Verizon: Technology leadership and innovation

2017 was a tremendous year for our fiber-optic network technology – the wireline infrastructure that underpins everything from our superfast Fios broadband and 4G LTE wireless network that millions use every day, through to our next gen 5G solutions. We are proud of the industry leadership and technological innovations our team delivered over the last year, truly demonstrating that at Verizon, we don’t wait for the future, we build it.

Here are some highlights:

We launched our Fios Gigabit Connection service in April, now available to nearly the entire Fios footprint of 14.5 million homes.

“We’re particularly proud of the scale of this achievement, which stands in contrast to those providers that offer gigabit-like services to a small number of customers. With almost all of our customers able to benefit from download speeds of up to 940 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 880 Mbps, Fios Gigabit Connection shows the future is here, now,” said Kevin Service, wireline field operations leader, Verizon.

If you think Fios is fast, our fiber-based services are about to get even better. In 2017, we successfully trialed interoperability with NG-PON2 technology, paving the way for commercial rollouts in 2018. This technology supports up to 40G of total capacity and up to 10G speeds per customer, both upstream and downstream, over a single fiber. That means customers will have unbelievable speeds up from 2.5 Gbps on today’s current GPON architecture.

We were the first to bring 100 Gbps speeds to our backbone several years ago, and now we’re primed to be the first to hit 400 Gbps. In December, we conducted a successful 400 Gbps trial in Dallas. This will be crucial to our industry leadership in continuing to meet the future demands of video streaming, 4K, virtual reality, cloud computing, 5G and more.

Expanding on our build in Dorchester, we brought TV and broadband competition and choice in September to residents in parts of the Jamaica Plain and Hyde Park neighborhoods of Boston as we continued the expansion of our 100 percent fiber-optic network across the Hub. Verizon Fios Internet, TV and phone services are also now available in parts of Dorchester, Roxbury, and West Roxbury, as part of our planned $300 million investment. 

We continue to replace aged copper wiring with more resilient fiber-optic technology in towns and cities along the Northeast coast. In 2017, we laid almost 7,000 miles of fiber-optic cables, which is like wrapping the moon around its equator.  This upgrade is providing increased reliability and advanced services like Ethernet, wave services, Fios, and more.

To help our customers enjoy the Super Bowl, we also deployed 550 miles of fiber inside U.S. Bank Stadium. Here is more information on our wireless and wireline preparations for the big game.

Our Fios service earned “Highest in Residential Internet and Television Service Satisfaction in the East” by J.D. Power, marking the fifth consecutive Internet service award. For the 12^th year in a row, Fios Internet won the PCMag Reader’s choice award.

“We are very proud of the service we provide to our customers, and will continue to make enhancements to stay ahead of the competition,” said Service.