years, upstream as well as down. Bravo to him for building a better network. The price is temporarily high ($150), but the marginal cost per home per month is about $10-12, virtually the same as today’s cable modems.

Randall at AT&T should be having nightmares. DOCSIS 3.0 real speed is 4 to 50 times as fast as any service they have for the better part of a decade. Their top tech people pointed out in 2004 that U-Verse was a big gamble, because it is far behind what DOCSIS 3.0 will deliver.

Numericable has passed two million French homes.in the major cities, and Videotron is taking the battle to Bell Canada.

Details here.

FIOS Pricing
Annual Plans:
5/2: $43/mo
15/2: $53/mo
15/15: $65/mo
30/15: $140/mo

Month-to-Month:
5/2: $51/mo
15/2: $61/mo
15/15: $73/mo
30/15: $160/mo