Ready for 150M Broadband Connections?

Faster networks have been an ongoing desire among small and medium businesses since the days of 50K bps modems. Trying to gain the high ground in the never ending speed war, Verizon boosted its top speed to 150M bps.The company boosted its top transmission speeds by a factor of three, supporting 150M bps downloads and 35M bps uploads. The emergence of higher speed network connections makes it more feasible for businesses to build video based applications. For instance, users can download a two-hour, standard-definition movie (1.5 gigabytes) in less than 80 seconds, and a two-hour HD movie (5 GB) in about four and a half minutes.

While these services have potential, they also face some barriers. The company has stated its intention to make the high speed service available to all companies in its service area, however, Verizon first must upgrade all of its network equipment, a process that could take several months. The cost of the service is high, about $200 a month. Finally, few businesses may not be ready to fill up the pipes at the moment.

Rather than a mad rush to the service, Verizon will probably experience a slow ramp up. More importantly for small and medium businesses, the advent of these new high speed services will enable them to deploy new bandwidth intensive applications that could help differentiate their businesses. So they can now plan accordingly.