Verizon Fios Tops Out at 5Gbps Now, and the Switcher Price Is the Real Story

Verizon just doubled the ceiling on its fastest home internet plan, and the honest question is whether anyone in your house can actually use it. Fios now tops out at 5Gbps, up from 2Gbps, which works out to roughly 625 megabytes per second on a good day. That is a genuinely enormous number. It is also more than most homes will ever come close to touching.

Here is where it gets interesting, though. The plan runs $105 a month in the select areas that can get it, but Verizon is dangling $90 a month for five years at anyone willing to switch, and locking upgrading customers in for three years at $105. The speed is the headline. The price lock is the part worth reading twice.

So what does 5Gbps actually buy you? Verizon's pitch is the multi-device household: VR headsets, security cameras, work video calls, and a pile of smart home gadgets all running at once without anyone yelling about buffering. The more relatable version is the 100GB game patch that lands in seconds instead of during dinner. If you have ever watched a console progress bar crawl while three other people stream, you know the feeling this is trying to erase.

Whether it is a good deal depends on who you can get it from. Google Fiber will sell you 3Gbps for $100 a month, or 8Gbps for $150. AT&T's 5Gbps plan is $135, though new customers pay $95 for the first year. And if you truly want to flex, Ziply will run you a 50Gbps line for a cool $900 a month, which is a sentence that exists now. Against that field, Verizon's switcher rate looks sharp, assuming the fiber actually reaches your street.

That is the catch with all of this. Multi-gig fiber is a phenomenal thing to have and a frustrating thing to want, because availability is still a lottery decided by your address. If 5Gbps Fios shows up as an option for you, the $90 lock is worth a hard look. If it does not, this is one more fast plan you get to read about and quietly envy.