Anyone have fiber optic service to/in their house?

[Gary Allan]

Verizon is getting around to running their fiber optic network in Pottstown. I'm more than happy to ditch ComCast as my cable provider ..actually I just resent paying what I have to for broadcasting with commercials ..and the cable company (local - now owned by Comcast) is pretty lame.

Now I've had plenty of offers for a dish, in one form or another ..and it appears that they don't really lower any costs. They may provide expanded services ..but the bottom line, sorta like it is with cellular service, is about the same no matter where you go. I've had no desire to get cable internet services ..even though it is probably double the speed of my DSL ..although I think that DSL is worth it over dial up.

That all said (huffy rant off) ...anyone out there using it ...what additional hardware is used/required ..and how about costs???

 

[T-Keith]

We don't have fibre optic here, but I can recomend shopping around for internet. At my house Cable is the better deal(or at least was), but only a few miles away my sister gets 7Mb DSL for $30 a month. Mine is supposed to be 4Mb, but is more like 1.5-2Mb

 

[brianl703]

Sometimes you can get Comcast to offer you a lower rate if you call and complain about some aspect of your service.

The key words to use are, "I've been happy with your service up till now and I'd really like to continue using it but.." (insert complaint here).

I did that and they knocked $20/month off my bill for the next year. My issue was an almost 2-week outage resulting from incorrect signal levels.

 

[XS650]

I have fiber optic to the curb from the local cable vermin. From there it goes to box where it is slit into coax into peoples houses. There is no difference in the user interface from that than any other cable system, so it's no-brainer to use it. Others may vary.

The cable company (a small regional one) is a bunch of over priced richard-heads so I use Dish Sat and Telco DSL.

The Dish lineup, service and business practices of the company are much better than the cable company so Dish was no brainer for me. Dish is alo less expensive for equivilant lineup. The cable company can't match Dish's better lineup at any price.

When we moved in here, I got the cable company's internet because they were the only bradband in town. When the Telco expanded DSL into my are a swicthed. I save some money and dropped my connection test speed from 4+ meg/sec to 2+ meg/sec. In real world useage I don't notice a difference except on big uploads where DSL is alot slower.

Despite having fiber-optic to the curb, the cable company is steadily losing business to DSL, wireless internet and Sat TV. I keep seeing more and more dishes and wireless internet dishes on people houses around here.

 

[Gary Allan]

I can see that I'm not the only one wanting to ditch the honey bucket cable company :^). It would not be so bad of they actually gave you service and appeared to give a crap when you call with issues. I've got to hand it to Verizon ..they have the most well trained customer service staff that I've ever run into ..at least in my experience. The cable company, otoh, appears to use graduates from telemarketing outfits. For all I know they outsource to telemarketing outfits.

Anyway ..per my conversation with the Encore rep (encore is a special service number that you get access to when you do all your communications with Verizon cellular, DSL, landline) the house is wired in fiber optic ...so I imagine that there will be a broader range of services that they can offer ..at (maybe) higher speeds

Either way ..it should cut the throat of the cable company ..and I'm fine with that. The "at par" competition should work to my favor (hopefully).

 

[labman]

Unlike my former phony company, Brighthouse has resolved all my complaints within a few months.