We got a door placard the other day that announced this, and our front yard is now being dug up to place the fiber cable as I type.
We cut the program aspect of our cable years ago and switched to streaming services due to the nickel-and-diming of Comcast / XFinity, but we kept them for their internet service simply because they were pretty much the only game in town, speed-wise. The internet service AT&T had to offer up to now had been a fraction of the speed of Comcast / XFinity’s.
We looked up what the pricing would be, and it appears if we signed up for AT&T fiber, the same speed as we’re getting now from XFinity would cost us half as much (I think that’s a first-year promo rate that will go up, though). In addition, the quoted speed is for both download and upload (XFinity’s is asymmetrical-- the upload speed is a tiny fraction of the download speed).
I also imagine that, given it’s a brand new fiber network, hopefully the service will be more reliable. We get fairly frequent mini down times where the XFinity internet goes out for a few minutes at a time (or sometimes longer). Not good, since I work from home.
So, anybody else have AT&T fiber? How you like it?
Fiber is almost always going to be better than legacy cable. Faster, more reliable and cheaper. Generally it will be much cheaper to start with a rate increase after a year or two and then still be faster, cheaper and more reliable than legacy cable.
I switched from Cox to Frontier/Verizon so I can’t answer your specific question but even someone who got AT&T outside of your area can’t really either. Experiences are very localized. Your best bet is doing a search on your local area’s subreddit. I guarantee that it’s been discussed to death.
There is no way understate how much I despise Cox Communications. I literally wanted to hug the fiber installers when I saw them in my neighborhood.
I can’t comment on how good AT&T fiber is, but I can testify that, if you don’t switch, they will hound you relentlessly to switch, especially if you already get any other service from AT&T.
Like you, I have internet (and cable) from Comcast/Xfinity; I have cell service and (for now) a landline through AT&T. They installed fiber here a few years back, but they constantly bug me to switch my internet service to them: at least 2 direct mail pieces a week, emails, and door-to-door, high-pressure salespeople at least once a quarter. When I bought new cell phones at an AT&T store last year, I had to sit through a ten-minute sales pitch for their internet service before they would give me my phones.
They have been doing this, consistently, for well over a decade, despite my repeated requests for them to knock it off. And it’s not like I adore Xfinity, but AT&T’s aggressive salesmanship has turned me off on the idea of giving them any more business.
Thanks for the replies so far! I’m already seeing a definite pattern forming here…
Heh, I know how you feel-- I hate aggressive marketing too, to the point of refusing to acquiesce to it out of sheer principle, no matter how good the actual product itself is. But fiber is starting to sound like a no-brainer, and I would looooove to cut all ties to Comcast/XFinity once and for all.
Seconded, except that I had to give up AT&T fiber service after moving last year.
My experience is much like hajario’s and Dorjan’s. A great improvement over the previous service coming in via coaxial cable. Worked like a champ, and as advertised.
We have AT&T fiber, and it’s fine - works as advertised. We also have ATT U-Verse for cable, and it’s garbage. I should really switch to YouTube or something else, but inertia and all that.
I will say that as customer service goes, I’ve never seen anyone but a new customer say they enjoy their experience with ANY internet provider. They’re all mediocre to bad, and not a single company out there wouldn’t jump at the chance to sell their children to the circus if it offered them an opportunity to make a buck.
The exception seems to be the installers. Every company I’ve encountered always has competent and friendly installers who do pretty good work and try to find the best solution to drilling holes into your house.
As long as there isn’t a contract or installation fee, you should switch. That way you’ll have connections for both providers and can switch back and forth to always get the new customer deal. If ATT doesn’t work out, switch back. We switched from Comcast to T-Mobile fiber. We didn’t have any issues with Comcast other than their ever increasing price increases. A couple of weeks after cancelling, Comcast is trying to get us back with a rate that’s less than half of what we were paying before.
I had the same thing happen on my street a couple of years ago when Bell installed fiber. Property owners had to give permission for fiber to be run from the street to the house, and since it was free of course I said “yes”. They have a clever tool for doing it that just cuts a little slit in the grass and lays the fiber a few inches down, and then it’s invisible and quickly grows over.
I have since been deluged by many requests to upgrade to Bell fiber but even though I hate my cable provider, I’ve resisted because of the many inconveniences it would cause. My primary email address would definitely have to change, and most likely my landline number, too. Plus a new internet modem and potentially maybe new wiring in the house, too.
I’d go for it except that, much as I hate my cable provider, my internet is fast and pretty reliable. In fact I’m getting a bonus from running an ancient cable modem that they no longer bother to throttle. So I’m paying for 150 Mbps but actually getting around 700 Mbps and I’m perfectly fine with that! YMMV.
Huh. Seems like no one taught the AT&T guys that. So far they’ve hand-dug several big, deep exploratory holes in my front yard to expose where the utility lines are and how far down. Not sure why they would need to do that if the fiber cable only goes down a few inches.
That seems odd. In my experience, underground telephone lines running from the street to the individual property are pretty shallow, too. Ask me how I know!
OK, don’t ask, I’ll tell you anyway. Years ago I lost telephone service when the next-door neighbour decided to install a new driveway, which required a certain amount of shallow digging.
I switched from Cox cable to AT&T fiber and I will never go back. Less expensive for better quality internet and the customer service has been good any time I’ve needed it.
I’ve also been able to get a discounted price just by calling and asking. I haven’t paid the advertised rate in probably 5 years.
In my neighborhood they are run on the power poles below the powerlines. That’s also where the coax is. They had these little machines that ran along the lines and spiraled them around the coax. From there it goes to your roof just like power does. I loved watching them clip the Coax off of my house at the source.
Since Verizon bought Frontier, I save around $200/year for bundling since I happen to have a Verizon cell phone plan.
There’s two parts to laying fiber: Laying the main trunk line and running a line to your house. The main trunk line will be a deeper dig and will have a box or something near the street like the cable and electric boxes you may see around the neighborhood. The line from the box to your house may be a shallow line. The installer may just use a spade to lift up a few inches of dirt and put the line under that. That makes the install quick and easy, but it also means the line is easy to cut if you’re doing any sort of landscaping in the area, including even aerating your lawn.
If you get fiber, think about where you want the fiber line to come into your house. For fiber, you’ll have a simple box at the wall where the fiber comes in. The router will connect to that fiber box with an ethernet cable. Ideally, you want the router to be in a central area so that it covers the maximum range. Pick an outside wall for the fiber installation so the box can be installed in a location that makes it easy to get the router located in a central area. Like this:
Street -------fiber------->Wall->Fiber Box------------------ethernet-------------->Wireless Router
If you can’t get the fiber to come in at a good spot, you may need to install some mesh routers to get whole house coverage. ATT may offer to throw in some additional routers to get the coverage you need.
Unlike others, I’ve had a good overall experience with Cox Cable. I use them for both internet and cable TV. Inside my house, I have installed a main splitter, from which I’ve done my own cable runs to my cable modem, as well as the various cable boxes. Works just fine.
But last year a local fiber company ran fiber all over town, including down the alley behind my house, which is also where the Cox coax runs. I’ve been considering signing up for fiber internet, because the speed is better than Cox, for about the same price.
So–a dumb question for those of you who have fiber running to your houses: Does the fiber need to run all the way to the modem, or can it ‘transition’ to coax once it gets to the exterior of the house?
It’s not fiber to the modem. It’s fiber to the fiber wall box, and then ethernet between the fiber wall box and the modem/router. They’ll drill a hole in your wall to get the fiber from outside to the fiber box on the interior wall. The fiber box has an ethernet port for the ethernet cord to the modem/router. It doesn’t use your home coax at all.