Cutting the Cord from Cable company

[00tec]

I have fiber to the home out where I'm at. Sucks that they under utilize the capabilities. I am required to have a home phone by my ISP, so for about $110 total, I get 25/5.

A friend has Rise Broadband (microwave) and you do see noticeable drops when the tower loads up.

[Gman]

As much as people knock Comcast, they've been great for me as an ISP in regard to reliability and throughput. Had DSL before cable was available and it sucked. Was interested in FIOS, but it's never become a reality.

[roberth]

As much as people knock Comcast, they've been great for me as an ISP in regard to reliability and throughput. Had DSL before cable was available and it sucked. Was interested in FIOS, but it's never become a reality.

Agreed. I've only used Comcast since 2006, Comcast has their problems but nothing compared to CTL.

[cstone]

Because no one in my area offers a competitive service to Comcast, I have Comcast. With the bandwidth that fiber opens up, I would expect competition for service on the strand. Besides the cost of the last mile, most companies don’t want to invest in the physical infrastructure if they can foresee the courts forcing them to share that fiber. Anyone else recall the competition for long distance services over POTS?

[Great-Kazoo]

ATM i have internet only, through the local cable co. Using a firestick i'm going to try the direct tv now service. IF i can get a CSR who has a $%^& clue . Most everything so far (minus any monthly payment) for the cable svc has been through the free apps i added to firestick

[Fentonite]

If it delivers 50mbps for $60 per month, I would drop Comcast in a heartbeat. Sadly, it has not expanded far enough for me to consider.

You may want to call them and see if they already have any customers in your neighborhood. Then you can ask them about their experience.

I was really hoping for fiber at some point but that just doesn't seem to be coming either.

Good idea - I’ll see if I can find some referrals.

They are just another WISP, similar to Rise, Hill Top (who Rise just bought), etc.

They will likely work well until they get to a larger customer base, and then it will start to drop off. (Seen this cycle with several WISPs that have been around).




Actual fiber to the home? Or just replacing the main backbones with fiber, but still copper to the home?



If that's the case, that Thornton said it would HAVE to include all homes, then that was a poor decision on the city's part.

FTTH is usually prohibitively expensive. Longmont got away with it because they are their own electric power utility, so they own all the power poles, and could string fiber along those.

The other problem that may be part of this is that opening up more and more cities with FTTH is creating a very different load on the existing backbones. I know guys that work for the company the feeds Longmont, and Longmont keeps asking for more bandwidth (not surprising with a city wide fiber network), and they are struggling to keep up.

Good insight, as usual - thanks! Gonna probably give it a try.

Next step - I need to provide my own router. Any strong feelings or recommedations?

[roberth]

Next step - I need to provide my own router. Any strong feelings or recommedations?

I've had excellent service from Motorola routers.

[Great-Kazoo]

I've had excellent service from Motorola routers.

Go with an ARRIS, which is one of the largest suppliers to a lot of cable co. Who, if you look at the similarities (IMO) also does the motorola modems

[Gman]

ARRIS & MOTOROLA

21 May 2015
Today, ARRIS is announcing that as of year’s end, we will no longer be using the Motorola brand on our retail products.

Since our acquisition of Motorola Home two years ago, we’ve anticipated this transition by accelerating our investment in making ARRIS the trusted name and global leader it is today. Now, we’re ready to usher in the next wave of industry innovation under the ARRIS brand.

When we acquired Motorola Home, we inherited a 60-year legacy of award-winning innovation—including the legendary SURFboard® line of products.

To be technical, Arris primarily makes modems/gateways for terminating a network at your location. I think the question was about routers.

Routers are primarily defined on what you plan to do with it. Are you looking for primarily amazing WiFi coverage, or do you need 8 ports for wired Ethernet connections?

If you're like most people using a lot of WiFi devices, the new 'mesh' systems are pretty slick. I recently setup my folks with a 3 node Linksys Velop mesh system since they have a complicated home layout with their office terminating their cable modem on the far side of their ranch style home. Was easy to setup using the phone app, and I can manage their network from 1500 miles away. I used a 4 port switch to interconnect the equipment in the office to the Velop node that's also connected to their cable modem. Lots of bandwidth over their entire home with lots of streaming video and no issues.

At home, my home office in the basement is fairly centrally located in the basement of our ranch style home. I bought my router before the mesh networks began to show up on the market. I went big with the Linksys EA9500 Max-Stream™ AC5400 MU-MIMO Gigabit Wi-Fi Router. I get great throughput anywhere in the house, garage, back yard, wired or wireless.

You need to figure out what's important to you and then find the solution that provides the solution that you're looking for.

[10x]

Comcast is the best isp in our area,so, we kept them for internet. Fired them for tv and phone. We use Roku and also get Netflix and Hulu. Hulu has tv shows the next day that my wife likes. We use Majic for land line, $20 per year. Cost is half we were paying with Comcast and we like the movies etc. much more.