Internet Provider Change At Work
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As for the OP, yeah price drops like this are totally normal!
I had a customer who purchased a T1 12 years ago, it was $850/month for internet. 4 years ago the town finally got cable. We upgraded them to 15/3 for around $80/month.
The main thing to watch out for is how well those people take care of their networks? The T1 never had an outage in the 8 years they used it. I'm not supporting them anymore so I don't know if they've had any outages with their cable connection.
That said, I'll beat Scott to the punch where he will tell you he's seen customers who've had a 1 year outage on a T1, so it's all just a game, you just have to pick a place to that appears to fit your needs the best.
Oh, and of course, past experience is not an indicator of future performance.
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@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Or at least for a big discount.
Sounds like they are already giving a huge discount. The build out cost is $20K, they are only passing along $4K of that.
You'll make that up in 57 months at $79/month vs what you pay now $780/month. Because of the whole time value of money thing, you could ask them to spread the $4000 over the payments for the 5 year term, that only adds $66.67 a month to the bill.
If there is little chance of you moving locations, this sounds like a total win.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
Wildly successful? Not sure what you mean? What is the smallest town size that would actually work in? I'm also curious how high speed internet is brought into the town itself?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
I was just going to comment on that... I assume most smaller towns don't have the tax base to layout the immediate costs for both the infrastructure and the impending lawsuits from the big ISPs.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
Wildly successful? Not sure what you mean? What is the smallest town size that would actually work in? I'm also curious how high speed internet is brought into the town itself?
Most municipal ISPs are doing fantastically after a few growth years.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
Wildly successful? Not sure what you mean? What is the smallest town size that would actually work in? I'm also curious how high speed internet is brought into the town itself?
Towns of several hundred or just like one thousand people were the first to do it back like almost fifteen years ago. Deep in the Washington State interior is the famous case where a town that never had telephone service ever put in their own fiber and had faster, cheaper and more reliable Internet and voice than any major city in the US.
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@mlnews said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
Wildly successful? Not sure what you mean? What is the smallest town size that would actually work in? I'm also curious how high speed internet is brought into the town itself?
Towns of several hundred or just like one thousand people were the first to do it back like almost fifteen years ago. Deep in the Washington State interior is the famous case where a town that never had telephone service ever put in their own fiber and had faster, cheaper and more reliable Internet and voice than any major city in the US.
When there is nothing legacy, that's pretty easy to do.. now, 15 years later.. how are they sitting?
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@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
I was just going to comment on that... I assume most smaller towns don't have the tax base to layout the immediate costs for both the infrastructure and the impending lawsuits from the big ISPs.
That might seem true but small towns are the ones that have done it so successfully. Many just don't bother because small town governments often just don't take the initiative. But remember, frivolous lawsuits from ISPs is also a good potential revenue stream too.
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@Dashrender said:
@mlnews said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
Wildly successful? Not sure what you mean? What is the smallest town size that would actually work in? I'm also curious how high speed internet is brought into the town itself?
Towns of several hundred or just like one thousand people were the first to do it back like almost fifteen years ago. Deep in the Washington State interior is the famous case where a town that never had telephone service ever put in their own fiber and had faster, cheaper and more reliable Internet and voice than any major city in the US.
When there is nothing legacy, that's pretty easy to do.. now, 15 years later.. how are they sitting?
Well as fifteen years ago they were lightyears ahead of where most cities still are today, I'd say likely pretty good! Don't know for sure, once they had that kind of success there wasn't much more to say.
Similarly, Iceland did this too. GigE everywhere near the capital. Really boosted the economy.
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Remember that having good Internet also makes people work from home, bring in businesses and people move into a town. It can mean massive growth both in people and in tax base. It's a very obvious way to invest in the town.
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I'm in a very rural area and I have a 50/20 connection from a Cable ISP.
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I had 8Mb/s both directions on a mountain in the middle of nowhere over WiMAX!!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
A local town near us is talking about getting Fiber town funded. So we will have to see what happens there, we are only 10 minutes from there.
Which town?
I'm surprised any town doesn't do this after it has been shown to be so wildly successful over and over again.
Geneseo
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Wow, now I am sad that I sold my house there
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@scottalanmiller said:
1Mb/s up is really, really rare these days. How AT&T and limited to that is beyond me. That had to be some whacky DSL service.
No, this is certainly not rare. All phone companies use DSL based technology to provide high speed internet. basic DSL maxes at 768 up.
There are millions of houses on DSL services right now.
U-Verse is just a newer version of DSL (VDSL or HDSL or DSL2 something like that) but can get higher upload speeds on the right set of lines.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
1Mb/s up is really, really rare these days. How AT&T and limited to that is beyond me. That had to be some whacky DSL service.
No, this is certainly not rare. All phone companies use DSL based technology to provide high speed internet. basic DSL maxes at 768 up.
There are millions of houses on DSL services right now.
U-Verse is just a newer version of DSL (VDSL or HDSL or DSL2 something like that) but can get higher upload speeds on the right set of lines.
UVerse where I have been (Dallas and Houston) was a fiber service, too. You never know what it will be until you get it installed, I think. We are on Uverse in Houston and while it sucks, our upload is at least 5Mb/s.
Basic DSL goes faster than that, though, many providers don't bother, but the technology lets it happen. If you are way, way out on the end of a line on old copper, you might be distance limited, but the DSL itself goes faster. I had faster DSL than that at home in 2003 back when cable wasn't so good in the area (in Geneseo, the town looking at fiber.)
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I wasn't saying, though, that it was rare for people to have ~1Mb/s DSL, but that it was rare for a vendor to not offer anything faster. That people opt for slower, cheaper service I'm not denying. I see that a bit. And it makes sense. But there is a lot of money to be made in upselling Internet now. I pretty consistently see ISPs offering a means to pay them more for premium services.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Basic DSL goes faster than that, though, many providers don't bother, but the technology lets it happen. If you are way, way out on the end of a line on old copper, you might be distance limited, but the DSL itself goes faster. I had faster DSL than that at home in 2003 back when cable wasn't so good in the area (in Geneseo, the town looking at fiber.)
No it does not. basic DSL spec was 1 mbps up. Real world lines were never that clean and the best you could do in the real world was 800 on a near perfect copper pair. Most people were lucky if the plant to their premise could support 512.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I wasn't saying, though, that it was rare for people to have ~1Mb/s DSL, but that it was rare for a vendor to not offer anything faster. That people opt for slower, cheaper service I'm not denying. I see that a bit. And it makes sense. But there is a lot of money to be made in upselling Internet now. I pretty consistently see ISPs offering a means to pay them more for premium services.
Yes you were. You were discussing lower cost technologies than T1. From a phone company the only alternative for many people was DSL until a few years ago.
