Two days after announcing that it has applied for a city-wide franchise agreement to serve all five New York City boroughs with its fiber optic video service (story here), Verizon has launched high-definition video-on-demand (HD VOD) service in New York.
“As the popularity of high-definition programming continues to grow, we are delivering the best in HD content,” said Shawn Strickland, Verizon’s VP of video solutions. “With 10,000 titles each month, our overall video-on-demand library is the industry’s largest, and we plan to offer more than 1,000 high-definition video-on-demand titles each month by the end of the year.”
In December, Verizon began offering HD VOD in Florida, Indiana, western Pennsylvania and Virginia (story here). In April, the service launched in California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Texas.
And in March, Verizon added more programs to its VOD tier with content from CBS, Discovery Channel, Smithsonian Channel and Ovation TV (story here).
Seventy percent of FiOS TV’s VOD titles each month – in both standard-definition (SD) and HD – are free of charge to subscribers.
Additionally, Verizon’s FiOS TV service has been approved in the Town of Orchard Park in Erie County, N.Y. The vote brings the total number of New York communities that have approved video franchises for Verizon to 108.
Meanwhile, consumers in 40 California cities and 12 New Jersey communities – parts of Barnegat, Camden, Farmingdale, Holmdel, Hopewell, Jersey City, Lakewood, Pennington, Mount Holly, Medford, Unionville and Vineland – now have access to Verizon’s high-speed Internet offering, which more than doubles the download speed of Verizon’s current DSL service.
The service offers qualified customers a downstream connection speed of up to 7 Mbps for as low as $39.99 per month when ordered with an annual service plan. Verizon offers the new service to some three million households and small businesses nationwide.
More Broadband Direct:
Comcast debuts multi-room DVR service in N.J.
ACA keeps a light on Verizon privacy problem
Verizon launches HD VOD in N.Y.
More companies pitch in for CableCares effort in New Orleans
Starcom first to sign up for DirecTView service
comScore: Online video viewing increases 66% compared with a year ago
