Fiber instead of Cable - Office

[jyl]

I have "business coax" internet for my little office. 100 Mb/s down, 15 Mb/s up, basic WiFi access point and LTE backup included. $315/mo. Only one outage in 3+ years (something took out power for the whole area, I can't work without power anyway). I don't need more speed, and can simply go work at home if need be.

Still, that seems kind of pricey (naturally, its gone up +200% in 3 years) so I listened to the "fiber" sales pitch.

Here it is. 100 Mb/s down, 100 Mb/s up, 99% uptime SLA, I provide the WiFi hardware, LTE backup extra cost, will be $600+/mo with the LTE, will take a "few months" to schedule techs to pull fiber from the building box to my suite.

Well, that sounds highly dis-interesting.

Internet in the US kind of sucks.

My daughter in France is getting 1 Gb/s fiber to her apartment for 30 euros a month (SFr).

[LWJ]

Which is why I invested in a fiber carrier. Sort of a monopoly.

[masraum]

I had a buddy get 1G ATT several years ago, and I think he was paying either $79 or $99 per month. Granted, residential is different than commercial (no SLA, no backup, etc...)

[beepbeep]

Whoa. I pay 50 bucks for 1Gbit/1Gbit FTHH here in Sweden. And I do get that...(not that I need it).

[masraum]

Originally Posted by jyl

I have "business coax" internet for my little office.

"Business" service is different (and more expensive) than home/residential/consumer service. The service in your home has no SLAs, and the equipment used is generally cheaper equipment that has far fewer features.

Internet in the US kind of sucks.

My daughter in France is getting 1 Gb/s fiber to her apartment for 30 euros a month (SFr).

Originally Posted by beepbeep

Whoa. I pay 50 bucks for 1Gbit/1Gbit FTHH here in Sweden. And I do get that...(not that I need it).

I believe this is the main reason for the big difference.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/usa-europe-same-size.html

Therefore, Europe has a bigger land area (3,910,680 sq miles) than the U.S. (3,531,905 sq miles). The United States has a population of over 327 million people, while Europe is home to more than 741 million individuals. Europe has a population density of 188 individuals per square mile while that of the United States is 87 individuals per square miles.

The US has ENORMOUS areas of super low population density, and running fiber through those areas is VERY costly. And Europe has over twice the population to foot the bill for Internet and fiber which means that the cost can be spread out over more bills, meaning each individual may pay a smaller portion of the total cost. At least, that's what makes the most sense to me.

[GH85Carrera]

I work from home, and I use a "home" internet connection as part of my cable TV package. They call it the Gigablast and to me that would be a full gig download, but I never get above 920 MB/PS down and they limit it to 35 up. It costs me $100 over the cost of the basic home internet package.

[red-beard]

AT&T is offering $80 for 1GBps and symmetrical locally. They just ran fiber through my part of the neighborhood.

I'm about to do this and reduce my cable to the lowest as a backup. I have internet plans for my tablets. The chip can be moved to a modem and make 4G (35 MBps) as a backup right now.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by red-beard

AT&T is offering $80 for 1GBps and symmetrical locally. They just ran fiber through my part of the neighborhood.

I'm about to do this and reduce my cable to the lowest as a backup. I have internet plans for my tablets. The chip can be moved to a modem and make 4G (35 MBps) as a backup right now.

FIFY, I think you probably meant Gig vs Meg.

The situation where PP will decapitalize your post is weird.

[beepbeep]

Originally Posted by masraum

"Business" service is different (and more expensive) than home/residential/consumer service. The service in your home has no SLAs, and the equipment used is generally cheaper equipment that has far fewer features.




I believe this is the main reason for the big difference.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/usa-europe-same-size.html


The US has ENORMOUS areas of super low population density, and running fiber through those areas is VERY costly. And Europe has over twice the population to foot the bill for Internet and fiber which means that the cost can be spread out over more bills, meaning each individual may pay a smaller portion of the total cost. At least, that's what makes the most sense to me.

Maybe. But I believe the way our Internet laws are set up matters as well. My local fibre network is privately owned but required by law to let any ISP into network. So I have a dozen of ISP's to chose from, and each of them offers different speed tiers between 10Mbit to 1Gbit. And local network cannot take different fees from them.

