We just had AT&T Fiber installed today, and it is glorious.

[UsandThem]

Maybe younger people don't have to remember how bad dial-up was, but I do.

We came from Spectrum 200 / 20 Mbps plan, and we went with the AT&T "Internet 300" plan. They actually offer a "Internet 1000" plan as well in our area, but it was too much for what we use the internet for. The terminal box is in the corner of our yard, so there it's a short run to our house, so we have pulled well over 300Mbps since they installed this morning.

 

[Chaotic42]

What's your listed bandwidth at fast.com ? I have AT&T and they seem to like to throttle the crap out Netflix and other streaming services from time to time. Seems like it's normal right now, I guess because it's so late. They're supposed to be giving us 1000/1000 service in the next couple of months.

 

[UsandThem]

What's your listed bandwidth at fast.com ?

It listed it as 340 Mbps.

 

[mxnerd]

Hosting at home becomes much easier!

 

[boomerang]

Our development is getting fiber from Summit Broadband right now. They're running behind because Irma screwed up every timetable imaginable down here. The install at our home was scheduled originally for tomorrow but there are still orange conduits sticking up out of the ground behind our place and all the other homes surrounding the water behind us.

I have talked to two people that live in areas served by Summit and both are very happy with the service. We have not cut the cord and I am curious to see how their TV service (and DVR) compares to Comcast. The Internet will initially be 100/100, going to 250/250 in 12 months.

I am cautiously optimistic.

 

[UsandThem]

I have talked to two people that live in areas served by Summit and both are very happy with the service. We have not cut the cord and I am curious to see how their TV service (and DVR) compares to Comcast. The Internet will initially be 100/100, going to 250/250 in 12 months.

I am cautiously optimistic.

For the last 24 months or so, we had Time Warner internet, and paid $69.99 month for the 200/20 service, and for TV, we had Playstation Vue that was $34.99 per month. So for $105 per month we had fast internet, and the Vue was a good package with lots of channels.

Then Spectrum bought Time Warner and our internet reliability began suffering a bit, and then they grandfathered in our internet package, but the price went to $79.99 per month. Then Playstation Vue began getting rid of a lot of channels, including all Viacom owned channels (Comedy Central, MTV, History, etc.). Then a few months later, they got rid of even more channels, leaving a pretty poor selection in our package. Finally, they grandfathered us into our plan, got rid of it for new subscribers, and increased the price to $44.99 per month. So now we were at $124.98 per month.

So at this point, we just said screw it and signed up with AT&T. For the first year, we pay $110.00 per month, for the "Internet 300" with no data caps since it's bundled with TV, and the U300 Uverse TV service with an insane amount of channels (like close to 400 channels). However, the part I hate is after a year I will have to contact them to give me a better rate than paying full price, and I really hate the process of negotiating with the "I'm going to switch to Spectrum unless....." stuff.

At least I have 12 months where I don't have to deal with that part.

 

[Elixer]

So at this point, we just said screw it and signed up with AT&T. For the first year, we pay $110.00 per month, for the "Internet 300" with no data caps since it's bundled with TV, and the U300 Uverse TV service

Does that mean you would have a cap if you didn't get the TV service?

 

[UsandThem]

Does that mean you would have a cap if you didn't get the TV service?

Yeah, they do it kind of weirdly, but here are the options:

The 1000Mbps plan has unlimited data, period.

The 50/100/300Mbps plans all have a 1TB cap per month. If you go over, they have this fine print:

If you get close to your monthly data allowance, we′ll notify you several times. If you happen to exceed your data allowance for a third time, we′ll automatically add 50GB for $10 to your monthly data limit, not to exceed a maximum of $100

But when I was choosing my internet and TV "package", it put this into my final printout before I actually bought it:

Unlimited data for bundling with TV (a $30 value)

and

Internet bundle discount -$20.00 Your discount will last as long as you keep your qualifying services

 

[VirtualLarry]

Officially, FIOS has no caps, but unofficially, you'll get a letter if you exceed around 8-10TB / mo. Unsure if that's increased or removed with gigabit service. (IMHO, it should be, or be way higher, like 50-100TB.)

