High Speed Internet - I have options!

[PaunchyPirate]

After many years of only having internet service from my local cable TV company, I recently found out that Windstream has wired my small town with fiber for internet. They are heavily advertising this now and have a decent new-customer promotion. So I decided to sign up and cut the wire on my cable internet. I haven't used cable for TV service in a few years, and I don't maintain a land-line phone anymore, so this will just be for internet service.

By the time I factor in the promo pricing and the $100 pre-paid Visa card I (hopefully) will eventually get in 45 days, this will drop my internet bill by about $35/month. The price goes up $15/month after 12 months, which will still be less than I'm currently paying for service. I figure, if prices rise more, I'll start playing the game of switching back and forth every year chasing new-customer bonuses.

The download speed they offer at this price point is 5000mbps compared to the 300mbps my cable currently provides. As the only user in my home, both of these speeds are more than adequate for my needs. But it never hurts to have faster! And the fiber upload speeds should be noticeably better if/when I need to upload much of anything.

Hopefully Windstream's Kinetic Fiber service works well for me. Fingers crossed. I have friends and relatives in the area that are happy customers. My brother lives on a farm about 8 miles from the nearest town and he previously had only bad DSL (also from Windstream) available to him. But Windstream has even run fiber out to his location as of the last year, so he's thrilled to be able to stream movies on more than one TV at a time.

 

[Car-Guy]

We've had Winstream DSL for years (decade +). As far out as we are from town, we felt lucky to have the 3meg we were getting but that was to slow for streaming. A couple of years ago they bumped our DSL speed up to 12+ meg which is fast enough to stream without any buffering even in HD. (No price increase) Not sure what I'd do with 300G much less 500G.

Service has been okay but I still need to reset the modem a couple of times a week... Again, we are so far from town, I'm happy to get it.

 

[Major Tom]

Fiber service is great. We have a company called Sonic in the SF East Bay who are building out their fiber network. They just hooked me up with a service that gives speeds up to 10Gbps, for $30/month (not an introductory price) and no contract. My router and ethernet port on my computer are only capable of 1Gbps, so that's all I'm getting.

Never thought I'd be saying that I'm only getting 1Gbps! I'm loving the speed.

 

[Jerry1]

I’m jealous. 123net dug up my front yard running fiber but it’s still showing as unavailable. Hopefully they’ll get it operational soon. We need some competition here. We just have two rather crappy cable providers.

 

[Qs Laptop]

The download speed they offer at this price point is 500Gb compared to the 300Gb my cable currently provides. As the only user in my home, both of these speeds are more than adequate for my needs. But it never hurts to have faster! And the fiber upload speeds should be noticeably better if/when I need to upload much of anything.

I'm happy to hear you're upgrading your internet connection speed. And I'm super jealous you've got fiber. The question is though--is your modem up to the task?

I ask because I recently upgraded from 300mbps speed to 800mbps speed but my modem was only rated for 300. I ended up needing to buy a new modem.

Are they supplying the modem?

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I'm happy to hear you're upgrading your internet connection speed. And I'm super jealous you've got fiber. The question is though--is your modem up to the task?

I ask because I recently upgraded from 300mbps speed to 800mbps speed but my modem was only rated for 300. I ended up needing to buy a new modem.

Are they supplying the modem?

Yes, I opted to let them provide the equipment. That adds $8.99 per month to the cost. I can end that any time I want if I decide I want to buy my own at some point. I believe fiber doesn’t technically use a modem. It uses a router and something called an Optical Network Terminal (ONT). But most people still refer to the router as the “modem”. I’m thinking/hoping that the ONT goes in my basement and then the router is located in a central room of the house. I believe the provider always provides the ONT.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I updated my original post. The fiber speed is in mbps and not Gb. So 500mbps.

 

[statsman]

I’m jealous. 123net dug up my front yard running fiber but it’s still showing as unavailable. Hopefully they’ll get it operational soon. We need some competition here. We just have two rather crappy cable providers.

We have two fiber providers, AT&T and Optimum (formerly Suddenlink), but they pretty much have the same pricing scale. It would seem that competition would drive down price a bit, but not in our case. It should be noted we are not in an area serviced by a cable company. That service appears to have stopped at the city just south of us.

 

[Car-Guy]

I updated my original post. The fiber speed is in mbps and not Gb. So 500mbps.

That's still way more speed than I'd know what to do with.

