FiOS Gains in Maryland and Virginia

It's just impressionistic, but at a recent dinner with friends not in the communications, Internet or software industries (just regular folks, in other words) who live in Maryland and northern Virginia, several mentioned that they just had switched to Verizon's FiOS service, and seemed quite happy with it.

One mentioned the new Netflix streaming capability, built in to the new HDTV the family had just bought.

The value proposition seemed pretty clear. The household normally rents four pay-per-view movies a month, at about $5 each. The unlimited, $10 a month Netflix streaming plan seemed like an obvious good deal.

It's just impressionistic, but illustrates the shifting state of the communications business at the moment. First, there was a shift of market share from cable provider to telco for video and broadband service. Second, there was a shift from pay per view to streaming Netflix. Third, though it doesn't seem to have been a key part of the buying decision, the video shift likely cements use of Verizon fixed-voice services as well.

Perhaps there is no immediate and obvious change in bandwidth consumption that would create "overage" charges. On a standard 3G or 4G mobile access plan, of course, the implications are quite clear. It is conceivable a wireless dongle user could blow through a month's usage by watching three movies a month.