In the biggest upgrade ever for its FiOS Internet Service, Verizon Communications said it will increase the upload and download speeds available to more than 10 million homes and businesses in 10 states.

Introduced in 2004, the fiber to the premises (FTTP) service has gradually spread across Verizon's service area. The company said it expects FiOS be available to more than 18 million potential customers by 2010.

The new deployment will replace existing offerings of 30 Mbps (download) and 15 Mbps (upload) with a faster 50/20 Mbps service.

The new service will be offered beginning next week in parts of California, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

"The appetite for bandwidth shows no signs of slowing down," said Verizon president and chief operating officer Denny Strigl in a statement. "Neither will we. We've already had successful trials of the 100-megabit home, which will be a reality faster than anybody thinks."

The company already offers the 50/20 Mbps service in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island.

Verizon is awaiting approval from the New York Public Service Commission to deploy FiOS in New York City. "Our plan is to cover all of the 3.1 million households in all five boroughs in the next five to six years," Strigl said.

The New York City rollout would place Verizon in head-to-head competition with cable television companies Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems.

FiOS usually competes with cable systems across its sprawling service area. AT&T, the other major phone company formed from the remains of the former Bell system, generally doesn't compete with FiOS. AT&T's U-verse system utilizes a similar but less expensive technology than Verizon's that mixes fiber and existing copper cables.

Verizon said 1.8 million Verizon customers received their broadband service over its fiber network at the end of the first quarter of 2008. Verizon and other providers of high speed broadband also offer various plans at speeds and prices lower than the 50/20 Mbps service.

Verizon said the 50 Mbps service will let a customer download a 5 GB file, such as a 112-minute, high-definition movie, in about 13.3 minutes. A 50 MB file, such as a 60-minute, Web video, would take 8 seconds to download. And a 5 MB MP3 music file could be downloaded in less than a second.

The 20 Mbps upstream connection would let a customer upload a a 250 MB file of 200 photos in about 90 seconds. The company said that a 3 GB file, such as a one-hour high-definition video, could be uploaded in around 20 minutes.