A discussion about the Telecommunication Industry

Qwest is rolling out a new Internet service.  While Verizon has been pushing fiber to the premise Internet service, Qwest is going with a much less expensive alternative; fiber to the neighborhood.  The service is ADSL from a neighborhood junction point to your house.  300 to 500 homes would share the junction where Qwest would run the fiber optic.  This is similar to how cable companies work too. 

While fiber to the neighborhood is much cheaper for Qwest to build, it prices our similar to Verizon FiOS or cable Internet service.  The new service will offer speeds of up to 20 Mpbs down, but only 768 Kbps up, which is much slower then fiber to the premise speeds.

The really interesting thing about this service is it comes with a lifetime price guarantee.  If you sign up for 2 years, Qwest will guarantee that you price will never go up.  This could be the first salvo in a price war between Telcos and Cablecos in the high speed Internet market.