Internet Provider Question

[stevej37]

I currently have Comcast for internet....looking for other possibilities.

I came home this afternoon to see a guy walking my property along the road with a spray can and flags. I asked him what he was marking and he said "Fiber Optic Internet Cable"

I'm sure there are others here that have FO....is it worth it over cable Comcast?
And if you do...what kind of monthly is it. (the guy had no info on details)

TIA

[masraum]

They installed fiber to the telco box at the front of our home a year or so ago. I believe it was for "Frontier", but there are a bunch of providers that are similar. It will depend upon who the provider is that paid for the fiber to be run, I'm sure, at least initially.

In my area, the area FB groups seem to be constantly complaining about outages with Frontier. But that may just be that the infrastructure or area near them sucks, not that it's an issue with the whole company. We haven't heard or received anything from them saying "we've got fiber to your home, do you want it?". I assume the fiber is laid, but the infrastructure that uses it isn't in place yet.

We moved here Mar 2021, and have had T-mobile Internet over 5G since then (well, started at 4G and now is 5G). Originally I used a commercial SOHO style device, but after the first year or two we switched to using one of the T-mobile Home Internet devices. I work from home and rarely have issues. We stream TV, sometimes to 2 devices and don't usually have any issues. I'm happy with the service. I believe most cell providers have something similar. We're paying $50/mo and getting anywhere from 100-400mbps down (usually around 200-250) (only a few mbps upload, but that's not really important for most folks unless you're backing everything up to the cloud or Glenn).

[stevej37]

Originally Posted by masraum

They installed fiber to the telco box at the front of our home a year or so ago. I believe it was for "Frontier", but there are a bunch of providers that are similar. It will depend upon who the provider is that paid for the fiber to be run, I'm sure, at least initially.

In my area, the area FB groups seem to be constantly complaining about outages with Frontier. But that may just be that the infrastructure or area near them sucks, not that it's an issue with the whole company. We haven't heard or received anything from them saying "we've got fiber to your home, do you want it?". I assume the fiber is laid, but the infrastructure that uses it isn't in place yet.

Hmm...that makes me think it might be the same or worse here. The guy said he was contracted by NCATS...which is a local voc/tech school in my area. This will be their first 'foray' into FO...they have used cable and micro dishes before.

I might be best to wait and see what others find out.

.

[masraum]

Starlink seems to be pretty universally well loved as an ISP, although I don't have any direct experience with it.

[id10t]

Its been a 25+ year long running joke at work with me about our end of budget year spend down "yeah, get a T1 line to my house", though a while back it changed "yeah, get fiber run to my house".

phone co ran infrastructure fiber 100 yards from my front door 8 years ago. I know a guy who can splice fiber, etc but never did any midnight networking...

4 months ago they started putting in fiber, the first offered it 2 months ago for install, and I got it a month ago. $100/mo for 1gb, though I'm dropping down to the cheapest 150gb plan (because my DSL was only 25/3 and $110/mo from same company)

[stevej37]

Originally Posted by masraum

Starlink seems to be pretty universally well loved as an ISP, although I don't have any direct experience with it.

I have limited spaces without trees blocking signals. Don't really like the idea of it on the roof.
I might look into it more.
.

[red 928]

A while back I switched from AT&T (worst) to spectrum.

Very pleased with the service and price so far.

They sent me the equipment to "self install" but there was a technical issue.
They said no problem, since you made the attempt at self-install we can send out a service tech at no charge.
He showed up the next day and dug a trench to run a new FO cable to the house.
A week later the evidence of patched grass was nearly invisible.

And get this, when I called a person answered the phone. Not after and hour, not even after a half hour on hold. But within a minute or so.
And the people I spoke to so far were in the USA, were easy to understand, and were very helpful and knowledgeable.

the exact opposite of AT&T.

Did I mention that it was nearly 50% less expensive than AT&T with better a product?

[stevej37]

I'll have to find out if there are going to be other providers besides my local NCATS on the FO cable.

My Comcast monthly is $250...but that includes tv and land line phone.
The phone could be deleted and I'm almost certain the digital ota would be enough. (that would include the network tv stations.

[rfuerst911sc]

When we moved into our home we only had DSL internet available . It was relatively reliable but slow . We only have one cable provider available on our street and its Windstream . They ran fiber optic on our road about 2 years ago . Obviously much faster and quite reliable . I personally think fiber optic is the best if available .

If a phone carrier like T-Mobile or Verizon had a strong signal where we are I would consider that . But our barely one bar of signal won't cut it for reliable streaming .

[stevej37]

^^^
That's funny because less than a quarter mile from me, the road goes down a hill to a very populated lake that is a mile long. Every day, at the top of the hill, there are a line of cars stopped before going home using their cell phones. Once they go down the hill...no more coverage.


That area around the lake is why the FO cable is being run....I'm certain.

.

[gacook]

I'm nowhere near your area; however, recently switched from cable to fiber (similar to you...new Fiber company installing lines). I waited months, salivating at the opportunity to dump Cox, who has had a monopoly in my city for decades and is just a horrible company all around.

