[MediocreButArrogant]

Originally Posted by AmericaWestCMH

The installer said it was fiber. I suppose that could be a lie, but I'm not using a cable or DSL modem.

This price list says that they do 40Mbps to 1Gbps over fiber, and speeds up to 40Mbps over (what I think is) VDSL2.

[Danknee]

Originally Posted by MediocreButArrogant

This price list says that they do 40Mbps to 1Gbps over fiber, and speeds up to 40Mbps over (what I think is) VDSL2.

Interesting. I wonder if everyone that has 40Mbps fiber has the option or near future option for gigabit service.

[Trash Can]

Hopefully other TV providers will follow suit. It's not a la carte, but definitely a step in the right direction.

Verizon to offer custom pay TV with monthly bundles

[Rabrrita]

Originally Posted by Danknee

Did they actually connect to your house using fiber, or is it just that their marketing is confusing? I believe the only true fiber is their gigabit fiber service which is 1000 Mbps and available to about 0.2% of the valley.

Centurylink advertises fiber service (mainly in connection with or to promote Prism) but the fiber is only to some community distribution point. After that, its copper to your premise. In order to get the 40 mbps they advertise, you need to have "new" wiring in your neighborhood. If you are in an older neighborhood with older lines or they just can't get 20 mbps on your line, they double up by using two pairs of copper to your home. Now, if your lucky to have had fiber installed to your premise, they will use it and your speed will be at least 100mbps. If you have 40mbps or less, you are not on fiber to the premise.

[mitchmiller9]

I just got COX 15mbps service (internet essential). They recently upgraded it to 15mpbs. If you are a single person household 15mbps is fine for watching streaming video (Netflix, etc.). The problem I've found is with plain old web surfing. COX is obviously throttling the data stream by dropping packets, forcing large number of retransmission requests. On Windows, one can easily watch the system TCP retransmit requests as a page loads. I tried tweaking the max connections on IE (I believe it's 10 for IE 11) and left it set to 8. That helped a small bit, but I eventually had to turn on IE's ad blocker (they call it tracking protection). Now web surfing is acceptable, but no ads. Same results with Firefox and Opera.

So it's a bit ironic that COX states you should pay for the Internet Preferred service to watch streaming video, but Internet Essential is fine for web surfing! They've got it backward because even HD streaming video requires less than 15mbps and because it is streaming, the packet send rate will not exceed what is required (unlike a bloated web page that establishes the max connections allowed, then all that data gets pushed back to it exceeding the 15mbps speed causing COX to throttle it back by dropping packets).

I'm going to try CenturyLink at the end of my one year commitment given COX will raise my monthly rate from $35 to $52. I'm thinking CenturyLink's 10mbps service should be as good as COX's 15mpbs for web surfing. What scared me off was all the complaints about CenturyLink where some where never able to establish service, but still had to pay for it.

[xusafpilot]

I dumped the phone portion and cable tv/dvr boxes years ago and don't miss it. I do however use their highest broadband tier.