Q: I was recently contacted by a company that will soon be offering fiber internet service in my area. What are the pros and cons of switching to fiber? Should I wait until my company is in the area for a while? thank you.
– Shalimar, Florida
A: From this Geek’s point of view, it’s just a matter of technological progress. The question you asked may have been asked at a time when everyone was hooked up to dial-up and broadband services began to emerge in the form of both digital subscriber lines (DSL) and cable. Both technologies existed and were stable at the time, but they were largely unfamiliar to the average consumer, raising many questions. Today they are generally seen as a solid, proven and true way to provide connectivity to the internet, but that often depends more on the quality of the provider than the underlying technology.
For those who don’t know, “fiber” in this context refers to optical fiber. This technology eliminates metal conductors entirely and instead relies on pulses of light passing through glass fibers. There was a time when no other technology could match fiber for speeds up to your home router. Today there is a race between cable and fiber. Cable he seems to top out at around 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) and the fiber packages I’ve seen offer competitive speeds with room for upward growth.
Fiber cables tend to be more reliable than copper or aluminum cables. Because traditional cables use electricity to transmit data signals, they are susceptible to electromagnetic interference (EMI) from events such as storms, extreme cold, and lightning strikes, as well as electromagnetic interference (EMI) from adjacent power lines and other data cables. are susceptible to weather phenomena. Fiber optic cables do not have these problems.
I’m not sure if the salesperson who said the price believed it was “about what you pay now”. Yes, and secondly, fiber has always been more expensive than cable because competition should result in lower prices as different companies try to win people’s business. Be careful to read the fine print and make sure you’re not signing up for a referral deal where the price is set for a period of time.
Unless the company is brand new and started in our area, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by waiting until they’re in our area for a while. Believe me when I say I understand the desire not to. But I think these lessons apply with new software releases and new types of hardware emerging. In this case, fiber is already a solid technology that has been around for years. The concern (and rightfully so) lies in the company’s ability to deliver and its commitment to its customers. As mentioned above, unless the company is new, you should be able to Google it and see how it performs in other markets.
One thing you didn’t ask about is the networking gear that makes up your home LAN, because it’s a “gotcha” that many people don’t think about. It can bring you the fastest, most blazing speeds you can find on your doorstep, but if you chain to the old hardware you may be using to interconnect your devices on the side of your firewall, it’s possible Of course, this is true regardless of the technology your ISP of choice uses to provide Internet connectivity. So make sure you have a router and switch capable of gigabit speeds, and remember that Wi-Fi only works at a fraction of those speeds.
Personally, I’m excited about the prospect of updating to fiber. At least it gives me options so I don’t get stuck with a single provider. If there is only one choice of company to go to, there is not much incentive for them to do more for their customers.
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