Verizon 10Gbps FiOS Backbone Gets Tested [Verizon XG-PON Fiber Test Promising Dramatically Faster Internet Access]

Those Verizon customers who wouldn’t mind having faster internet, should know that Big Red is working on a long-term project that would dramatically increase the practical speed of its internet access. The company has confirmed that they’ve been testing a new passive fiber optic network, dubbed XG-PON, in a FiOS test home in Waltham, Massachusetts and recorded speeds of up to 10Gbps downstream — which is comparable 4x faster than their 2.5Gbps hardware, while uploads clocked in at 2.4Gbps — 2x faster than today’s 1.2GHz infrastructure.

“From the earliest stages of the FiOS design, we knew we could repeatedly and progressively leverage the immense capacity of fiber to carry more and more data in support of customer applications,” said Mark Wegleitner, senior vice president of technology for Verizon. “Now we’re already working on the best way to take the next leap forward in capacity.”

Now for the bad part, Verizon acknowledged that the new technology standard won’t be ready until mid-2010, which means that it will take even more for them to deploy it into your home. What’s even more interesting is that you may not see 10Gbps speeds at your end, as Big Red may limit everything when connecting a full neighborhood, but they still promise to be good enough for HD video and ultra-high-definition video streaming.

It’s definitely a step forward in getting ourselves faster Internet access, don’t you think. So let the games begin!