Verizon ups in-home FiOS speeds to 175 Mb/s

Verizon Communications announced a new set of home gateways for its FiOS fiber-to-the-premises network Wednesday aimed at opening up home networks for future bandwidth needs and enabling multiple wireless networks today.

The new gateways -- custom-made for and exclusively provided to Verizon by incumbent supplier Actiontec and new supplier Westell -- boost FiOS speeds over coaxial cable in the home from 75 Mb/s to 175 Mb/s. Users won’t be able to take full advantage of that speed hike today, as Verizon’s broadband offerings are slower than that (topping out at 50 Mb/s). But the new gateways, which Verizon will begin installing in homes within the next two months, offer some future-proofing for subsequent increases in speed -- and apparently the not-too-distant future. Tushar Saxena, Verizon’s director of home networking technologies, calls the new products “devices for the next three to four years.”

Whereas Verizon’s current gateways typically allow for just one WiFi network per home, the new gear allows users to create up to four separate wireless networks, each with different security settings, so that users can create one for work, one with parental controls for their kids and one for guests, for example.

The new devices also have double the processing power -- important because, Saxena said, the number of networked devices in the home will soon mushroom. And value can be created in the interconnection and communication between devices.

“Ultimately, with all these devices on your IP network, you’ll want [them] to share media seamlessly with out having to futz around with the home network,” Saxena said. “The home network should be transparent.”