 

[Aerides]

I’m jealous. 123net dug up my front yard running fiber but it’s still showing as unavailable. Hopefully they’ll get it operational soon. We need some competition here. We just have two rather crappy cable providers.

AT&T came around and dug up out neighborhood over the late summer. We just got turned on in February. Finally said goodbye/riddance to Comcast/Xfinity and cut the cord. We've had only one choice for decades.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

Only have one choice, Spectrum at 100 Mbps for $59.99. 300 Mbps for $20 more.

 

[Qs Laptop]

only have one choice, spectrum at 100 mbps for $59.99. 300 mbps for $20 more.

 

[Trailwalker]

I'm jealous too. Competition is a good thing.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

I pay $44.95 for my new Frontier Fios 500 which includes the ONT and an Eero Mesh WiFi Router.
The downside was the Eero only has one port for an ethernet connection so I bought an unmanned switch on Amazon for around $25 to handle my ethernet connections. I also setup my new WIFI network with the same name and password as the old one for a seamless transition.
So far it's been great, no regrets.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I pay $44.95 for my new Frontier Fios 500 which includes the ONT and an Eero Mesh WiFi Router.
The downside was the Eero only has one port for an ethernet connection so I bought an unmanned switch on Amazon for around $25 to handle my ethernet connections. I also setup my new WIFI network with the same name and password as the old one for a seamless transition.
So far it's been great, no regrets.

Great suggestion on keeping the Wi-Fi network name and password the same as my current one! I will do that unless they hardcode the name for some reason.

I was laughing because the installation details say that they will get ALL my devices on the network. I was envisioning the poor installer fiddling around with all 15-20 devices trying to do this. I’m guessing they will suggest the same thing you did just to simplify things. Your price is similar to mine. I will be paying $49.98 per month + 1 free month + the $100 prepaid visa.

 

[threeonesix]

I figure, if prices rise more, I'll start playing the game of switching back and forth every year chasing new-customer bonuses.

Note that in my experience internet service providers require a minimum two year window between when you last had service and signing up as a "new" customer to get the best deals.

 

[Midpack]

Competition makes all the difference, congrats. Comcast was the only option at our last home and we paid high prices for low tier bandwidth. At our new house, we have AT&T and Spectrum, and we’ve paid $45 to $50/month for four years, even had 1000 mbps service one year for $50! It’s great!

 

[ERD50]

.... The download speed they offer at this price point is 500mbps compared to the 300mbps my cable currently provides. As the only user in my home, both of these speeds are more than adequate for my needs. But it never hurts to have faster! And the fiber upload speeds should be noticeably better if/when I need to upload much of anything. ...

I can see where faster upload speeds could be helpful to someone who routinely is uploading videos to YouTube or something. But other than that, I can't imagine many cases at all where even 300Mbps would be a limiting factor. Even with my ~ 60 Mbps speeds, if I go to download a large file, it seems the limitation is on the server end, I may only get 10~20 Mbps, so I'm not being limited by my end (speed tests show a consistent ~ 60 Mbps).

For reference, even 4K ULTRA HD streaming only requires 15 Mbps. Fifteen. If you had ten people each streaming a 4K Ultra HD video, that's only 150 Mbps, and even the so-called "slower" 300 Mbps services being discussed here could handle that, and that's really extreme for a household. So what does 500, 800, 1,000 buy you?

I don't even have a 4K TV, and HD streaming is 5 Mbps, I really can't even use the (horrors) 60 Mbps connection I have. I wouldn't pay a dime more for faster, it would make zero difference to me/

... Never thought I'd be saying that I'm only getting 1Gbps! I'm loving the speed.

Where you do you actually 'see' the speed increase? Do web pages load faster? Again, it's usually the server, or the number of pings that is the limit, not the BW.

... I recently upgraded from 300mbps speed to 800mbps speed but my modem was only rated for 300. I ended up needing to buy a new modem. ...

Again, where would you see the difference between 800 and 300? Why did you "need" a new modem?

That's still way more speed than I'd know what to do with.

Correct.

I find it interesting that no one published their ping times (mine are ~ 15 msec). That can be more of a limitation than BW.

-ERD50

 

[statsman]

I suspect the main issue with a "slower" speed connection might be with any data caps. Some Internet services give you unlimited data at and above a certain speed. Otherwise, there are data price penalties. A high-use family, even on 1080p panel TVs, can require a great deal of data with TV streaming.

 

[braumeister]

Very much looking forward to a similar story. We have had no competition for many years here. It's Spectrum cable (used to be Time Warner). 70 Meg down, 5 up for $80/month.

