Verizon managed to get the Franchise and Concession Review Committee’s approval to bring its FiOS service in New York City. There is one more hoop the company must jump through: getting the New York Public Service Commission’s approval. Once this is taken care of, the service will immediatly be made available in the city.

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

In the second week of April, Verizon sued Time Warner Cable over claims of false advertising. According to The Wall Street Journal, Verizon claimed that Time Warner’s ad falsely suggested several facts: that a satellite dish was required by FiOS for TV service and that it couldn't bundle video, Internet and phone service.

There has been quite a battle between the two companies since Verizon started offering the FiOS service two and a half years ago; since then, it has managed to sign up around 1 million customers. For 2007, Time Warner Cable reportedly had 13.3 million video subscribers.

With regard to New York, it seems that Verizon, due to its insufficiently developed fiber optics infrastructure, is not going to be able to reach all the city’s residents, at least not until 2014.