Las Vegas — Verizon Communications Inc. will ramp up consumer Internet speeds on its fiber-optic network in 10 states next week, Verizon President Denny Strigl said Wednesday, firing another salvo in the escalating broadband war with cable companies.

The Verizon FiOS service will offer download speeds of up to 50 megabits per second and upload speeds of up to 20 megabits per second. Those speeds have been available in six other states where competition with cable is fierce.

Those speeds allow the download of a high-definition, 5-gigabyte movie in about 13 minutes and an MP3 music file in a fraction of a second, the company said.

Strigl said at an industry convention that Verizon also has tested a 100-megabit service that will become "a reality faster than anybody thinks."

The duel with cable comes as consumers grow increasingly hungry for the bandwidth needed to conveniently download movies and music, play online games, and share videos and photos.

A Comcast Corp. executive said this month that the cable leader would offer speeds above 100 megabits per second in 20 percent of its markets by the end of this year, with a broader deployment over the next two years.

Verizon's "timetable will be competitive," Strigl said.