ATT Gigabit Fiber Coming? (house, move, requirement)

[SaintCabbage]

Originally Posted by Florida2014

Saw this on the local news last night, still no word on the exact locations of where this will be. I know those of us in St Johhs County would LOVE such a service, although I'd likely wait a few months for them to work out all the kinks.

Agreed, I would be first in line, come dig up my yard, whatever they need to do, give me speeeeed!

[Florida2014]

AT&T customer service is certainly not great, but anything I can do to remove my dependence on Comcast and their SHODDY service and awful customer service would be worth it. I really hardly care about the upgrade in speed, that would be a nice bonus.

[Fabkab1]

So what is prevalently used in the area now then? Comcast it sounds like?

[SaintCabbage]

Originally Posted by Fabkab1

So what is prevalently used in the area now then? Comcast it sounds like?

Correct. AT&T is available, but it's relatively terrible in comparison.

[Florida2014]

I live in Durbin and have seen several workers digging and dropping what appears to be fiber optics lines and I've seen a few smaller "AT&T" flags next to them. Anyone know if that signals their entry into our area?

[bellhead]

Originally Posted by Florida2014

I live in Durbin and have seen several workers digging and dropping what appears to be fiber optics lines and I've seen a few smaller "AT&T" flags next to them. Anyone know if that signals their entry into our area?

More than likely the are replacing rather than putting in new. New subdivisions do not have copper anyway it's all fiber optics due to copper's cost, it is cheaper to put in fiber vs. copper plant.

[cricketfan]

Comcast's 50 megabits per second in and half that out is fast enough for me and, I would guess, for most households. What's all the fiber hype for residential customers in SJC?

[Florida2014]

Originally Posted by cricketfan

Comcast's 50 megabits per second in and half that out is fast enough for me and, I would guess, for most households. What's all the fiber hype for residential customers in SJC?

The problem is, at least in our neighborhood, that the speed that Comcast promises (and that you pay for) is rarely what you get. Several of us in Durbin did speed checks and posted our results and no one came close to what they were paying for. During peak times it's laughable.

[Robyn55]

Well it's not only an issue of speed checks. It's a question being able to run whatever you want to run well - or not. We do streaming internet video on TV - probably the most speed intensive thing we do - and don't have any problems. Robyn

P.S. A lot of people don't realize the inherent limitations of their computers (or ever clean up their computers) - their routers - or other physical components of their systems. For example - I have a signal amplifier in the MBR to boost internet TV reception (our router is at the other end of the house). The maximum through put of the signal amplifier is X (I forget what). Enough for internet TV. At least for now. But - no matter what speed I get into my router - my TV in the MBR will never get more than my signal amplifier supports.

Also - we have 2 notebooks running on Windows XP that we use for "serious business work" (we have programs that don't work even in Windows 7). And 2 Chromebooks - for fun. The Chromebooks run at least twice as fast as the older notebooks. Again - it's a hardware thing - not an internet speed thing.

[Oliver2014]

Originally Posted by Robyn55

P.S. A lot of people don't realize the inherent limitations of their computers (or ever clean up their computers) - their routers - or other physical components of their systems. For example - I have a signal amplifier in the MBR to boost internet TV reception (our router is at the other end of the house). The maximum through put of the signal amplifier is X (I forget what). Enough for internet TV. At least for now. But - no matter what speed I get into my router - my TV in the MBR will never get more than my signal amplifier supports.

yes and no;
your local network (aka your wifi at home) is going much faster than your cable or dsl connection. You can now get 802.11ac wifi routers which reach data rates of up to 1.3 Gbps. (theoretical limit is even much higher). Such routers (like my Apple Airport Extreme one) cost less than $150.

So the bottleneck is definitely with your ISP provider, not so much your home equipment; DSL will be slow but consistent as you never share your "pipe" with others as you do with cable. (users will see ADSL speeds up to 7/1 Mbps vs Cable at 30Mbps).

I also suspect the speed of your amplifier is much faster than your cable modem but that "amplifier" device will not stream faster than the weak link in your internet connection...