You’ve seen the commercials and heard the pitches, but what exactly makes fiber optics so special? What does all that “high speed” and “#1 in the nation” talk mean? We’ve broken it down for you here. Prepare to have your mind blown!

1. Fios is 15x faster than cable television or internet. In layman’s terms, that’s the speed difference between a cheetah and a manatee. A cheetah can sustain a sprint at 69 mph while the fastest a manatee can swim is a sluggish 4.6 mph. No contest.

2. A 2013 survey revealed that 18 million homes had been installed with fiber optic cables covering areas in Texas, Florida, California the mid-Atlantic, and the Northeast. To put that into perspective, imagine taking 18 million $1 bills to represent each home. Stack them on top of each other and that stack will be roughly 5,994 feet high — assuming these are crisp, lovely new bills and not the bills wadded up in your car’s glove box. 

That’s the equivalent of five Chrysler Buildings standing on top of each other!

3. In 2011, 19.2 million miles of Fios cable were installed in America. That’s enough cable to circumnavigate the globe a whopping 772 times! “Wrap” your head around that one!

Have a great weekend!