Decades ago, I connected to the internet through a Telebit
modem and GTE pone lines. GTE became Verizon, which offered
offered fiber. Verizon became Frontier, and service went to
hell. So, I transitioned to Comcast cable - which went to
deeper hell a few years later, bad mistake. Currently, I pay
$170 per month for 40/6 (40 mbps download, 6 mbps upload),
plus one telephone "landline" (used for a fax machine).
Except ... the upload/download includes wifi ... which
Comcast sells separately ... to other customers ... out of
the 40/6 bandwidth I've paid for. Ditto for the bits that
are converted to our faux "landline" phone service.
Worse yet, the Comcast coax cable feed is shared with
television and movie channels, so the entire kludge is
underprovisioned and overstressed. On a good day with
a tailwind, a coax feed /might/ carry a few hundred
megabits of information/signal, and uses grid power for
the repeaters. When the power goes out, so does Comcast.
When the overstressed repeaters fail, Comcast shuts down
our neighborhood feed to tinker with them (unannounced
and without warning), typically between midnight and 3
or 4 am (prime hacker hours).
Meanwhile, Frontier was purchased by Northwest Fiber, and
rebranded as Ziply Fiber. The vast expansion caused
problems and some early bad reviews, but recent reviews
are very good; I soon expect to add another good review.
Ziply offers 100/100 consumer grade service for $45
per month (first year is $20 per month), with support
from an Asian call center. I wanted "no surprises"
pricing and local phone support, so instead I signed
up for 200/200 business service for $60 per month.
I prepared well for the install, which only took a few
minutes ("fiber already to premises, backer board,
cable trays, UPS, test computer handy - this won't take
long at all"). Most of the minutes was spent removing
the old ONT, uncoiling the 30 feet of extra fiber,
recoiling it in a new separate box, then connecting it
to the new optical network terminal ... about the size
of a large paperback book, and powered by a 12V/2A
wallwart (wallwart wire down the preexisting cable
tray, cat5e cable using the same armored tray).
The technician tested the service with his laptop; he got
330/330 mbps test results. I'm only getting 95/95 mbps
after my 24 port gigabit switch, but there may be some
slow cat5 somewhere on the path. I'll debug that soon.
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For voice telephone, we've been using Ooma VOIP for years,
and the expensive Comcast "landline" for the business fax.
Ooma is an $80 box ... subsequent voice service (including
domestic long distance) is free. I just bought a second
Ooma box for the fax.
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Bottom line: after we cancel Comcast, we will pay $60 per
month for very fast internet, and $0 per month for a voice
phone and a fax phone. Much better than $170 per month
for slow and intermittent Comcast. I hope - failure is
(sadly) always an option.
Keith L.
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Keith Lofstrom [email protected]
