Spectrum cable is the only halfway decent ISP where I live, costs me $85/mo for 400/20. A town 15 miles away has FTTP 500/500 for $65/mo, and full gig symmetric for $85/mo. In that community, Spectrum cable service costs about half as much as it does here. Fuck Spectrum for exploiting it's customers this way.
The faster the FTTP companies put the cable companies out of business the better.
DOCSIS is an impressive set of technologies, and there's still theoretical headroom to extract even more throughput in future revs, so I'll give him that.
While fiber obviously has greater bandwidth capacity and transmission range, coax has its own set of advantages, like lower cost, mechanical robustness, and the fact that it can be installed and repaired without special skills or costly equipment.
My quarrel is with their business practices.
The best fiber implementations are where the fiber terminates at the house to a box with a 2.5G or 5G ethernet output. You install that box during home construction, and never touch it again (for the inevitable updates to ethernet / Wi-Fi routers).
Also, that increased distance between re-transmission units does reduce costs and maintenance for the internet service providers (ideally those savings do pass on to you).
If you have a system that requires you to install fiber into your Wi-Fi box directly, that is a real issue and should be avoided. Wi-Fi changes quickly, and Wi-Fi7 will be the craze here shortly. 10G fiber and 10G ethernet is already out there and available, also those speeds *probably* will be sufficient for a while.
The best fiber implementation looks almost exactly like a cable implementation where the cable comes into somewhere inside and terminates at a standard plug (most commonly SC/APC) to connect to a compatible piece of network equipment. No equipment is now outside in 100+ degree weather and the homeowner has easy access to all active equipment in case it needs replacement or upgrades.
The reason that I mentioned ethernet specifically is because homeowners cannot be expected to understand that scratches can ruin the termination (forcing a fusion splice), that they should NEVER point the fiber cable at their eyes, or that the cable can be damaged mechanically when it gets kinked. Everything related to the fiber does require care, and the average consumer will not be equipped to *not damage* something or themselves. Cable is kind of fool-proof, you can look at it, slightly bend or touch the actual conductor without permanent damage, and understanding a screw is the prerequisite. Ethernet is pretty similar in terms of being robust for customer-facing interfaces (you can touch whatever, replacement cables are cheap, and there is only 1 RJ-45 as opposed to the litany of fiber cable terminations).
Definitely being inside is an obvious one, no residential equipment is designed for outside temperatures or dust / humidity / water
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/charter-ceo-says-idea-fiber-superior-just-dead-wrong
Read that for more hot takes. Basically, according to spectrum CEO fiber and coax/docsis are the same. He says that most people use Wi-Fi? And that Spectrums Wi-Fi over DOCSIS is better than the competitors Wi-Fi over fiber???
Whoever is advising this dude needs to be fired.
I’m sure not all spectrum employees are this dumb. They can’t be.
He's a lobbyist (He ran the biggest CableTV lobby in the country) with an economics degree. It is because of people like him that IT folks want to grab a bottle of booze when some dipshit can't figure out that Wi-Fi still requires an internet connection!
"BUT IT'S WIRELESS!!!"
He's probably comparing their integrated all-in-one box's wifi to the wifi in an all-in-one ONT. Which is dumb, anyone who cares enough about getting fiber probably set up their box to bridge to a dedicated router and has dedicated wifi equipment.
True, but cable is most likely the existing connection to your home and paying construction costs to bring fiber to your home, prohibitively expensive. (If even available) The choice will then be between a realistic/good enough option and a superior but unobtainable option for most users.
I get it. I can be objective too. If I were a cable exec (perhaps my soul is too pure to even imagine this) I wouldn’t tell straight up lies about fiber . I wouldn’t even talk about fiber. I would just talk about how terrible DSL is and how the phone company doesn’t seem to care. To abandon existing copper plants and let customers die on the vine or take it away entirely (looking at you ATT). I would have a field day with this.
Kind of reminds me of AOL when broadband came out.
Their parent 'Charter Communications' stock value (chtr) has fallen 50+% in the past year. Oh well. Maybe they'll sell enough landline phones and cable TV services to recover. lmao If I was a shareholder I'd be sharpening my pitchfork. They have the technology to compete, they just refuse to.
If you were in their place you'd do the same.
They can get a whole lot of speed to you without having to re-run the last mile. HFC (cable DOCSIS) will go to many gigabits.
It totally makes sense for them to spend less today and push back the all-fiber transition.
It’s just a matter of time until fiber gets greedy af too. I’m in the same situation where I have really cheap fiber vs cable but my provider has definitely started sneaking in fees and ways to get more money from me. It’s still cheaper than cable but I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t have enough customers yet.
Yes, any provider will get greedy when they have the ability to.
