Fiber TV/Phone/Internet is nice

My local utility company, quite progressive for the fairly small city that we are, began rolling out a total fiber infrastructure several years ago, offering the usual TV, phone, and internet bundling. They call it OptiLink. Since I live in the 'burbs right outside of town, it took 'em a few years to get out to my area, but they finally did and I got hooked up today. All I can say is, wow!

First, I've said it before and I'll say it again Charter Cable sucks the big wiener. I was with DirecTV for 5 years and loved them. The only reason I gave Charter another dime after dropping them the first time for DirecTV, was because they had a little better HD package with no equipment purchases, which would have cost me about a thousand bucks with DirecTV at the time (I have three TV's with HD PVR's, plus a fourth TV with a regular digital box), and they gave me a 12 month promotional price which was pretty attractive. But as usual, Charter service sucks. Picture quality is terrible, and the MOXI box is total garbage. Boy how I missed my DirecTivo units. Then my promo discount expired and it was like pulling teeth to get any further discounts. I was just about to switch back to DirecTV since the HD PVR equipment is a bit more affordable now, when I caught wind that OptiLink was finally coming to my neighborhood.

As far as internet, I've had reliable DSL for years, but it tops out at 3M/384K (which never test out higher than 2500/315), which for me is bad because I run servers from home, and a 384K upstream is painful to host very much from.

So, OptiLink comes in today and hooks me up. They transferred my old phone number over AND made it unlisted for no extra charge. Then they hooked up my TV's -- I must say the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD PVR is limuchli nicer than the MOXI, the picture quality on ALL channels is superb, and I have 12 HD channels including HBO and Showtime. It's funny but we all swear that OptiLink's HD picture quality looks better than Charter's. Not sure how since they're both 1080i digital signals, but that's what it looks like. Maybe we just hate Charter too much. ;)

But the kicker is the internet speedtest has me at 9040 down, 2550 up! Not that fast by a lot of ISP's across the country, but it's the fastest you can get around these parts. Plus I paid only $5 extra for a static IP, so my hosting will be even easier.

All of which nets out to about $15-$20 less per month than I was paying before. Hooray for technology.

How nice for you twisted

Yeah...I'm jealous if you haven't noticed.

Good deal d, I'd love those upload/download numbers.

Nice.

I can't wait for FIOS or something similar to come here, but I'll likely be in my 60's when that happens.

This is an interesting read, saw it on Digg

http//www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2007-06-25-net-speeds_N.htm

[quoteb7e533ae0b="theysayjump"]I'll likely be in my 60's when that happens.
[/quoteb7e533ae0b]

Big deal, so was David.

[quote0eca0e0615="theysayjump"]This is an interesting read, saw it on Digg

http//www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2007-06-25-net-speeds_N.htm[/quote0eca0e0615]
Yeah, that's always been one of my pet peeves. Here we are one of the most technologically developed countries in the world, and our internet speeds suck compared to much of Canada and Europe. Not to mention Asia. It's ridiculous.

[quote8ab880fc2a="CollidgeGraduit"][quote8ab880fc2a="theysayjump"]I'll likely be in my 60's when that happens.
[/quote8ab880fc2a]

Big deal, so was David.[/quote8ab880fc2a]
Oh, I'm sorry CG... did I accidentally ban you? And delete your account? And drain your bank account? And subscribe you to a lifetime of homosexual goat pr0n?

Woops.

[quotee298944b55="dmorris68"][quotee298944b55="CollidgeGraduit"][quotee298944b55="theysayjump"]I'll likely be in my 60's when that happens.
[/quotee298944b55]

Big deal, so was David.[/quotee298944b55]
Oh, I'm sorry CG... did I accidentally ban you? And delete your account? And drain your bank account? And subscribe you to a lifetime of homosexual goat pr0n?

Woops.[/quotee298944b55]

You may have done the other things.. but I already had the goat pr0n

[quote608f0f81c5="CollidgeGraduit"][quote608f0f81c5="dmorris68"][quote608f0f81c5="CollidgeGraduit"][quote608f0f81c5="theysayjump"]I'll likely be in my 60's when that happens.
[/quote608f0f81c5]

Big deal, so was David.[/quote608f0f81c5]
Oh, I'm sorry CG... did I accidentally ban you? And delete your account? And drain your bank account? And subscribe you to a lifetime of homosexual goat pr0n?

Woops.[/quote608f0f81c5]

You may have done the other things.. but I already had the goat pr0n[/quote608f0f81c5]
lmfao goat pr0n FTW!!!1

http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4903776.stm

[quotea7b3b0ee62="dmorris68"][quotea7b3b0ee62="theysayjump"]This is an interesting read, saw it on Digg

http//www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2007-06-25-net-speeds_N.htm[/quotea7b3b0ee62]
Yeah, that's always been one of my pet peeves. Here we are one of the most technologically developed countries in the world, and our internet speeds suck compared to much of Canada and Europe. Not to mention Asia. It's ridiculous.[/quotea7b3b0ee62]

My brother said one of the cable companies in Edinburgh were offering to double his speed to 10mbps for an extra $15 a month but he missed the promo.

We're at 3mbps and it's costing us about $60 per month.

What's your rate on just the Internet itself?

They charge $66 for the 9MB service if you have at least one other bundled service. It think it's around $75 by itself. They also offer a 3MB tier and a 6MB tier for quite a bit less of course.

$19.99 Dry Loop DSL ftl - d/l speeds of up to 768K

i have same speed but for $14.95 (verizon). no fios in this area yet tho i imagine it's expensive. no verizon tv here either (they just try to sell you directv)

So jealous of you Dmorris twisted The reason so many other countries have "fiber to the curb" is because they have a much more concentrated population whereas the U.S. is much more dispersed. Not to mention fiber is expensive to lay out. Hopefully, we'll all be living the high life on pure fiber soon wink

hopefully we'll all just be using something like WiMax instead. i forget how fast it is, but it's faster than cable/dsl and it's basically wifi covering a whole city. that'd rock.

In PC Magazine they had internet speeds (average) by state. Louisiana was in the top 3. They said Louisiana has more fiber optics than most states, and that blew my mind.

still no fiber from verizon at home yet
though i did get my dsl + phone + direct tv merged last month which amazingly will save like $30-$40 a month not including getting a better local/long distance package for the same price we were paying before. i had planned to go voip