Germany on the other side, is 3:rd world country when it comes to internet, despite having higher population density.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

Maybe. But I believe the way our Internet laws are set up matters as well. My local fibre network is privately owned but required by law to let any ISP into network. So I have a dozen of ISP's to chose from, and each of them offers different speed tiers between 10Mbit to 1Gbit. And local network cannot take different fees from them.

Germany on the other side, is 3:rd world country when it comes to internet, despite having higher population density.

You're probably correct about the laws. Internet here is usually limited, and somewhat of a monopoly. If you want high speed, you may have few options, mostly being either the telephone company or a cable TV company, with relatively few others. I think most folks will have 1-4 options, and a lot of folks may only have 1 good option for their location depending upon the location which means if you want HS Internet, you pay whatever they charge or you don't have HS Internet.

[beepbeep]

What people often miss is that it is not just speed that is important (as long as it is "good enough" and you do not download/upload huge amounts of data), but latency too.

I measured my "loaded" latency by pegging my Gbit line and ping latency went from 10ms to "all over the place". When I fitted proper router with SQM shaper I could have almost constant latency no matter how hard I loaded the line. I figured I could live happily with 100Mbit (Netflix, Zoom, Teams, Youtube included) as long as i had proper QoS shaper.

But of course, ISP will gladly sell you faster/more expensive subscription than equip you with gateway powerful enough to enforce queueing.

[Radioactive]

In Socal, Frontier (Old Verizon) FIOS fiber business static IP was 100M/100M for $65(promo I think) now 500M/500M $90. I don't need/want the 500M, but they kind of didn't give me an option.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

What people often miss is that it is not just speed that is important (as long as it is "good enough" and you do not download/upload huge amounts of data), but latency too.

I measured my "loaded" latency by pegging my Gbit line and ping latency went from 10ms to "all over the place". When I fitted proper router with SQM shaper I could have almost constant latency no matter how hard I loaded the line. I figured I could live happily with 100Mbit (Netflix, Zoom, Teams, Youtube included) as long as i had proper QoS shaper.

But of course, ISP will gladly sell you faster/more expensive subscription than equip you with gateway powerful enough to enforce queueing.

Yes and no. It's less about latency and more about jitter (variability of latency). I used to work for a company that provided voice and data for (primarily) oil companies and the military over satellite. You can upload/download things and carry on a conversation on the phone (albeit with a bit of delay, but voice quality is fine) with adequate bandwidth and a round trip latency in the 500-800ms range.

That said, lower latency is better. I'm usually pretty happy with latency in the 30-60ms range. But the latency is heavily dependent upon geographic location (ie, the distance between you and the item that you're testing latency to).

What really sucks is when latency jumps around (like you saw). Now, that again may not be a big deal on a loaded link because latency checks (usually ping or traceroute) are going to be impacted before most other traffic. So if you're using 99% of your bandwidth for some download or streaming or something, your latency is likely to jump around because the other traffic is not.

QoS is actually going to slow things down, because there are 2 options when doing QoS, 1 drop traffic that exceeds a limit. So you get to a certain limit and then anything over the limit gets dropped and your session/application (TCP has to replace the dropped data). The second option is to form a queue with the traffic, often kind of like creating a merge lane for 8 lanes to merge down to 1 or 2 lanes. What that means is that traffic backs up, and if it backs up too much then you drop traffic, and that's bad too. If you have enough buffers so you don't drop traffic, then you only slow things down.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by masraum

You're probably correct about the laws. Internet here is usually limited, and somewhat of a monopoly. If you want high speed, you may have few options, mostly being either the telephone company or a cable TV company, with relatively few others. I think most folks will have 1-4 options, and a lot of folks may only have 1 good option for their location depending upon the location which means if you want HS Internet, you pay whatever they charge or you don't have HS Internet.

I remember the "olden days" when 100% of all telephone equipment was owned by Bell Telephone. We were only allowed to rent the phone in our home every month, and long distance was crazy expensive. It was actually illegal for me to hook my 300 BAUD modem I owned to the phone system on a home line!