 

[mnewsham]

Officially, FIOS has no caps, but unofficially, you'll get a letter if you exceed around 8-10TB / mo. Unsure if that's increased or removed with gigabit service. (IMHO, it should be, or be way higher, like 50-100TB.)

I dont really see an issue with the 8-10TB soft cap currently, but that will need to be addressed in the future. Already my household is averaging 2.5-3.5TB a month.

 

[Engineer]

Ugh...I hate you guys, lol!

Lexington just signed a contract to bright gigabit down (not sure of up) fiber from MetroNet (to compete with redacted Spectrum and redacted Windstream). Sad part is that it may take up to 4 years to finish install.

 

[mnewsham]

Sad part is that it may take up to 4 years to finish install.

Hopefully they are installing some newer fiber standard, and not something older like GPON. My ISP, FiOS is talking about NG-PON2 network upgrades starting in the next year or two and that should allow them to enable 10gbps or even 40gbps if the need arises.

When doing initial rollout they really should go for the highest end tech they can reasonably install, otherwise your network will be depreciated before it's even done being built. If they do it right though there is no reason you shouldn't see 1gbps down and up and at a reasonable price. FiOS is already managing to deliver reasonable 1gbps down and up on their current GPON network, and that tech has been in deployment in various places for over a decade. If they're installing a brand new fiber network in 2017-2021 then they really have no excuse if they can't deliver 1gbps in both directions.

 

[Engineer]

Hopefully they are installing some newer fiber standard, and not something older like GPON. My ISP, FiOS is talking about NG-PON2 network upgrades starting in the next year or two and that should allow them to enable 10gbps or even 40gbps if the need arises.

When doing initial rollout they really should go for the highest end tech they can reasonably install, otherwise your network will be depreciated before it's even done being built. If they do it right though there is no reason you shouldn't see 1gbps down and up and at a reasonable price. FiOS is already managing to deliver reasonable 1gbps down and up on their current GPON network, and that tech has been in deployment in various places for over a decade. If they're installing a brand new fiber network in 2017-2021 then they really have no excuse if they can't deliver 1gbps in both directions.

I've looked at their plans and they do not, from what I can tell, have 1Gbps down and up. Was something like 1Gbps down / 500 Mbps up. I can live with that (or lower depending on price and speed). I thought TWC was bad but Spectrum is nothing but pure greed (as shown by the highest paid CEO in the entire US for ALL companies).

 

[mnewsham]

I've looked at their plans and they do not, from what I can tell, have 1Gbps down and up. Was something like 1Gbps down / 500 Mbps up. I can live with that (or lower depending on price and speed). I thought TWC was bad but Spectrum is nothing but pure greed (as shown by the highest paid CEO in the entire US for ALL companies).

With all the hate Verizon as a company gets i'm still surprised i'm paying under $100/month for 1gbps fiber with essentially no data cap (~10TB soft cap)

 

[Engineer]

With all the hate Verizon as a company gets i'm still surprised i'm paying under $100/month for 1gbps fiber with essentially no data cap (~10TB soft cap)

Where are you located (if you don't mind)? Is there competition?

I suspect that Spectrum and Windstream will be redacted bricks trying to upgrade here now as well as lowering prices. Windstream states they have 1Gbps here but it is limited to new constructions areas and they have no interest in building it out to existing areas.

 

[mnewsham]

Where are you located (if you don't mind)? Is there competition?

I suspect that Spectrum and Windstream will be redacted bricks trying to upgrade here now as well as lowering prices. Windstream states they have 1Gbps here but it is limited to new constructions areas and they have no interest in building it out to existing areas.

Comcast is the only other ISP in the area for me. (Just north of Washington DC)

Similar pricing to Verizon but the upload on their service is 30-40mbps instead of 1gbps like Verizon.
Unless you get the 2gbps package, since that's a direct fiber connection it's provisioned at 2.2gbps download and 2.2gbps upload with a static IP address. But $1000 installation not to mention costs to upgrade your own network gear to handle those speeds.
Also they give you a 1gbps ethernet connection too (with a different static IP address). So it's basically 2 internet services.

