Verizon’s FiOS network is already capable of top speeds of 500 megabits per second, which lets you download an HD movie in about 15 seconds. But the FiOS of tomorrow could be as much as 20 times faster than even those blazing speeds.
Verizon has just finished testing a next-generation fiber-optic Internet technology that allows the company to transfer data at rates of 10 gigabits per second.
For those keeping track, that’s 10 times faster than even Google Fiber, which offers some of the speediest fiber you can buy today.
Verizon believes its new technology, called NG-PON2 — short for “next-generation passive optical network” — could eventually grow to support speeds of 80 Gbps.
That’s thousands of times faster than what most average U.S. households get today.
Fiber-optic cables work by sending data that’s been encoded as packets of light. NG-PON2 transmits the data using certain wavelengths of light that can handle 10 Gbps of capacity each, according to a company release.
The company tested NG-PON2 at a customer’s house three miles away from Verizon’s central office in Framingham, Mass. It also tried it out with a business customer.
A burgeoning arms race is occurring in the broadband industry. Comcast, for instance, has been working on a 2 Gbps service that it recently said will cost $300 a month.
While this version of FiOS probably won’t be coming to your area anytime soon — and would be insanely expensive even if it did — the demonstration shows just how fast the Internet will someday become. That capacity will be used to accommodate new technologies like driverless cars, smart appliances and a host of other emerging products we haven’t even invented yet.