The local phone company came by last month and said they're ready to run fiber to our street, and will be installing it later this year. The advertised pricing starts at $45 for 250 Megs, so it will be a good deal no matter how you look at it.

 

[Major Tom]

Where you do you actually 'see' the speed increase? Do web pages load faster? Again, it's usually the server, or the number of pings that is the limit, not the BW.
-ERD50

I don't. I was coming from a connection that, at best, was 5Mbps, but during daytime, was often well below 1Mbps. Sometimes, it was so slow that even static web pages took a long time to download. It was that bad. In reality, a consistent 5-10Mbps would have tickled me pink. For me, coming from a very slow connection, it's more the knowledge of all that speed that gives me lots of warm fuzzies. The fact that I'm getting it all for just $30/month makes it even better. At least with a connection this fast I know for sure that if there are any delays downloading anything, the problem is almost certainly not at my end.

I just did a speed test, and got 927.1Mbps down, and 822.5Mbps up, with a 3ms latency (not ping, but latency). If I were to upgrade my router and motherboard, I could get speeds significantly faster than that but, as a single end-user who is rarely using more than a few devices at the same time, as you mention, there is no point.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

Update: The Windstream Kinetic fiber internet was installed this morning. I’m quite happy. For those pointing out that faster download speeds are unnecessary, I agree. This change was not to get faster internet. It was to cut the price of my internet. The faster speed is an added bonus, as I said above.

In fact, in some locations in my house the speed is about 30% lower than I had with the cable provider internet. That is because they provided 2 range extenders around my house to boost the signal a little thru some walls.

I may look into adding my own range extenders if I decide that lower speed in my office is noticeable. For now it seems fine. I asked the installer about their extenders and he said ours are crap and you should buy your own if you want them. They would also charge $5 per month for them.

Windstream initially set my Wi-Fi network name “at the factory” and the installer said that was just how it is. But I had noticed in my online account that I could rename it and change my password from the one they provided by default. He verified I was able to get my iPhone and my MacBook on the network using the default name/password. As soon as he left, I changed them both to match my previous ones. This meant all my smart devices then quickly connected to the internet. I didn’t even need to re-change the iPhone and laptop since they already had the right one in its settings. Easy peasy.

All-in-all, I’m happy and I’m saving money.

 

[frank]

my bil got windstream and is happy with them. he has the fiber connection. when you check the incoming speed on the modem it says 1000mbps, but the modem slows it down to about 50mbps, which is plenty for him. I just wonder why the modem slows it down so much? settings on the modem or just need a different one? thanks

 

[ERD50]

Update: The Windstream Kinetic fiber internet was installed this morning. I’m quite happy. For those pointing out that faster download speeds are unnecessary, I agree. This change was not to get faster internet. It was to cut the price of my internet. ...

All-in-all, I’m happy and I’m saving money.

Great that it is working out, and saving money. Competition is good!

Yes, I know you mentioned the speed wasn't the driving factor for you, and my response to you was actually confirming that speed doesn't really matter in most cases. But there were so many comments about "only" getting 300, and so on, I just wanted to put some perspective on that.

Even some of my good engineers sometimes got caught up in the numbers game, and missed the big picture. One insisted we should upgrade the computers that were used at one of the production stations, because new computers were so much faster, these were several generations old. I pointed out that at that particular task, the computer spent about 99.9999% of its time waiting for a response from the operator, or waiting for the product being tested to respond. There was not even one second of pure computer time in the whole 2 minute process. A 10x faster computer would knock less than one second off the process. We have better things to invest our time/money on!.

But, but, but, these computers are faster (but, but, but, these go to eleven! )!

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

my bil got windstream and is happy with them. he has the fiber connection. when you check the incoming speed on the modem it says 1000mbps, but the modem slows it down to about 50mbps, which is plenty for him. I just wonder why the modem slows it down so much? settings on the modem or just need a different one? thanks

Could be so many things. Hard to troubleshoot at a distance. Could be the WiFi connection (or is he direct wired?). Is the modem model supported by the internet company? If he's renting it, check with them.

What do you mean by "check the incoming speed on the modem it says 1000mbps" - how do you check the incoming speed of the modem?

But as you say, 50 Mbps is plenty, so if it is consistent and not a sign of another problem that might take it down completely, then if he didn't test it, he wouldn't even know. Sometimes ignorance is bliss!

-ERD50