Bell telephone was broken up, and they reassembled themselves back into AT&T and have lots of competition. Long distance is now free, and that huge chunk of income is just rolled into the cost of internet and phone service.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I remember the "olden days" when 100% of all telephone equipment was owned by Bell Telephone. We were only allowed to rent the phone in our home every month, and long distance was crazy expensive. It was actually illegal for me to hook my 300 BAUD modem I owned to the phone system on a home line!

Bell telephone was broken up, and they reassembled themselves back into AT&T and have lots of competition. Long distance is now free, and that huge chunk of income is just rolled into the cost of internet and phone service.

Yep. We moved into a townhome in Pensacola in the early 80s. We had a phone from the telco. We had or had purchased a phone for some reason. There was a line in my parents bedroom. I think dad had to tinker with the wires a bit, but got the phone to work up there. The telco called at some point "You are renting one telephone from us, but when you receive a call, we see two rings on the line. You can't have a second telephone that you don't rent from us."
I think my parents ended up leaving it unplugged and then plugged it in when they wanted to use it. We were there for ~3 - 3.5 years and then moved. By the time we came back to the US, things were no longer like that, IRRC.

[stealthn]

Yes those are really expensive prices for what you are getting we even pay less in Canada where competition is restricted by the Feds.

[Deschodt]

How much do you need the business service ? I have been working from home on Sonic Fiber for < 1/3 of your cost, 1Gig up and down (so a lot faster than you), zero outages to speak of (maybe 3 modem reboots over 3y due to IPv6 settings down 2 min each time). I do IT and I do a lot of file transfer stuff from home to office server and vice versa... Never thought I needed a "business" service. Backup solutions are available privately for $5 a month onwards. Wifi etc, setup you own once and for all if need be, one time small cost. These days if the "Fit hits the shan", you can always get by for a day with a good Hotspot from a phone ! No ?

PS: ditto on France, sister pays $35/mo for a gig fiber, vs $100 here, we're getting ripped off.

[jyl]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

How much do you need the business service ? I have been working from home on Sonic Fiber for < 1/3 of your cost, 1Gig up and down (so a lot faster than you), zero outages to speak of (maybe 3 modem reboots over 3y due to IPv6 settings down 2 min each time). I do IT and I do a lot of file transfer stuff from home to office server and vice versa... Never thought I needed a "business" service. Backup solutions are available privately for $5 a month onwards. Wifi etc, setup you own once and for all if need be, one time small cost. These days if the "Fit hits the shan", you can always get by for a day with a good Hotspot from a phone ! No ?

PS: ditto on France, sister pays $35/mo for a gig fiber, vs $100 here, we're getting ripped off.

I don't need the "business"-level service - residential-level is fine, because I can simply decamp to work from home if need be.

I found a fiber Internet carrier - EDIT Centurylink - that will supposedly provide residential 900 Mb/s to my office for $70/mo. I scheduled an install. We'll see if they object when they see it is an office.

What backup solution ($5?) did you find?

[Jeff Hail]

If you eat copious amounts of fiber you can avoid the cable.

[jyl]

Well, so far it is difficult for me to praise CenturyLink. Technician scheduled to come for install yesterday (Friday) in 8:00 am to 4:00 pm window. Multiple texts and emails sent to me confirming this. Then narrowed to 8:00 am to noon window. Then no one shows up. 2:00 pm contact CenturyLost (via chat, that seems to be only practical way), they say is 8:00 am to 5:00 pm window, so I continue waiting. 5:30 pm contact them again, get shifted between departments, wait in 40 person queue, their systems can't seem to direct business vs residential iquiries to the correct department. Finally CenturyBrainless say there's a problem with the order so no one came. What is the problem? Unknown, have to speak with "Dedicated Team" tomorrow. Yes, they confirm, on Saturday. So here I am in the office Saturday morning on hold for that team. On my third - no, fourth - no, fifth - department. Update, CenturyMoron says "Our engineering teams are working on your location. Additional work needs to be completed before completing installation in your premise. As soon as works are completed, they will contact you and reschedule the installation." So I ask, is this going to take days, or weeks/months, because if its the latter then I'm going to terminate and get a refund. CenturyPutz says they don't know, and can't answer, because the correct team is not available until Monday.

They say that generative AI will wipe out >2MM customer service / call center jobs in the US. At times like this, I couldn't care less GRRRR