ROSEVILLE, Calif. -- As Internet users continue to increase their need for speed, leading independent communications holding company SureWest Communications (NASDAQ: SURW) maintains its commitment to meeting that demand. Today, the nation’s first company to deliver a symmetrical two-way Internet speed at a blazing fast 50 Megabits per second (Mbps) announced it will boost connection speeds for fiber-to-the-home customers in its greater Sacramento market. This upgrade will happen automatically on June 30 with no extra cost or action required by the customer.

These unique symmetrical speeds, meaning Internet speeds downstream are the same as those upstream, are only available on SureWest’s superior fiber-optic network and can reach up to 50 Mbps for both uploading and downloading. Customers can use these new super-fast speeds for enhanced online gaming and faster uploading and downloading of multimedia such as music, photos and videos.

For example, in SureWest’s serviceable footprint, the average Internet upload speed of other service providers is 2 Mbps. To upload an average 2-hour movie at a video file size of 500 MB, SureWest’s most popular Internet speed of 15 Mbps would take roughly 4.5 minutes compared to 33 minutes at 2 Mbps. SureWest’s 25 Mbps speed would take 2.7 minutes and its 50 Mbps would take 1.3 minutes.

SureWest Communications (Nasdaq: SURW)