If you happen to be in one of the 16 U.S. states (and possible 10 million mostly suburban homes) where Verizon provides their fiber optic FiOS service, data will soon be moving at 50 megabits per second downstream and 20 mb/s upstream -- up from its former 30/15). Verizon Chief Operating Officer Denny Strigl says the 100-megabit home , will be a reality faster than anybody thinks.

If right about now, you're starting to feel a little green, like one of those Slowsky turtles with DSL of 1.5 mb/s or something even slower (yikes!), you might feel surprised to learn that 100 mb/sec consumer broadband is already common in Sweeden, Denmark, Japan and elsewhere in the world.

At these speeds, lag on WoW, high quality NetFlix streaming, and true thin client computing becomes very possible -- and we won't even talk about bittorrent.

If you're already a FiOS user, Verizon says you'll need to request the upgrade when it launches. If you want to see if you can get hooked up where you live, check availability at www.verizon.com/fios. Of course, leading cable broadband providers like Comcast are not sitting still and have competitive efforts to offer similar speeds through 2008-2009.

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