Comcast is tempting, but the out of pocket expenses just don't seem worth it.

 

[Engineer]

Comcast is the only other ISP in the area for me.

Similar pricing to Verizon but the upload on their service is 30-40mbps instead of 1gbps like Verizon.
Unless you get the 2gbps package, since that's a direct fiber connection. But $1000 installation not to mention costs to upgrade your own network gear to handle those speeds.

Still, shows true competition is good. Hope the same happens here.

As for home network, I've run my house with Cat6 a few years ago and it should be good for 10Gbps since the runs are shorter. Right now running with 1Gbps but have 'smart' managed switches with 2 lines (link aggregation) between them so the total bandwidth can at least be split if it goes higher than 1Gbps. PC based router has 4 - 1Gbps ports but not sure if it can pump out that kinds of speed, even with Link Aggregation.

 

[Chaotic42]

What the hell are you people doing that you use so much data? I'm virtually always streaming when I'm home and awake and I've never cracked 500GB.

 

[UsandThem]

What the hell are you people doing that you use so much data? I'm virtually always streaming when I'm home and awake and I've never cracked 500GB.

With two teenagers and a wife, we usually are around 1.3TB - 1.6TB of data usage per month. That's with my kids playing XBOX One games online, watching YouTube, and up until we switched, constant streaming of Playstation Vue, Netflix, or Prime Video.

 

[Engineer]

Maybe younger people don't have to remember how bad dial-up was, but I do.

Just how much do you remember (i.e. how old are you)? Did you ever have a 300bps modem tied to text based Compuserve? I remember pulling in encyclopedia articles from them at 300bps and at that time, it was amazing.

 

[UsandThem]

Just how much do you remember (i.e. how old are you)? Did you ever have a 300bps modem tied to text based Compuserve? I remember pulling in encyclopedia articles from them at 300bps and at that time, it was amazing.

I'm in my 40's, and was pretty poor growing up, so I didn't have access to a computer until late 1994. I want to say the modem was a 14k, but early in 1995 it was upgraded to a 28k one to make America Online "fast". I do remember I bought a 56k modem in 1999 on base when I was in the military.

It's crazy to think that when I bought the game 'Half-Life', it had a release day patch. It wasn't that big compared to today's standards, but I remember it taking all night to download. Young people today will never understand the pain of dial-up

 

[Engineer]

Young people today will never understand the pain of dial-up

100% agree on this. Also note that nothing was worse than setting a download up and going to bed only to find out that it quite at 75% (and 5 hours) in the night and you had no choice but to start over the next night because you couldn't afford to give up the phone for that long.

 

[bbhaag]

Congrats UsandThem! We had fiber installed just over a year ago and we love it. Going from the crap known as Frontier Communications dsl service to MTCOs fiber service was one of the best tech decisions we've made in years. We liked it so much we went with MTCOs fiber service at our business to.

 

[UsandThem]

100% agree on this. Also note that nothing was worse than setting a download up and going to bed only to find out that it quite at 75% (and 5 hours) in the night and you had no choice but to start over the next night because you couldn't afford to give up the phone for that long.

Don't forget that sometimes when someone tried to call when you were connected, for some reason it would sometimes disconnect you.

And just the noise the modem would make would be so loud, and then when it was done you'd get blasted by "You've got mail!".

 

[mnewsham]

What the hell are you people doing that you use so much data? I'm virtually always streaming when I'm home and awake and I've never cracked 500GB.

Streaming bitrates aren't that high, so im not surprised.

A movie at 1080p on netflix might be 5GB. That same movie on a bluray will be ~30-40GB. With decent encoding ~12-18GB. Easily 2-3x the netflix bitrate.

And really youtube bitrates can vary significantly depending who you're watching. MKBHD posts all of his videos in 4k res. A 10 minute video can be ~1GB. If you feel like it there are some 8k videos on youtube that are around 80mbps bitrate for 1GB every ~2 minutes. 1080p60 youtube content is generally ~7mbps for 1GB every 20 minutes or so.

Stuff adds up, but if you're a quality fanatic, high quality encodes add up even faster. Just a dozen movies could eat through 200GB.