Since the move to Fiber (about 2 months ago), I've had zero issues--much better speed and flawless reliability. Best of all...at the same price point I was paying for cable.

[stevej37]

I would think something will be mailed to me about upcoming prices or packages.

Meanwhile...I have about 10 red flags in my lawn next to the road that I have to mow around.
I asked the guy about that and he said if you remove the flags....there is a heavy fine.

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by masraum

Starlink seems to be pretty universally well loved as an ISP, although I don't have any direct experience with it.

A year ago some of my wife's colleagues in the SE USA dropped it as a WFH provider, but they have more birds up so it is probably a lot better.

[gacook]

Originally Posted by stevej37

I would think something will be mailed to me about upcoming prices or packages.

Meanwhile...I have about 10 red flags in my lawn next to the road that I have to mow around.
I asked the guy about that and he said if you remove the flags....there is a heavy fine.

Yeah, that part was annoying. Had all kinds of flags and spray paint all over my yard, sidewalk, and road. And the install took a good chunk of time (months). At one point, they told me they were done and we could remove the flags (curmudgeon in me says THEY should do that) but I did...and a few days later, they'd put them back in

[stevej37]

^^^ The guy planting the flags told me that he had a '180 day ticket' for the project.
I'm thinking...oh great, it might not be done before Thanksgiving.

[schwarz633]

I've had Spectrum internet service over coax cable for many years, as the only other option was AT&T DSL. A few years back we dropped the Spectrum TV portion and are using YouTube TV. Spectrum was charging $90/month for 500/25 Mbps, which is all the speed we need.

Recently AT&T and T-Mobile/Metrocom each installed fiber in the neighborhood independently. Doesn't make any sense to me why they would both make that investment, but I guess the more competition, the better.

I've got a 1" PVC conduit running from my attached garage to the Spectrum pedestal. It pops through the garage wall at ground level and then the conduit extends vertically into my garage attic. The coax runs across the garage to an interior wall and drops down into my den. A few weeks ago I added a couple of Y's to extend that conduit into the two fiber handhole boxes. While I was doing it the AT&T guy was connecting my neighbor to fiber. I asked him some details about how my installation would work and he was quite perplexed about the conduit. He claimed that they had to put a grey box on the side of my house in order to change from the orange exterior cable to the white interior cable. I envisioned the guy giving me enough fiber cable for me to run it from the handhole box to my den and all they would have to do is terminate it. They apparently need to make it much more complicated than that.

For my neighbor they ran the fiber cable from the handhole box across the lawn to his garage, up the exterior wall, across the front of the garage stapled to the soffit, down the wall to the gray box on the front of the house, and through the wall into the room where the router was to be located. It looked like crap and he made them change it. So now it comes out of the handhole box, across the lawn, laying in the joint in the concrete driveway, across the lawn, laying in the joint in the concrete sidewalk, and then into the gray box. Apparently another lower paid crew comes later to bury the cable. I saw a couple of guys trying to drill a hole under the sidewalk, but they gave up after an hour or so. I was really curious to see how they were going to get under the driveway.

After observing all this, I called Spectrum and after using the fiber availability for leverage, got them to lower my bill to $40/month with a 2 year price lock. And I don't have to do anything, other than the time I wasted with the conduit.

[stevej37]

^^^ Yeah, I hadn't thought too much of the hook-up from the road to the house. I'll be sure to ask some questions before switching to it. When Comcast did mine, they just piggybacked to the phone line from the pole to the house through the air.

[LWJ]

My wife's cousin is a Fiber Optic legend. He is famous in the Fiber world. And? He says that fiber is by far the best medium to get a signal on. He had several dozen reasons. I will switch when it comes up our street.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by flipper35

A year ago some of my wife's colleagues in the SE USA dropped it as a WFH provider, but they have more birds up so it is probably a lot better.

When they first sent me an email (I got on a list) that it was available in my area, they had a disclaimer that it was technically in beta and could go down at any time, so I skipped on it. I've had some degraded service or the occasional outage with T-mobile a few times when my closest tower has an issue, but for the most part, I've never not been able to WFH. I've been very happy with T-mo internet. I think I'm lucky to live pretty much in the middle of 2 towers, so if one goes down, I still get some service.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by LWJ

My wife's cousin is a Fiber Optic legend. He is famous in the Fiber world. And? He says that fiber is by far the best medium to get a signal on. He had several dozen reasons. I will switch when it comes up our street.

Fiber > copper > wireless in pretty much every case.

But, it is possible for there to be issues that are a major PITA with any of them.

I've been a network engineer since '99. Weather and poorly installed/maintained copper (or fiber) can have issues in very wet environments (copper is more susceptible than fiber). Either of the 2 wired versions of network connectivity are almost always going to be more stable, reliable, and secure than anything wireless.

But these days all 3 can be VERY fast, stable, and reliable.