In seeking the upper hand on its competitors in cable, Verizon is boasting about improved upload speeds for its FiOS service.
The telecom has boosted upload speeds from 2 Mbps to 5 Mbps for its base plan and from 5 Mbps to 15 Mbps for its mid-tier plan. Download speeds also increased, but to a lesser degree.
"From grade-schoolers to grandparents, no one wants to wait for long uploads any more than they want to wait for long downloads," Mike Ritter, Verizon's chief marketing officer, said in a press release, adding that the speed boost is good for video chat, backing hard drives, uploading photos and videos to e-mail and social networking sites and sending large files. (What, no mention of BitTorrent?)
Verizon claims that the new upload speeds are two to seven times faster than cable.
Ars Technica wonders whether prospective customers will care much about a boost from 2 Mbps to 5 Mbps. I don't think that's an insignificant change, but perhaps the real news is the mid-tier package. Upstream of 15 Mbps is impressive no matter how you slice it, and it could prove alluring for existing customers as well as new ones.
