Verizon used the NXTcomm event today to announce the one millionth FiOS customer. And, to add a human touch (albeit a cheesy one), Verizon has embedded a video on its policy blog showing the family that put FiOS over that one-million milestone. (For those who don’t live in the area, that’s a Long Island accent you hear.)
Congrats to Verizon on the FiOS success. Now let’s talk a little bit about what made it possible.
First and foremost, there’s the optical network carrying Verizon’s broadband signals. If you haven’t followed the Passive Optical Network (PON) alphabet game, we’ve gone through APON, BPON and GPON, just to name a few. When Motorola started providing optical gear to Verizon in ’05, it was BPON. Part of a five-year contract, that announcement followed on the heels of an ’04 agreement for Motorola to provide video infrastructure and set-top equipment, and led to an ’06 agreement where Motorola was one of three vendors selected to provide GPON technology. (Need that in visual form? See above.)
For those who aren’t so much into the optical networking thing, Motorola has also acted as the engine behind one of Verizon’s coolest and most-coveted TV services: Home Media DVR. I’m always a little surprised by how relatively little coverage the service has gotten. In the Verizon video, the family talks about the advantages of not having to schedule time on one DVR in the living room. As the youngest family member says, “There’s a button (on the remote) and it even says DVR and it goes right to it. So it’s really easy.” (Okay, so she could have been reading from a script for all I know, but the service is cool.)
Again, congrats to Verizon on the FiOS milestone – one million and counting. And a pat on the back to all the engineers (including an awful lot of Motorola ones) who made it possible.
[...] About ← FiOS – One Million and Counting [...]
[...] as well as where you can access them, and whether they’re free or for purchase. Meanwhile, Motorola’s work with Verizon has satisfied the guardians of copyright in terms of in-home video networking with the Home Media [...]
[...] The Fiber to the Home conference took place this week in Orlando so there’s been a wave of fiber news and statistics. From the Fiber to the Home Council comes a study stating that more than two million American homes now have a fiber connection. While that’s under two percent of homes in the country, it’s still a fairly impressive number, made more so by the fact that two-thirds of those connections come via Verizon, which has only been deploying FTTH for the last few years. [...]
[...] become table stakes for recruiting subscribers. We’re seeing some of this already in the areas of whole-home DVR, home monitoring and casual gaming, but it’s been primarily on the telecom side rather than [...]
[...] Last week Verizon announced it has topped one million customers for its FiOS TV service. The announcement hit the wires a mere seven months after the operator reached the same milestone for its high-speed Internet offering. [...]
[...] For context on the Council’s numbers, Verizon now has one and a half million FTTH subscribers in the US. Currently the operator is deploying GPON fiber solutions including GPON technology from Motorola. [...]
[...] GPON in the US at all (Gigabit Passive Optical Networks – a fiber-to-the-home network standard), you think about Verizon. Verizon’s been high-profile on its fiber deployments and the migration from BPON technology to [...]
[...] Verizon launched its Home Media DVR service (whole-home/multi-room DVR) I’ve wondered why the feature hasn’t been highlighted more prominently. Cable, teleco and satellite operators have few attractive options for differentiating their video [...]
[...] the evolutionary path for broadband starts in the workplace and moves out to the home. Consumers moved from dial-up to high-speed because of expectations built at work. However, as evidence that sometimes the reverse is true, Motorola announced today a new solution for the enterprise – Motorola Passive Optical LAN – based on the same GPON technology used in consumer FTTH deployments. In fact, the solution uses the very same Optical Line Terminals and Optical Network Terminals that have been field-tested in consumer broadband deployments for years. [...]