At the end of June, Verizon managed to get the Franchise and Concession Review Committee’s approval to bring its FiOS service in New York City. As the company has also reveived the New York Public Service Commission’s approval for deploying its technology, things could finally be started.

On Monday, Verizon Communications Inc. began selling its FiOS service in NYC. However, because of its insufficiently developed fiber optics infrastructure, the company is not going to be able to reach all the city’s residents, at least not until 2014.

For this week, Verizon will have to settle for about 300,000 of NYC’s 8 million residents. According to Virginia Ruesterholz, president of Verizon Telecom, by the end of 2008, around three million homes and businesses will have access to this new service.

Network consultant George Ou confirmed that the FiOS network is indeed faster than anything current cable technologies can offer. FiOS can deliver 622 Mbps downstream and 155 Mbps upstream - bandwidth shared among 32 users.

One of the packages that are now available costs $94.99 and brings 20 megabit downstream and 10 megabit upstream Internet, phone service (users can make unlimited local calls) and FiOS TV.

For the time being, FiOS TV will provide customers with 100 high-definition channels; by the end of 2008, the number of available channels will be raised to 150.

Verizon started offering the FiOS service about two and a half years ago; during this time, the company has managed to sign up more than 1 million customers.