Verizon makes the competition very afraid.
Broadband and satellite service providers should feel afraid. Very afraid. Verizon has entered the fierce competition for pieces of the residential service market, jumping right in with its fearsome FiOS “bundle” of services. Bringing the latest technology and its reputation for reliability and affordability, Verizon has thrown-down the gauntlet to AT&T, Comcast, and other telecom giants. Verizon FiOS offers sophisticated, seamless integration of television and internet service, and it adds high-quality, full-featured residential phone service all priced at approximately half the competition’s rates for similar packages. Although FiOS is not yet available in all markets, it is blowing away the good ol’ boys in its test markets. Residential consumers should feel as excited as service providers should feel afraid.
FiOS serves-up a fistful of cool features.
“FiOS” stands for “fiber optic system,” a phrase which here translates to “hello, high-powered hi-def” and also is synonymous with high-speed reliability and ease of access. Linked to users’ televisions, FiOS delivers the clearest, highest resolution picture available anywhere, and it offers choice among more than 300 channels plus access to more than 17,000 movies. Better still, users can access the internet to enhance their viewing. During sports broadcasts, FiOS users can retrieve player bios, statistics, and peak performances from the world-wide web. Watching movies, users can answer the time-honored question, “Who is that actress?” Watching news broadcasts, viewers can find alternative points of view and take advantage of wire service and print media coverage of the day’s events. Just as importantly, FiOS delivers excellent sound, putting the boom in the bass and the quiver in the high soprano.
Users enjoy all these services without bulky cables or ugly dishes. One DVR runs all the television sets in a whole household, and subscribers easily can program their viewing from their personal computers or from their internet-enabled cell phones. Most importantly, Verizon’s introductory rate for a year’s service comes-in at just slightly more than DirectTV’s price for just television–$89.95 per month. Compare against $69.95 for satellite television alone, or compare against $120.00 for AT&T U-Verse bundles.
