Broadband Reports reader guppy_fish fired me a message this morning, saying that he was no longer able to get bundle discounts for FiOS's popular symmetrical 20Mbps tier, which costs $69.99/month. "I had FIOS installed on monday, I got the 20/5 double play with Freedom phone," says the user, whose new-found restriction we confirmed with Verizon. "Today I called to see about upping to the 20/20 tier and the phone rep said last night they removed all the higher speed tiers from being able to be bundled. You can still order 20/20 but must pay full price for the ALL services, no bundling discounts," he says.

"We no longer offer 20/20 as a qualifying bundle service," Verizon spokesperson Bobbi Henson tells me. "If this customer can receive and wants to receive FiOS TV -- an option would be to get a double-play TV/voice bundle to save money on those services, while purchasing the 20/20 broadband outside of the bundle." The $70 service (plus the usual fees) previously cost $65 if users bundled voice service, though the Verizon website has yet to be updated.

Verizon first unveiled their symmetrical 20Mbps FiOS offering in the fall of 2007, though initially it wasn't offered in all markets, and some markets were only offered a symmetrical 15Mbps tier. In June of this year, the symmetrical 20Mbps offering was extended into all markets. The symmetrical tier is a particularly effective marketing weapon against cable companies who've traditionally struggled to provide upstream bandwidth. For now, the tier even offers some insulation from DOCSIS 3.0, given the troubles with upstream channel bonding.

guppy_fish says what ticks him off is he missed out on the promotion by a hair. "If I had been able to do this last night online, it would have been fine, but I couldn't due to a pending disconnect on my old dsl prevented me from upgrading," he says. "So their system prevented me from making the upgrade and today I can't get that bundle."

So what's the reason for the change? "The rep I spoke with said it was to discourage the 20/20 tier as its taxing the network," says the user. "It was a business decision to streamline our bundles to feature our flagship offerings," says Henson.