Verizon ups ante with FiOS SMB offering
Following a logical track taking advantage of its FiOS service buildout, Verizon is offering small-medium businesses symmetrical high-speed data throughput for prices ranging from $99 to $239 per month, depending on the plan and where it’s offered.
“It’s definitely not a new business segment and we’ve always had a business FiOS data product. What we’ve done is be able to increase the speeds to the point where we’re probably touching more businesses,” said David Frendo, director of business voice and broadband services for Verizon.
The high-speed data offering is for businesses from 1 to 500 employees who to transport increasing loads of bandwidth-rich content, said Frendo.
In Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island customers can get 20 Mbps symmetrical service with a dynamic IP address for $99.99 or with a static address for $139.99 with a two year agreement. A 50/20 Mbps plan is $299 per month with dynamic IP and $239 a month for static. In California, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington plans range from a 15/15 Mbps service for $99-$139 price to a 30/15 Mbps at $199-$239 a month. The plans are also available with 12- month agreements at higher prices, the company said.
Where FiOS Internet is not available—and that’s still the majority of the carrier’s footprint–Verizon offers high-speed Internet for business from 768 Kbps up to 7.1 Mbps.
“We’ve always been able to deliver a high-end fiber-related service, Ethernet-over-fiber and those services,” said Frendo. “What we’ve been able to do with FiOS is deliver extremely high speeds at much lower costs. We’re bringing high-end services and some very high-end speeds down to price points that the small customer can afford.”
Frendo said there was probably going to be some cannibalization of Verizon’s existing business service customers, many of who have been paying high prices for low- speed speed, albeit reliable, T1 private line networks.
“We’re opening this up to a whole new segment of customer who … are pushing for more bandwidth,” Frendo said, pointing to groups such as medical offices that send high resolution X- rays and cat scans between facilities or “people hosting their own Web sites. Is there some cannibalization? Sure.”
For the most part, though, the new offering takes advantage of FiOS as a high-speed network to pitch new customers and use the expertise Verizon Business has gained working with large enterprises and high-speed networks.
“We work with our enterprise group to bring things down from enterprise into the small-medium business space and work with our consumer folks to bring products up to make them business grade,” Frendo said. “We’ve always been sort of a standalone entity between those two, providing specific requirements for the space.”