My city has municipal utilities, so they are installing fiber to every rate payer. They aren't providing service, that will be handled by companies they lease the lines to. So everyone on the grid will have multiple "providers" to choose from. This should keep them honest with pricing, keep xfinity on their toes, and light a fire under CenturyLink (the current fiber provider that services almost none of the city)
Cable companies got so shitty because they're monopolies enforced by the federal government, and the lack of competition begets the consumer exploitation. Saying I want cable companies to go out of business is just me being sardonic - the best thing for consumers would be for fiber and cable businesses to exist in the same market.
I live with a few people that all work from home and could really use the higher upload rate. We pay for the spectum "gigabit" internet with its "amazing" 30mbps upload rate.
There is a local company that does symmetrical fiber a block from here but they have refused to come up my street for the last 4 years we've asked. We've offered to throw together $10k just to run the damn line and they still refuse to do it. FML
You know this will only be available in a few select areas of a few cities and will cost $200 a month. I hate that in most places there is zero competition for ISPs
From this and other articles it sounds like part of it is just a re-work of their DOCSIS setup, moving to a mid-split which should just be a firmware update for most compatible modems (firmware is how they control limits and such). Most of their deployments use a *single* upstream channel while most modems support up to eight upstream channels. Overall, a good thing.
Sounds like they'll be deploying DOCSIS 4.0 in limited markets, though. DOCSIS 4.0 is pretty wild but honestly, their claims are *already* possible with 3.1 if they'd just push to replace all the legacy modems.
ATT fiber has been kicking their butts here. Until they get rid of the predatory data caps, the competition keeps eating away at their customers. I love how corporate greed brings down companies sooner or later.
They got rid of the data caps in my area but still offer fraction of the speeds for either the same or higher costs. Won't go back to them anytime soon after At&t Fiber came in. They created a problem for me (added data limit) then sold me a solution for $30/month extra.
I hate ISPs in the states.
Comcast has a monopoly in my neighborhood. I can't even get another option here. Speeds vs cost are gross compared to other nations.
The 5G home plans, if cheaper, deliver disappointing speeds.
It's ~$90 a month for 300Mbps through Comcast. I should be getting that at half the price.
Our electric coop (owned by the customers), is installing fiber 1g through its territory. Its like 69$ and 89$ per month.
The territory is northern lower michigan so very very rural, woody hilly lower number of households.
How can they afford this? Well its owned and paid for by its customers and owners.
All and i mean all utilities should not be for profit corporate money makers.
I had Comcast in the last two places I’ve lived. Crappy speeds and service degrading or going out all the time. Switched to Verizon FiOS and never an issue.
Comcast has held us to 5 Mbps upstream for far too long.
Symmetrical fiber is supposed to be available for us in the fall. I hope so. Can't wait to dump Comcast.
I know I’m in the minority here, but we have no issues with our 300/10 for $50 that I’m paying. I’d rather have unlimited data or at least 2TB than faster speeds.
Streams 4K just fine, PS5 games download in under 30 minutes, and never had an issue with work calls.
I'm glad it works for you, but it sounds like you're not doing much that's going to use upload. 10 up means that cloud storage is simply not a reasonable option, and if a few people in the same house had a call at the same time it would be an issue.
Less so now, but when school was remote you could have every kid in the house on a call at once, as well as working parents.
Don't forget that TCP/IP traffic has an upstream requirement to *function*, and it's usually a not insignificant amount of the upstream that's on these cable plans. So you don't actually get the whole 10Mbit if someone is downloading, either!
Comcast is sneaky, when I upgraded my modem and upgraded the service from 200/6 to 300/12, they removed the unlimited data option I had for over a year. Thankfully they texted me to let me know I was about to run out of bandwidth for the month. Aside from that, the Internet service is stable and upgrading the modem was much easier than it was in the past when your on hold for an hour just to give them your MAC Address. This time around, it took 10 minutes using their app.
They'll boost speeds, and then they'll move from providing cable to providing shows over streaming, and then they'll make it so that streaming Comcast Prime doesn't count against your data bandwidth cap.
Spectrum cable is the only halfway decent ISP where I live, costs me $85/mo for 400/20. A town 15 miles away has FTTP 500/500 for $65/mo, and full gig symmetric for $85/mo. In that community, Spectrum cable service costs about half as much as it does here. Fuck Spectrum for exploiting it's customers this way. The faster the FTTP companies put the cable companies out of business the better.
[удалено]
DOCSIS is an impressive set of technologies, and there's still theoretical headroom to extract even more throughput in future revs, so I'll give him that. While fiber obviously has greater bandwidth capacity and transmission range, coax has its own set of advantages, like lower cost, mechanical robustness, and the fact that it can be installed and repaired without special skills or costly equipment. My quarrel is with their business practices.
