Holy fiber Batman!

[TerryRitchie]

I'm back online after being offline most of the day. Over the past few months my small little podunk Ohio town (population ~17,000) has had a fiber optic company running fiber underground every where. Last week they started visiting households for people to sign up.

A couple of techs showed up today and spent 4 hours running a fiber optic line to my home.

Get this: for $45 a month I get 250Mbps up and down speeds, no installation charge, no contracts, and no hidden fees! I just did a speed test and I'm getting 7ms latency times with 265 Mbps up and down speeds. Woohoo!  I just told the cable company to go pound dirt (that felt good). The cable company's cheapest package is $95 a month for 200Mbps down and 25Mbps up and I could never get better than 25 to 30ms latency times. Heck, if I wanted to for $85 I can get 1Gbps fiber speed or $105 for 2Gbps fiber speed but 250Mbps is plenty for my needs.

The difference in responsiveness with Internet sites is amazing. I now know just how bad the cable company's service was.

The company is called Omni Fiber and they are installing in Ohio and Pennsylvania right now. Be on the look out for them if they come to your area.

Never in my wildest dreams did I believe a little backwoods town like mine would ever get fiber.

[SMcNeill]

   

There's the speeds this poor hillbilly gets in Nowhereville.  

[Jack]

@SMcNeill
how much does it cost you?
I have a 300 Mbps fiber connection for about $46 a month, I have the option to upgrade to 1 Gbps but I don't need it, 300 Mbps is all I need

[TerryRitchie]

There's the speeds this poor hillbilly gets in Nowhereville.  

Show off

[SMcNeill]

@SMcNeill
how much does it cost you?
I have a 300 Mbps fiber connection for about $46 a month, I have the option to upgrade to 1 Gbps but I don't need it, 300 Mbps is all I need

Ours is a local telephone co-op, of which my family has been a part of since they come over in the MayFlower, I guess.  Recently, I got a letter that as a "Legacy Co-owner" in the co-op, that my rates would be going down to $35.00 per month for unlimited access.  I'm certain that's not a going rate for all customers, just something for us for "being a part of the family for 100 years" or some such thing.  I didn't read the details the most, but I was happy for the price reduction. 

I just checked -- their other unlimited plans start at $60 for 100Mbps, and go up to $200 per month for unlimited GB speeds.   They offer metered plans (such as 2TB up/down transfer limits) at lower prices, so I'm getting one heck of a deal for being in the same place and on their same systems since...  1968, I guess, was when my parents had the first phone installed in our home.  Everyone had party lines before then, and my father paid extra to have the first dedicated private line in the county.   When they first started talking fiber, I ended up paying several thousand dollars myself, to have it branch from the main road to my home early.   I guess this is their way of giving back to us, after years of us giving to them as well. 

[SMcNeill]

   

One thing I've learned-- on wifi, distance from the router makes a HUGE difference.  There's my speeds from the far end of the house, as far from the router as I can get without going outside.

[Jack]

Steve you are lucky man  
I am not a fan of WiFi due to concerns of extended exposure, I turn on WiFi once a week to update my phone and tablet
when they installed my fiber connection, the router or the Optical Network Terminal had WiFi  on by default, but I learned that you could turn it off which I quickly did
but the Optical Network Terminal only had one Ethernet socket, then I remembered that some years ago I had purchased an 8-port GigaBit switch by mistake, I thought that I was getting a router, so I decided to hookup the switch fearing the worst but everything worked great

[Dimster]

I think Fiber speed drops by the number of clients being added, so if they are still adding customers in your neighborhood Terry, then the speed you likely can rely on is the one when all the build out activity has ceased. I wonder, with the advent of AI, if the speeds Steve is getting could lead to a housing boom in his neighborhood. The new satellite systems are promising future speeds (and mobile) that are comparable to fiber but nothing like what Steve is getting. I thought I read somewhere that 5g cellular was expected to obsolete fiber and satellites. Maybe that's the next generation of cellular 6g. At this moment in time, fiber, being least affected by weather, is the way to go. Who knows how far away all those other promising systems will take to get to us.

[TerryRitchie]

I know cable has the shared connection problem. Spectrum's system in my town places 24 connections per hub in each neighborhood. I would notice that at times too during heavy known usage times, like the Ohio State vs Michigan game and the Super Bowl. I'm not sure if fiber is shared in the same way. That's an interesting question and one I'll be looking into.

I looked into Star Link a while back but it's just way too expensive. Dishy McDishFace alone costs $600 and then the cheapest plan I could find was around $110 per month I believe. 5G, 6G, Whatever G, I don't believe will ever be a viable option. It's spotty, unreliable, drops off rapidly in speed vs distance from tower, and most importantly, is controlled by greedy wireless companies that you can't trust. Remember when Verizon called their 4G network 5GE to confuse everyone? That's the kind of crap they pull all the time.

[Dav]

Lucky guys. Wish fiber was in our area.  I just took our spectrum speed test.  

Download = 65 Mpbs
Upload = 11 Mpbs

Guess I shouldn't complain - it's hard to get reliable internet cable service at this place. 

- Dav