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Verizon to Launch 750 Mbps FiOS Instant Internet Service

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U.S. telecom behemoth Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ - Free Report) has decided to introduce FiOS Instant Internet service which offers 750 Mbps speed from Jan 14, 2017. The service will be available to nearly 7 million homes and businesses which are under the FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) footprint of the company in greater New York City / northern New Jersey, Philadelphia and Richmond. After the initial launch, it will be available in portions of Boston and Norfolk in the later part of first-quarter 2017.

Consumers can purchase a standalone service for $149.99 a month and $169.99 a month for a triple-play bundle with TV and landline phone service. At present, leading cable MSO (multi service operator) Comcast Corp. (CMCSA - Free Report) is offering 1 Gbps Internet speed at $140 a month with an additional $10-a-month modem rental in Philadelphia and New York City.

Recently, Verizon successfully completed interoperability trial run of a new technology on its state-of-the-art fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network for both residential and business customers at Verizon Labs location in Waltham, MA. In the trial run of NG-PON2, Verizon’s equipment vendor partners were ADTRAN Inc. (ADTN - Free Report) , Broadcom, Ericsson AB (ERIC - Free Report) via calix partnership and Cortina Access.

Popularly known as next-generation passive optical network (NG-PON2), this technology can deliver an exceptional 10 Gbps (gigabit per second) of upload and download speeds. Management further stated that the system has the capability to set up transmission speeds up to 40–80 Gbps data transmission speed in the future.

Verizon will initially target business enterprises with the NG-PON2 offering. However, in future, this technology may also witness considerable demand from residential customers once 4K video technology and Internet-of-things (IoT) technology rises in popularity. Several analysts estimate that around 25 billion devices will be connected through Internet by 2020.

Price Performance of Verizon

In the last one year, the stock price of Verizon has witnessed a growth of 19.32%, underperforming the Zacks categorized U.S National Wireless industry’s growth rate of 25.32% in the same time period. Nevertheless, Verizon has a very powerful diversified business model. In the wireless front, it will start initial deployment of the upcoming 5G network in 2017 while on the wireline front, the company is aggressively expanding its fiber-based footprint. In the digital media front, Verizon has become a major contender for the lucrative online advertisement business. We believe these are primary reasons behind the stock currently carrying a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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