Verizon Online DSL

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Verizon Online DSL is a digital subscriber line (DSL) internet service offered by Verizon Communications. It allows consumers to use their telephone and internet service similtaneously over the same telephone line while benefiting from internet connection speeds that are significantly faster than dial up. Verizon Online DSL is available in many areas where Verizon offers telephone service. The availability is mainly determined by the overall distance from the DSLAM, normally in the [[telephone exchange|central office, in which the DSL signal originates, to the consumer's residence, where the signal is received. This cable length distance, known as the local loop length, is the physical copper cable length that runs from the central office to a consumer's household. The loop length is also important in determining the availability of package speeds as the DSL signal degrades over the distance of copper phone cable. Theoretically, this means the further you are from the central office, the less likely you will be able to get the higher speed package or get the DSL at all.

The official maximum loop length for Verizon DSL, as of 2006, is 18,000 feet from the Central Office or remote DSLAM, depending also on the absence of bridge taps, repeaters, load coils or other devices that augment the telephone signal and impair the DSL one.

Currently two consumer price packages are available; 768 kbit/s download with 128k upload speeds and up to 3.0 Mbit/s download and 768 kbit/s upload speeds.[1] On the premium speed package engineers will test the line in order to ensure qualification for the 3.0 Mbit/s package. If the loop length is too long or the signal integrity is in jeopardy engineers will install a middle speed at 1.5 Mbit/s which remains at premium package pricing. The pricing on packages is variable depending on the contractual obligations a consumer wishes to adopt. However, with its current 768 kbit/s package pricing of $19.99 a month (if ordered online, $21.99 if ordered over the phone) Verizon Online DSL attempts to appear among the cheapest in the broadband world. This price is locked in for 12 months after which the monthly price may rise to the mid-$30's. Similarly, Verizon has aggressively marketed to households who have signed up for the promotional-rate DSL to upgrade them to new FiOS service which, once switched to, eliminates DSL as an option to the household, from any provider.

Verizon recently began offering Fiber to the Premises (FTTP, or Fiber to the Home) to some subscribers. This is not DSL in that it does not run over a copper cable but rather uses fiber optic cables to transmit and receive the digital signal. Verizon calls this "FiOS Internet".^[1]