metronet is coming to town

[SevenBizzos]

metronet has had the utility locater mark up the neighborhood for a fiber optic install. Xfinity is not interested in coming down in price and AT&T has abandoned wired service. It looks like I can get to $65 or $70 with them. Because of family's work VPN, wireless connections don't work very well, so we'd prefer to stay on a wire. Speed is not a concern.

Is this provider any different than the others?

 

[Rand]

fiber is fiber .. and awesome!

 

[Geekhead]

metronet has had the utility locater mark up the neighborhood for a fiber optic install. Xfinity is not interested in coming down in price and AT&T has abandoned wired service. It looks like I can get to $65 or $70 with them. Because of family's work VPN, wireless connections don't work very well, so we'd prefer to stay on a wire. Speed is not a concern.

Is this provider any different than the others?

I don't know anything about that provider but any glass fiber to home has to be better than a cable feed or ancient twisted pair phone lines if you still even have that service provided.

 

[TnT_M]

In eastern Iowa and have Metronet. It's been very reliable and fast. We changed from a different provider earlier this year for a higher speed and better price. Old provider wouldn't price match or discount at all even though we had them for many years (10ish years probably).

 

[Pew]

metronet has had the utility locater mark up the neighborhood for a fiber optic install. Xfinity is not interested in coming down in price and AT&T has abandoned wired service. It looks like I can get to $65 or $70 with them. Because of family's work VPN, wireless connections don't work very well, so we'd prefer to stay on a wire. Speed is not a concern.

Is this provider any different than the others?

Around here I think they started out pretty far out like by Sugar Grove/Sandwich/Oswego where there weren't enough houses for Comcast to run cable. Now MetroNet is starting to creep closer and closer towards the city. Comcast/Xfinity is in bed with IL so it's pretty hard to get any sort of other ISP in pre-CV19 housing developments. After TMO bought MetroNet, the prices went up. Last year 1G/1G was $55; now it's $85. At least it's not as bad as Comcast's $140/month for 1G/20M.

MetroNet's tech support was....interesting. 6-ish years ago they tried to make one of our VPs order a static IP for his home internet because his router or something kept cutting out when using the company VPN. The boss of my other job has had them for about 6 years too and I don't believe he's had any issues yet.

A neighbor down the street has a little MetroNet street sign so maybe they'll be here soon. I'm slightly turned off by TMO buying them but xfinity can shove it.

 

[Rand]

tmob buying them reduced the prices.. you should be happy.

Omnifiber moved in here.. and metro in green..(15-20min away)

They can get 2/2 fiber for 5$ more than the cost of .5/.5 for me.

 

[tburke]

My parents had MetroNet for quite a while when they still lived in IL (Romeoville) -- it's good service, reasonably priced, and reliable. They had a relatively low tier (200mbps, IIRC) and had no complaints, even as a non-technical user, while they had 1Gbps cable here and were disappointed with reliability and performance.

The only downside is that they run "carrier grade" NAT with no IPv6, which can cause trouble if you plan on running any sort of servers, VPNs, gaming, etc. They do offer a static IP for a nominal fee, I think it was $15/month. As someone that used to do IP engineering for a decent sized fiber operator, they should just provide customers with "real" IP addresses instead of putting them behind NAT, but I'm not going to get on that soapbox today.

 

[Aichiguy]

We've had it for a year. No issues.

 

[CJE]

metronet has had the utility locater mark up the neighborhood for a fiber optic install. Xfinity is not interested in coming down in price and AT&T has abandoned wired service. It looks like I can get to $65 or $70 with them. Because of family's work VPN, wireless connections don't work very well, so we'd prefer to stay on a wire. Speed is not a concern.

Is this provider any different than the others?

I have had T-Mobile phones for almost 20 years. One day I was complaining to their customer service people (you know they always ask if there is anything else they can help you with? <g>) about my girlfriends $320. cable bill. They said that had wireless for about $40. a month and sent me a quart juice can sized widget to put on my window sill. Worked perfect, canceled the cable, and have used it ever since. I have one here and one in Florida. When I take the camper somewhere - I take their "gateway" along with me. Two internet things and two cells are about $160. a month and T-Mobile is always an efficient delight to deal with.

 

[Pew]

My parents had MetroNet for quite a while when they still lived in IL (Romeoville) -- it's good service, reasonably priced, and reliable. They had a relatively low tier (200mbps, IIRC) and had no complaints, even as a non-technical user, while they had 1Gbps cable here and were disappointed with reliability and performance.

