AT&T Fiber in Decatur (30030) (Atlanta: apartment, new house, neighborhoods)

[pdadda]

I'm looking to get high speed internet in this area. I have heard that Decatur is on the short list for getting Google Fiber soon, so I am hesitant to get into a several year contract with either Comcast or AT&T. AT&T Fiber is also available in my home, but I don't know if it is a good idea to put that in place when I will likely switch to Google Fiber when it becomes available. So I am looking at the following:

-AT&T: 75 Mbps for 12 months for $70
-AT&T Fiber: 1,000 Mbps for 12 months for $70
-Comcast: $80 for 100 Mbps (no contract)

Any suggestions from other people using one of these in 30030?

[pdadda]

Just discovered the only coax cable port in my living room is in a terrible location, but the phone line type port is in a great location. Wiring is already in place from exterior box to that port with Cat5e, so I guess my choice is down to the two AT&T options.

[speeddemonz]

I would go with Comcast I had AT&T Uverse/Fiber and it was a nightmare not reliable at all. I read that Google fiber is cutting back on building the fiber network. Not sure how true that is. Just my 2 pennies.

[pdadda]

I keep hearing mixed things about AT&T, based on location. Are you in Decatur speeddemonz?

[TripTychTwo]

I've had AT&T Fiber for a year now (Morningside) and zero outages or issues. I get 800-900 asynchronous, I can't imagine what "bad" would be based on location, 700? Which is still much better than anything Comcast offers. Further still, fiber speeds really do not degrade as much as DSL or copper as its based light and not electricity. Go with AT&T, Google Fiber still is not on in my neighborhood and they promised a while back they'd be in place by EOY 2016.

[Thulsa]

I live just outside of Decatur
Google ran fiber down the feeder street intersecting my street, and last week one of the guys that does the utility detection (painting stripes on the lawn) was in my yard.
I asked him what was happening with the Google fiber, and he said that Google has dropped the fiber project for Decatur because not enough people expressed interest. He further said that AT&T has bought what Google had done so far and was going to finish the rollout.


Take this with a grain of salt. I have no way to verify his story, or if it was just my leg that Google had dropped, or all of Google fiber in Decatur.

[magnetar]

Originally Posted by Thulsa

I asked him what was happening with the Google fiber, and he said that Google has dropped the fiber project for Decatur because not enough people expressed interest. He further said that AT&T has bought what Google had done so far and was going to finish the rollout.

This is not accurate. Google Fiber is already announced for many Decatur apartment buildings and they are still working on building out the network to individual neighborhoods. They've only gotten that far in a handful of neighborhoods on the east side of Atlanta, but the expectation is that many more will start to come online this year.

No experience with AT&T but I'm using Comcast as a temporary solution until Google Fiber is available.

[CA_Vol]

I've had the 1k Mbps AT&T fiber in Chelsea Heights area of Decatur for about 1 month. I'm only getting about 135 Mbps over wifi. It supports my streaming services fine, but hasn't been close to the 1k I'm paying for. They also had to drill into my new house to run the cable, which I wasn't super pleased about. And the router placement is going to require a wifi extender to adequately push the signal to other parts of the house. Thus far, I'd say it's a mixed bag.

[magnetar]

Originally Posted by CA_Vol

I've had the 1k Mbps AT&T fiber in Chelsea Heights area of Decatur for about 1 month. I'm only getting about 135 Mbps over wifi.

This is probably going to be a recurring problem as more people start to get fiber installed. A single WiFi access point isn't going to be strong enough to give you the full throughput of fiber-speed internet everywhere in an average-sized house. Especially not when the router probably isn't in the most optimal spot anyway (it's probably up against an outside wall, not in the middle of your house).

I'd beware of "WiFi extenders," which can improve your wireless signal but actually make your connection even slower. Instead I'd look at something like Eero which can wirelessly extend a network without sacrificing your throughput.