I seem to recall that, when fiber optic data transmission first became a thing (and it has been a while), the talking point was all about -huge- bandwidth but at the expense of some additional hardware cost.
The local telco is now touting "Fiber, direct to your house!" but the bandwidth they are claiming (not to speak of what one might actually get) is only slightly better than my budget plan cable internet. But it's slightly cheaper now, there's a free trial period and, best of all, it's -not- the cable company (Comcast) so I thought, "Why not give it a try?".
Fortunately, I was smart enough to have it installed well before letting the Cable internet service expire. The installer had to drill a hole in an exterior wall to run the fiber in. He carefully figured out where to drill and drilled the hole form the outside. On the inside, his drill bit caught the drapes and wrecked a curtain rod. Got that all settled. He did a quick connectivity test to verify the router and that I could see the router's wifi on my phone. I made sure to get the credentials and procedure for logging into the router itself and made sure I had the customer service phone number in case I ran into any trouble.
Well, I could connect to the ESSID of the router but couldn't get -any- internet traffic. Using the login credentials given on the decal on the router itself, I could not log in to the router to even attempt trouble shooting. I never managed to actually speak to anyone at the customer service number. And they had the gall to send a bill due well before the free trial period was up. I -did- manage to contact someone at their billing department and told them to send someone to collect their hardware.
Though the uninspiring bandwidth claim was a bit of a let down, I understand they might have a hard time servicing fiber-worthy connection speeds for any large number of customers but it begs the question, "Why fiber instead of existing wire technology?" My guess is that it's simply cheaper for the ISP while providing no tangible benefit to the customer. It all comes to nothing though when the ISP drops the ball in so many ways.
@KGIII - I know you're a long way from suburban Pittsburgh, but you might want to get first hand reports on the provider before dropping 8 to 10 grand on the cable run.
The local telco is now touting "Fiber, direct to your house!" but the bandwidth they are claiming (not to speak of what one might actually get) is only slightly better than my budget plan cable internet. But it's slightly cheaper now, there's a free trial period and, best of all, it's -not- the cable company (Comcast) so I thought, "Why not give it a try?".
Fortunately, I was smart enough to have it installed well before letting the Cable internet service expire. The installer had to drill a hole in an exterior wall to run the fiber in. He carefully figured out where to drill and drilled the hole form the outside. On the inside, his drill bit caught the drapes and wrecked a curtain rod. Got that all settled. He did a quick connectivity test to verify the router and that I could see the router's wifi on my phone. I made sure to get the credentials and procedure for logging into the router itself and made sure I had the customer service phone number in case I ran into any trouble.
Well, I could connect to the ESSID of the router but couldn't get -any- internet traffic. Using the login credentials given on the decal on the router itself, I could not log in to the router to even attempt trouble shooting. I never managed to actually speak to anyone at the customer service number. And they had the gall to send a bill due well before the free trial period was up. I -did- manage to contact someone at their billing department and told them to send someone to collect their hardware.
Though the uninspiring bandwidth claim was a bit of a let down, I understand they might have a hard time servicing fiber-worthy connection speeds for any large number of customers but it begs the question, "Why fiber instead of existing wire technology?" My guess is that it's simply cheaper for the ISP while providing no tangible benefit to the customer. It all comes to nothing though when the ISP drops the ball in so many ways.
@KGIII - I know you're a long way from suburban Pittsburgh, but you might want to get first hand reports on the provider before dropping 8 to 10 grand on the cable run.