The only downside is that they run "carrier grade" NAT with no IPv6, which can cause trouble if you plan on running any sort of servers, VPNs, gaming, etc. They do offer a static IP for a nominal fee, I think it was $15/month. As someone that used to do IP engineering for a decent sized fiber operator, they should just provide customers with "real" IP addresses instead of putting them behind NAT, but I'm not going to get on that soapbox today.

They were right down the street from me, I didn't know metronet was that close.

 

[tburke]

They were right down the street from me, I didn't know metronet was that close.

If memory serves me right, Plainfield was their first town in Illinois... and my parents lived in an older part of Romeoville, had it installed in 2017.

I'm honestly surprised that AT&T hasn't made any effort to deploy fiber in that area... I just looked up the last home I lived in up there (built early 2000's, Joliet with a "Plainfield" address), and AT&T is pushing folks to their fixed wireless product.

 

[Pew]

If memory serves me right, Plainfield was their first town in Illinois... and my parents lived in an older part of Romeoville, had it installed in 2017.

I'm honestly surprised that AT&T hasn't made any effort to deploy fiber in that area... I just looked up the last home I lived in up there (built early 2000's, Joliet with a "Plainfield" address), and AT&T is pushing folks to their fixed wireless product.

We were probably almost neighbors. My coworkers call this "Jolfield" lol. Your parents were probably neighbors with my ex haha.

Comcast completely rules Joliet but no company wants to run new lines in Joliet, there's no where to expand anymore. West part of Plainfield grew like crazy, new developments have passed Ridge Rd and County Line is a 4-lane now.

I think we're plumbed into Chicago's water now too. The aquifiers were running dry and we had a year of really hard water, but the water seems better now.

 

[tburke]

We were probably almost neighbors. My coworkers call this "Jolfield" lol. Your parents were probably neighbors with my ex haha.

Comcast completely rules Joliet but no company wants to run new lines in Joliet, there's no where to expand anymore. West part of Plainfield grew like crazy, new developments have passed Ridge Rd and County Line is a 4-lane now.

I think we're plumbed into Chicago's water now too. The aquifiers were running dry and we had a year of really hard water, but the water seems better now.

Ha, small world... we were right off of County Line, and I went to the high school off of Ridge Rd. I haven't been back that way in a few years... my folks moved down here, so no real reason to.

We had a cable modem for a while, think it was 3mbps?, then switched to 6mbps SBC DSL up until I moved out in 2011... then I went to college in Carbondale where I had what was once blazing-fast 100mbps in my dorm. Crazy how bandwidth has exponentially increased in such a short period of time, thanks to fiber, I now have 15gbps of bandwidth at my house (7gbps from the telco, 8gbps from a local provider) for what I consider a relatively reasonable price.

 

[SevenBizzos]

If memory serves me right, Plainfield was their first town in Illinois... and my parents lived in an older part of Romeoville, had it installed in 2017.

I'm honestly surprised that AT&T hasn't made any effort to deploy fiber in that area... I just looked up the last home I lived in up there (built early 2000's, Joliet with a "Plainfield" address), and AT&T is pushing folks to their fixed wireless product.

That's what I thought was interesting. I had AT&T DSL for years before getting priced out. Now they don't even offer it. It's cell tower stuff only. Now I'm getting priced out of Xfinity and need to find an alternative.

 

[Pew]

Ha, small world... we were right off of County Line, and I went to the high school off of Ridge Rd. I haven't been back that way in a few years... my folks moved down here, so no real reason to.

We had a cable modem for a while, think it was 3mbps?, then switched to 6mbps SBC DSL up until I moved out in 2011... then I went to college in Carbondale where I had what was once blazing-fast 100mbps in my dorm. Crazy how bandwidth has exponentially increased in such a short period of time, thanks to fiber, I now have 15gbps of bandwidth at my house (7gbps from the telco, 8gbps from a local provider) for what I consider a relatively reasonable price.

Ah I moved in from Woodridge to Plainfield in 2014. I meant to say Ridge** has turned into a 4-lane all the way down to Minooka. I bet before we pass away the neighborhoods of Plainfield and Oswego are going to border each other.

Do you remember that old house on Theodore and County Ln? The owner passed away a few years ago unfortunately; his wife went crazy decades ago and did a murder/suicide with their kids .

 

[SevenBizzos]

Install today went well. Speed is 2.09Gbps. Even though they were digging up around my house for months, there was no line TO my house. So the line is on the ground until another crew buries it. The Xfinity cancellation call went exactly as expected. No dealing with me a month ago, but on the cancel call they want to upgrade speed and lock in a reduced cost. Just like AT&T did years back. My price is now locked in for 10 years. That's just about when I plan on retiring and moving, so all is good.