As Cnet reported yesterday, Verizon Communications COO Denny Strigl announced Fios fiber-to-the-home speed upgrades during his keynote speech at the NXTcomm08.  Fios customers will now have access to download speeds of 50 megabits per second and uploads of 20 Mbps.  Low-end Fios service speed will increase from 5Mbps/2Mbps to 10Mbps/2Mbps, although it was unclear (to me anyway) if existing low-end customers would experience any speed gains without upgrading.

By the end of this year Fios will pass by twelve million homes, a figure that is growing by three million homes a year.  Within five years, the company expects to extend their FTTH service to the 3.1 million households in the five boroughs of New York.  Verizon also plans to extend a fiber backbone to China in time for the Olympics.

Verizon’s broadband expansion extends into their wireless offerings as well.  “Convergence is the holy grail,” Strigl said when describing the company’s plans to adopt a common protocol for application s to work across all of their networks.

Dan Hesse, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sprint Nextel Corporation picked up the wireless thread saying, “Mobile data is what we are building our Sprint brand around.”

Sprint is betting heavily on WiMax and plans to deploy the high-speed data service in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington DC this year.  Hesse  pointed to Sprint’s Instinct handset as one example of how consumers might carry a WiMax enabled device, but added that embedding WiMax capability in other consumer electronics products was the company’s ultimate goal.   “The WiMax embedded chip model lets us break the cell phone groupthink,” Hesse said.  “We will use open standards because the walled garden stifles innovation.”

Scott McNealy, Chairman and Co-Founder, Sun Microsystems continued the open source theme by explaining Sun’s business philosophy.  “Free is a good business model,” said McNealy.  “We started open source when we started giving away our software in 1982.  Our software is free and we monetize it through storage and service contracts.”

Sun gives away 2 million copies of Open Office each week and McNealy claims, “Not one Web 2.0 company would admit to paying for commercial software.”  In describing why Sun would spend so much on research and development while giving away their products for free, McNealy pointed out that open source software turns all users into beta testers.  He used Java, which he expects to be embedded in an increasing number of CE products, as an example.  “There are 6 billion Java devices in use today without a single virus.”

During the speech, McNealy quietly announced that Sun had developed a version of My SQL specifically for carriers that the company planned to give away as well. With a shy smile, McNealy said simply, “Free is cool.”

All three speakers were excellent, each offering a compelling vision for their company and some news for the industry.  Hesse and Strigl wore sharp suits, used their teleprompters and made a series of insider jokes about each other.  McNealy however wore a slightly wrinkled shirt, khaki pants with stuff in the pockets and carried a paper script.  McNealy began by saying “I don’t know why I’m up here with these corporate guys,” and continued to speak quietly and sincerely throughout.

I can’t speak to anyone else’s reaction, but I was really taken by this unpretentious, passionate engineer.  If Hesse and Strigl are the carrier’s equivalent of Steve Jobs, McNealy struck me as the Steve Wozniak of the group although none of them may appreciate the comparison.  Again, they were all good, but McNealy spoke to my inner geek and made me a believer.  Pass the Kool-Aid!