Tag: New York City

Verizon Gets Slapped by New York City Mayor

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English: Verizon Building in New York City

English: Verizon Building in New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Daniel Cooper | @danielwcooper | June 19th 2015 At 11:00am

Way back when, Verizon pledged to build fiber optic services to every home in NYC, but for some reason, it never got around to finishing it. Unfortunately, New Yorkers are used to getting what they want, and so Mayor Bill de Blasio has slammed the company saying that it needs to sort out the problem, or else. The city has delivered Big Red a very public ultimatum: Either it brings its FiOS network to “every household” in the five boroughs, or it’ll face some heavy penalties.

The saga began back in 2008, when the city agreed that Verizon could operate a local cable TV franchise in exchange for a fiber optic network. The deal was that every person in NYC that wanted super-fast broadband would be able to get it by June 30th, 2014. Naturally, the overwhelming number of consumer complaints prompted the mayor’s office to conduct a full investigation into what the hell was happening. Continue reading

Move over, Google Fiber. Hello, Brooklyn Fiber

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English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhat...

English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhattan, New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Download an entire movie in about a minute and a half. Send a whole genome in a fraction of the time.

That’s the promise of low-cost gigabit Internet service that is finally coming to New York.

Brooklyn Fiber, a three-year-old five-person startup, is rolling out its gigabit broadband service this week in Industry City, the Brooklyn complex of former warehouse buildings under development in Sunset Park. That’s 20 times faster than existing download speeds in New York City, which average around 52 mbps, according to Ookla’s Speedtest.net service. Upload speeds average about 17 mbps. Continue reading

NYC Launches Free Gigabit Speed Wi-Fi Network

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That’s right, New York City’s public spaces are going wireless thanks to a public-private consortium that’s bringing gigabit wi-fi connectivity through something called the LinkNYC network. The city estimates that the new Wi-fi capability, funded by advertising, will generate at least $500 million in revenue over the next 12 years.

The LinkNYC network is being put together by a consortium called CityBridge together with city government. CityBridge’s main players include the transit advertising company Titan; the advertising and design agency, Control Group, networking giant Qualcomm; and hardware manufacturer Comark. Partners on the New York side include the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. Continue reading