Verizon's Ritter: Our 300 Mbps FiOS tier is about building a foundation for new services

Verizon got the broadband market's attention recently with its plan to offer a 300 Mbps tier for its FiOS Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) service, a move the company says will create a foundation to support multiple devices and higher bandwidth applications in the home.

Speaking in the closing keynote at Parks Associates' CONNECTIONS at TIA 2012, Verizon CMO for Consumer & Mass Business Markets, Mike Ritter, outlined the vision of what its higher FiOS speed tiers will enable. With the new speeds, the focus is on targeting users who are more interested in downloading using bandwidth-hungry applications such as online video and gaming via multiple devices in the home. "We're making, I think, a bold new move to respond to this trend of the consumption of devices with a whole new portfolio of broadband speeds," he said. "We're going to double the speeds of all of our top tiers within our bundles, and for the first time we're offering 300 Mbps to the consumer at a very reasonable price that will more than double anything that's in the marketplace today." Set to be launched later this month, the one remaining mystery about the new speed tiers, of course, is the pricing.