Strange question but.... (Cincinnati, Clifton: rentals, house, neighborhood)

[perrinjcat]

.....we are relocating to Cincy within a month or so and have started looking at rentals (planning to buy once we have been there a little while and decide where we would like to live). My wife works from home and needs a good, consistent high speed internet connection. What providers are good? I saw the Fioptics from Cincy Bell but it gets mixed reviews and I am having trouble seeing where it is available. We currently have Uverse but Im not sure it is available in Cincy or not.

Thanks in advance for any advice/help!

[TomJones123]

Originally Posted by perrinjcat

.....we are relocating to Cincy within a month or so and have started looking at rentals (planning to buy once we have been there a little while and decide where we would like to live). My wife works from home and needs a good, consistent high speed internet connection. What providers are good? I saw the Fioptics from Cincy Bell but it gets mixed reviews and I am having trouble seeing where it is available. We currently have Uverse but Im not sure it is available in Cincy or not.

Thanks in advance for any advice/help!

I use Time Warner's Extreme Internet for my home based businesses. Works fine for me with nearly zero down time.

[perrinjcat]

It appears Time Warner is the biggest provider there, right? Is that cable or DSL?

[mike1003]

Time Warner is (in our area) fiber optic cable. I assume that is the case in all of greater Cincy.

[kjbrill]

Originally Posted by perrinjcat

It appears Time Warner is the biggest provider there, right? Is that cable or DSL?

It is cable, and they have more than one level of service. Far and away the largest provider in the Cincinnati area, though Cincinnati Bell is coming on strong with their Fioptics service. Between the two they pretty well dominate.

[TomJones123]

I am not sure about Time Warner and fiber optics. I think it's just cable at this point. Cincy Bell Fioptics is fiber optic and the only game in town at this point. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[JustinBucks]

All I know is, just don't get Cincinnati Bell. It's not very good.

[kjbrill]

TWC is sill what is in their name - cable. I would expect they have fiber optics within their network, but it is not what comes down the street into your house - that is pure unadultered hardwired cable.

Cincinnati Bell is the newcomer on the block, so it would make sense they would use the latest technology - fiber optics. But since they are also the largest conventional telephone supplier (Cincinnati Bell - get it?) in the area you must be careful whether you are comparing apples and oranges.

DSL across conventional telephone lines is not even close to cable or fiber optic speeds. It is cheaper and if that is all your can afford OK, but an equivalence - Nope!

I switched from TWC to Cincinnati Bell Fioptics, and to tell the truth I would switch back to TWC except for all of the hassle changing email addresses, coordinating phone number, etc. CB Fioptics is erratic for reasons I don't understand. TWC was much more uniform in response speed. I will not go as far to say CB sucks, but their performance falls short of what the salesman stated when they came through the neighborhood. But why should that surprise me?

[kjbrill]

I was a customer of TWC for over 20 years. Started out with one TV on their network. That grew to 2 , 3 and then 4 TVs. The cable had to be extended all over the house.

When I retired and decided we just had to have high speed internet, we signed up for TWC Road-Runner service. Prior to that I made my wife be satisfied with DSL service through our then terrible local phone provider. Surprising she did not divorce me over that fiasco.

We had some problems with the cable modem maintaining connectivity and feeding our computers. I contacted TWC, they came out and checked signal strength, and said our signal level was low and they wre installing a new separate line to our 2nd floor computer room. which they did right then. It worked very well.

Whenever we had a problem with a desktop TV receiver or our cable modem, since my wife always insisted on instant repair, after determining the equipment did seem to be at fault by trial and error (if you have more than one desktop TV receiver boxes you just swap them, if the problem follows the box it is the box). So I would cart the defective equipment down to the TWC store in Tri-County Mall. They were always extremely nice and gave me a replacement at No Charge. That is the way it should be, after all I was doing their work on my dime.

Obvously I am composingf this on Cincinnati Bell Fioptics. But would I rate them better than TWC, NO!

[wolden]

I have CB FIOS and its much faster than the TW cable we had in Clifton. The difference seems expecially noticeable with wireless.

The only drawback is that Three (3) of their interface panels have died in 15 months. No charge to us beyond losing service.

Also I don't use the supplied router but but a linksys one.