Brian Alvey posted yesterday about his new broadband service from Verizon. They’re rolling out a new fiber service called FIOS which offers at the entry point 15 Mbit down. Alvey reports getting 27 Mbit down. Un-freaking-believable.

Every time I go to a technical/Internet conference, I always walk away jealous of how good folks in Japan or South Korea have it as far as broadband is concerned. I can’t believe that I’ve had broadband now for at least 4 years and I’ve only gone from 1.5 Mbit down to 4Mbit down (on a good day when my neighbors are asleep). Especially when in Asia they have 40Mbit to the home (and higher). I understand that the U.S. is harder to wire than a small country like South Korea, but come on… they have better broadband in Canada which is, in most ways, just like us.

So many things change when broadband gets to that speed. Imagine having competition amongst your video-on-demand (VOD) providers? Instead of just having whatever Comcast is offering, you could download movies direct from the distribution studios or from third parties who amass more interesting libraries with different pricing. It starts making purchasing media over the broadband connection trivial. Right now, it’s a pain over the slower connections we have now. High quality video still is better suited for overnight download than instant gratification download.

I’m looking into FIOS but I’m pretty sure it won’t be available in West Hartford. One more reason I miss living in a major metro area, especially a high tech haven like Boston.