Does Anyone Use 2 Broadband Providers?

[RunningBum]

Internet service where I've lived on the mountain for almost 20 years has gone from dial up, then unreliable 2Mbps DSL in 2008, 4Mbps cable in 2011 that over the years increased to 10, 25, and finally 100Mbps last year. Cable is a little flaky though, and on busy weekends and holidays, especially during ski season, it can slow wayyy down.

Last week I got 100Mbps fiber from the local electrical co-op. 1 Gbps is available for another $30 but I don't see a need for that. Buried fiber should be more reliable than cable that is above ground all over the place on the mountain, and should not hit those slowdowns. The only problem I've hit is that my echo dot seems to cut out a lot. I suspect the Calix wifi router isn't as good as the Netgear Nighthawk cable modem/router I've been using. A mesh router would probably fix it, but...

I've been thinking about keeping both. I can downgrade cable to 50Mbps for $34. With $49 for 100mbps fiber, I've got redundancy for $83/month. Seems a lot more useful than 1Gbps service for $4 cheaper. I could set up streaming, my laptop and phone on fiber, and use cable for my smart home stuff, including the Echo Dot.

I don't work anymore so it's not like internet is essential, but I hate when it's down. I'd have to manually switch over networks when one or the other fails, but that's not a big deal.

Just wondering if anyone else is using two different internet providers? It's a real treat to have two very reasonably priced high speed internet options. I'll probably do it even if I'm the only one, but I'm just curious, especially if you have any tips I didn't think of. At least for awhile, until I see that the fiber is rock solid. And as it happens, just before I started this post, my fiber internet did go down. So here I am on my backup cable internet.

 

[W2R]

I have to admit that if it was me, I'd keep both for a few months and then drop whichever one I used the least.

On the other hand, it seems to me that having two providers is giving you a lot of value for your money! Since it seems to make you happy to have access through two providers, than I urge you to keep both.

I have thought of getting AT&T high speed fiber internet instead of my present Cox 150Mbps service, but I don't think I can quite yet. I keep getting ads for it in the snail mail and email, but then when I go to the site to sign up, they say "coming soon". Also I'd like to wait and find out what other people in my area think about it before I switch over. Cox is really not that bad but I keep thinking I could do better. Here's what I am getting right now:

 

[Onward]

I have two, if you include my cell phone's wi-fi hotspot.

I will always keep at least two available, because Internet access is essential to me.

If I didn't care about losing access for an hour or two, I'd be comfortable with just one service.

 

[pb4uski]

Since two is so affordable, run two for 3 months and then decide if fiber alone will do the trick.

 

[ziggy29]

I'd hedge my bets for a couple months.

Recently our broadband provider (Spectrum) has rolled out what they claim is 300 Mbps service for $20 more than we're paying for the 100 Mbps service ($89 versus $69). I'm tempted but I wish I could try it out for 7 days or so to make sure I was really getting what I'm paying for.

 

[RunningBum]

I'm definitely keeping both for at least 3 months. Considering keeping them indefinitely.

The comment about using my phone as a hot spot is a good one, though cell service is pretty sketchy here. I have used it that way a few times.

 

[wildsun]

We had dual commercial grade internet connections coming into my home office, where I designed and supported businesses in acquiring and implementing business accounting software. I felt obligated to provide that kind of redundancy, in order to address client needs.

At one point both connections came into a single piece of hardware that managed the signals from both sources, allowed the sources to pool both sources into one faster source, and had automatic fail-over so if one provider went down, the other provider would automatically manage the load. It worked well if it was properly maintained, but was expensive and probably not suitable for most home users.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

The phone hot spot was an internet life saver during our week+ power outage last month. The cable internet wouldn't work even on generator (power was out of the cable system too in our area), so only the hot spot would work. We also have an electric co-op that has wired our 'hood for gig service, but I am not sure if it was working when the power was out. I loathe all things with our cable company, so will be getting the gig fiber hooked up here in the next couple of months.

I think between the fiber and the soon to be almost everywhere Starlink, the days of crappy internet are numbered for almost everyone.