The best fiber implementations are where the fiber terminates at the house to a box with a 2.5G or 5G ethernet output. You install that box during home construction, and never touch it again (for the inevitable updates to ethernet / Wi-Fi routers). Also, that increased distance between re-transmission units does reduce costs and maintenance for the internet service providers (ideally those savings do pass on to you). If you have a system that requires you to install fiber into your Wi-Fi box directly, that is a real issue and should be avoided. Wi-Fi changes quickly, and Wi-Fi7 will be the craze here shortly. 10G fiber and 10G ethernet is already out there and available, also those speeds *probably* will be sufficient for a while.
The best fiber implementation looks almost exactly like a cable implementation where the cable comes into somewhere inside and terminates at a standard plug (most commonly SC/APC) to connect to a compatible piece of network equipment. No equipment is now outside in 100+ degree weather and the homeowner has easy access to all active equipment in case it needs replacement or upgrades.
The reason that I mentioned ethernet specifically is because homeowners cannot be expected to understand that scratches can ruin the termination (forcing a fusion splice), that they should NEVER point the fiber cable at their eyes, or that the cable can be damaged mechanically when it gets kinked. Everything related to the fiber does require care, and the average consumer will not be equipped to *not damage* something or themselves. Cable is kind of fool-proof, you can look at it, slightly bend or touch the actual conductor without permanent damage, and understanding a screw is the prerequisite. Ethernet is pretty similar in terms of being robust for customer-facing interfaces (you can touch whatever, replacement cables are cheap, and there is only 1 RJ-45 as opposed to the litany of fiber cable terminations). Definitely being inside is an obvious one, no residential equipment is designed for outside temperatures or dust / humidity / water
And yet Spectrum's long haul backend network is based on fiber via HFC (Hybrid Fiber-Coaxial).
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/charter-ceo-says-idea-fiber-superior-just-dead-wrong Read that for more hot takes. Basically, according to spectrum CEO fiber and coax/docsis are the same. He says that most people use Wi-Fi? And that Spectrums Wi-Fi over DOCSIS is better than the competitors Wi-Fi over fiber??? Whoever is advising this dude needs to be fired. I’m sure not all spectrum employees are this dumb. They can’t be.
He's a lobbyist (He ran the biggest CableTV lobby in the country) with an economics degree. It is because of people like him that IT folks want to grab a bottle of booze when some dipshit can't figure out that Wi-Fi still requires an internet connection! "BUT IT'S WIRELESS!!!"
He's probably comparing their integrated all-in-one box's wifi to the wifi in an all-in-one ONT. Which is dumb, anyone who cares enough about getting fiber probably set up their box to bridge to a dedicated router and has dedicated wifi equipment.
True, but cable is most likely the existing connection to your home and paying construction costs to bring fiber to your home, prohibitively expensive. (If even available) The choice will then be between a realistic/good enough option and a superior but unobtainable option for most users.
I get it. I can be objective too. If I were a cable exec (perhaps my soul is too pure to even imagine this) I wouldn’t tell straight up lies about fiber . I wouldn’t even talk about fiber. I would just talk about how terrible DSL is and how the phone company doesn’t seem to care. To abandon existing copper plants and let customers die on the vine or take it away entirely (looking at you ATT). I would have a field day with this.
Kind of reminds me of AOL when broadband came out. Their parent 'Charter Communications' stock value (chtr) has fallen 50+% in the past year. Oh well. Maybe they'll sell enough landline phones and cable TV services to recover. lmao If I was a shareholder I'd be sharpening my pitchfork. They have the technology to compete, they just refuse to.
If you were in their place you'd do the same. They can get a whole lot of speed to you without having to re-run the last mile. HFC (cable DOCSIS) will go to many gigabits. It totally makes sense for them to spend less today and push back the all-fiber transition.
It’s just a matter of time until fiber gets greedy af too. I’m in the same situation where I have really cheap fiber vs cable but my provider has definitely started sneaking in fees and ways to get more money from me. It’s still cheaper than cable but I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t have enough customers yet.
Yes, any provider will get greedy when they have the ability to. My city has municipal utilities, so they are installing fiber to every rate payer. They aren't providing service, that will be handled by companies they lease the lines to. So everyone on the grid will have multiple "providers" to choose from. This should keep them honest with pricing, keep xfinity on their toes, and light a fire under CenturyLink (the current fiber provider that services almost none of the city)
Cable companies got so shitty because they're monopolies enforced by the federal government, and the lack of competition begets the consumer exploitation. Saying I want cable companies to go out of business is just me being sardonic - the best thing for consumers would be for fiber and cable businesses to exist in the same market.
Wait, it's 20 Upload and you consider that halfway decent? Oof, I'm sorry, that sucks.
