Photography often focuses on the camera, the lens, the artist’s eye—all very important. But there’s also the photographer’s technology infrastructure that is critical to his or her success and efficiency.
Today, digital photographers (amateurs or professionals) constantly share large files via their websites, e-mail, and social networks and these basic tasks require fast, reliable upload and download speeds. Typically, people focus on download speeds when selecting their internet service provider, but photographers should pay close attention to the upload speed. In fact, photographers opting for pure fiber to the home services, like Verizon FiOS, can share their work with clients, colleagues, and prospective customers up to 200% faster than is possible with cable internet. FiOS Internet boasts more bandwidth and faster speeds and is far more reliable than cable competitors (based on claims from Verizon).
Verizon FiOS Speed
Take a look at the comparisons between Verizon’s top-end service and the typical cable service in the chart below and you start to get a sense of what it could mean to your workflow if you didn’t spend so much time just waiting on the little green bars to move from left to right.
Verizon FiOS Pricing
The Verizon FiOS Internet plans aren’t necessarily cheap though – particularly when compared to DSL and low-end cable Internet prices. Still yet, if you can deal with a mere 5Mbps upload speed and 15 Mbps download speed, you can get FiOS for $44.99/mo if you sign up for a one-year commitment and have Verizon home phone service. If you opt for the month-to-month rate and want the wicked-fast 20Mbps download and 50Mbps upload speeds, then you are looking at $164.95/mo for Internet alone.
If your business is centered around uploading hundreds of photos per week (…any microstock photographers out there?), then it may very well make business sense to send your photos on the 20Mbps express lane up stream to your microstock account. There are a number of other plans between these two extremes available. You can see the entire range from Verizon on their plan page.
Verizon FiOS User Experience Interview
With upload speeds up to 20 Mbps, Verizon FiOS Internet allows users to upload 200 photos in approximately 90 seconds, which is usually hours on my DSL connection. See how professional photographer and distance-learning photography professor, Kathy Halamka, uses FiOS in the video below:
Personal Choices
I know there are other fiber optic Internet providers out there. Unfortunately, none of them are available where I live. While I could pick up cable Internet from Comcast, I swore off Comcast for an inferior DSL service because of the severe and chronic customer service shortcomings from Comcast. For me, I think I would certainly go for the base plan of FiOS at $44.99/mo and might even consider the 15Mbps upload speed plan at $64.99/mo. However, for the $140+ rate plans, I would have to pass. In light of those top-end plan prices, I kind of like the little green uploading bars.
What about you? Are any readers on Verizon’s FiOS or other fiber-based Internet service providers? What have your experiences been with Verizon FiOS or just fiber-based service in general?
Would you pay the extra rates for Verizon’s FiOS speed? Would it affect your workflow?
We wrote up your findings on Stop the Cap! earlier this afternoon, but it brought about a bunch of inquiries from our readers about whether the math is correct on those download speed differences, particularly with larger file transfers.
Can you elaborate on whether those speeds you list were “real world” experiments or could it be a math error. Our readers, most of whom don’t have FiOS, are wondering.
Thanks!
@Phillip – Thanks for the link and comment. The speed estimates come from Verizon.
http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/FiOSInternet/FiOSvsCable/FiOSvsCable.htm
I was more concerned with the upload figures; however, now that you mention it, it looks like Verizon may have the 80% calculation on the wrong side of their equation for the download portion of the chart.
The upload chart looks right with FiOS at 10x faster than cable; however, the download chart shows a 20% speed increase when it should show a 5x speed increase.
Nice catch.
Locally, service of any sort by Verizon is terrible. I dropped them in February and I’m still getting bills from them for no existent service in July. It’s taken a lot of time on the phone and still not resolved. Verizon technicians don’t seem to get service right. On the other hand, Comcast cable has great service. Most problems fixed on the telephone or service guys come right over. I actually forgot to pay studio cable bill for a couple of months and Comcast cut me off. I dropped check off at their office and had service in a few minutes. Not only that, I got a telephone call a couple of hours later thanking me for my payment. For the very small difference and pain in the neck Verizon is, I’d never go back to them.