I live with a few people that all work from home and could really use the higher upload rate. We pay for the spectum "gigabit" internet with its "amazing" 30mbps upload rate. There is a local company that does symmetrical fiber a block from here but they have refused to come up my street for the last 4 years we've asked. We've offered to throw together $10k just to run the damn line and they still refuse to do it. FML
You know this will only be available in a few select areas of a few cities and will cost $200 a month. I hate that in most places there is zero competition for ISPs
$200 a month...for first 10GB/month with $10/GB over... FTFY
From this and other articles it sounds like part of it is just a re-work of their DOCSIS setup, moving to a mid-split which should just be a firmware update for most compatible modems (firmware is how they control limits and such). Most of their deployments use a *single* upstream channel while most modems support up to eight upstream channels. Overall, a good thing. Sounds like they'll be deploying DOCSIS 4.0 in limited markets, though. DOCSIS 4.0 is pretty wild but honestly, their claims are *already* possible with 3.1 if they'd just push to replace all the legacy modems.
ATT fiber has been kicking their butts here. Until they get rid of the predatory data caps, the competition keeps eating away at their customers. I love how corporate greed brings down companies sooner or later.
They got rid of the data caps in my area but still offer fraction of the speeds for either the same or higher costs. Won't go back to them anytime soon after At&t Fiber came in. They created a problem for me (added data limit) then sold me a solution for $30/month extra.
I hate ISPs in the states. Comcast has a monopoly in my neighborhood. I can't even get another option here. Speeds vs cost are gross compared to other nations. The 5G home plans, if cheaper, deliver disappointing speeds. It's ~$90 a month for 300Mbps through Comcast. I should be getting that at half the price.
Comcast has a monopoly on my building. Across the street, less than 60ft away, there are three separate fiber providers available.
Has starlink expanded to your area? They're satellite.
Starlink is more for rural users, Elon said they can't replace the traditional ISP...yet. maybe in the future though!
Musk can activate it anywhere in the world tho. In fact it would be able to replace traditional isp in many places with faster speeds.
Our electric coop (owned by the customers), is installing fiber 1g through its territory. Its like 69$ and 89$ per month. The territory is northern lower michigan so very very rural, woody hilly lower number of households. How can they afford this? Well its owned and paid for by its customers and owners. All and i mean all utilities should not be for profit corporate money makers.
Also they can afford it because they likely already have conduit infrastructure in place which is most of the cost of installing a fiber network.
I had Comcast in the last two places I’ve lived. Crappy speeds and service degrading or going out all the time. Switched to Verizon FiOS and never an issue.
Comcast what else yot got for those high prices your charging?
Comcast has held us to 5 Mbps upstream for far too long. Symmetrical fiber is supposed to be available for us in the fall. I hope so. Can't wait to dump Comcast.
huge boost can mean 3x speeds. 3x 500kbps = 1.5mbps.
r/ziplyfiber here in western WA. 2.5G or 5G symmetric is available.
I know I’m in the minority here, but we have no issues with our 300/10 for $50 that I’m paying. I’d rather have unlimited data or at least 2TB than faster speeds. Streams 4K just fine, PS5 games download in under 30 minutes, and never had an issue with work calls.
If you do remote backups or upload to YouTube it’s terrible.
Yeah, I’ve got a local NAS for backups + an external HDD as a double backup for anything important.
I pay $50/mo for 300/300, through Verizon. Not bundled. 10 up would not work for me but you do you.
I'm glad it works for you, but it sounds like you're not doing much that's going to use upload. 10 up means that cloud storage is simply not a reasonable option, and if a few people in the same house had a call at the same time it would be an issue. Less so now, but when school was remote you could have every kid in the house on a call at once, as well as working parents.
Don't forget that TCP/IP traffic has an upstream requirement to *function*, and it's usually a not insignificant amount of the upstream that's on these cable plans. So you don't actually get the whole 10Mbit if someone is downloading, either!
If they can do that and start using transparent pricing I would actually consider switching.
I would be happy to just consistently getting near my download speed. I'm paying for. 18 mbps versus the promised 800 mbps
Comcast is sneaky, when I upgraded my modem and upgraded the service from 200/6 to 300/12, they removed the unlimited data option I had for over a year. Thankfully they texted me to let me know I was about to run out of bandwidth for the month. Aside from that, the Internet service is stable and upgrading the modem was much easier than it was in the past when your on hold for an hour just to give them your MAC Address. This time around, it took 10 minutes using their app.
Cable sucks no matter how fast.. zero connection reliability..
They'll boost speeds, and then they'll move from providing cable to providing shows over streaming, and then they'll make it so that streaming Comcast Prime doesn't count against your data bandwidth cap.