Finally they got us turned on a RURAL HIGH SPEED FIBER OPTIC INTERNET

[powerboatr]

after nearly 2 years of massive fiber putting the ground in our county and all points around to get us off phone line DSL

thanks to everyone digging ditches, cutting water lines and paying taxes etc

they turned us on Saturday evening with the final wiring into the house

right now i am on the 50 mg down and 10 mg up thing its like driving a pedal car to the f150 in difference
we finally joined the modern age

its amazing at how fast the world comes at us now

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[HammaMan]

Only GPON huh? That sucks. They should be offering symmetrical. GPON isn't bad and it's capable of much more. Not sure why they're constraining you so much though. They're likely getting 10Gb/s for $500/mo. Selling internet is like selling air.

 

[fordtruckman2003]

Funny thing, I live in city and throw lots of money at Comcast for high speed internet. My mom lives on a road with goat in the name in middle of nowhere and she has fiber running through front yard by road. Had offer to sign up when they were going through $40 monthly 1 Gbps. She has no need for internet so never signed up for it.

 

[HammaMan]

Funny thing, I live in city and throw lots of money at Comcast for high speed internet. My mom lives on a road with goat in the name in middle of nowhere and she has fiber running through front yard by road. Had offer to sign up when they were going through $40 monthly 1 Gbps. She has no need for internet so never signed up for it.

Comcast sucks because they need a powered amp every 500' and they're super cheap bastards and play the census block game. In rural areas, census blocks are basically your block as defined as the public road wrapped chunks of land. They'll string cable down every other 'parallel' stretch of the county simply touching each census block and per federal and municipality rules, they're "serving" that census block even if their deployment doesn't actually touch but 5% of the census block.

Your tax dollars at work.

 

[powerboatr]

i have no idea what GPON is
we have 300 up and 300 down available for 20 more
which is 65 month before taxes..
which is 12 less than the old dsl
all i know is my 3 smart tvs are not getting the spinning wheel of load

as long as the battery does not die i am happy

 

[HammaMan]

i have no idea what GPON is
we have 300 up and 300 down available for 20 more
which is 65 month before taxes..
which is 12 less than the old dsl
all i know is my 3 smart tvs are not getting the spinning wheel of load

as long as the battery does not die i am happy

It's illegal to tax internet.

 

[powerboatr]

It's illegal to tax internet.

yep
tax is on the 3.49 modem ad wire protect plan, i guess
i get that plan because even with whole house surge and that outlet surge we loose one about every 2 years to something
what is GPON

Government Taxes, Surcharges & Fees Total
STATE TAX 0.25
COUNTY SALES TAX 0.02
CITY TAX 0.06
Subtotal Government Taxes, Surcharges & Fees $0.33

tax man is getting his
we have a freaking county bridge tax.....and the county only has 3 bridges, the rest are state owned roads..

 

[HammaMan]

yep
tax is on the 3.49 modem ad wire protect plan, i guess
i get that plan because even with whole house surge and that outlet surge we loose one about every 2 years to something
what is GPON

Government Taxes, Surcharges & Fees Total
STATE TAX 0.25
COUNTY SALES TAX 0.02
CITY TAX 0.06
Subtotal Government Taxes, Surcharges & Fees $0.33

tax man is getting his
we have a freaking county bridge tax.....and the county only has 3 bridges, the rest are state owned roads..

So they're milking you on nonsense.

GPON is a type of fiber sharing vs discrete runs. Basically think of it as a splitter of sorts for a single uplink.
https://www.gpon.com/

 

[snapper9601]

Comcast sucks because they need a powered amp every 500' and they're super cheap bastards and play the census block game. In rural areas, census blocks are basically your block as defined as the public road wrapped chunks of land. They'll string cable down every other 'parallel' stretch of the county simply touching each census block and per federal and municipality rules, they're "serving" that census block even if their deployment doesn't actually touch but 5% of the census block.

Your tax dollars at work.

Not that it matters to OP, or anyone else for that matter, but I think you mixed two different technologies in your statement. I'm referencing OP's statement "massive fiber putting the ground ". No coax is mentioned.
An amplifier every 500' is old school HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax). And that architecture/technology is not proprietary to Comcast. There are still lots of those old school HFC systems in use all over the world. Still chuggin' along. I highly doubt any of that technology is being deployed new in any green field as it is called.

GPON is Gigabit Passive Optical Network (I assume you know this). Range is 20 km from central location to end user. There is no amplification in that link.

To your point about "Only GPON huh?" (non-symmetrical), there is XGS-PON now, which is 10 Gigabit Symmetrical PON.

I'm glad OP has access to greatly improved service. I'd bet there could be another tier of service available, for a fee of course.

 

[powerboatr]

So they're milking you on nonsense.

GPON is a type of fiber sharing vs discrete runs. Basically think of it as a splitter of sorts for a single uplink.
https://www.gpon.com/

thanks that makes much sense
we have 12 miles of roads in our community that is 7 from town
with maybe 50 homes along that direct route to town, where the main peoples communications office is residing

right out side of our community is a BIG telecommunications shack, where i assume it is coming together as it is

on my street they planted a box every 120 feet and one across the street from every other box
i was told each box can serve 6 to 8 "homes"
funny thing is my mom lives on side of me: they put a box in ground at her property line and then one at end of y property, another 120 feet. i have feed off the one at her property and they dug or drilled under her property to get to mine
all in all there are 5 more homes on my street... 3 total opted to get the fiber internet
one uses a beamed internet from a tower about 1/2 mile away, it sucks
on the other side of street, 2 homes will be plugged in , the rest is empty lots tied to those homes and a few weekenders that don't have anything.
seemed like a huge expense
next is they are yanking the copper , which was upgraded a few years back. literally pulling it out at each terminal they have already

and yes we can opt for 300 down and 300 up service
so far
its fast as crap
and reboots when i killed pwr really fast, as in under a minute compared to the dsl line that took 5 or 6 to reboot and connect

price dropped to

 

[HammaMan]

Not that it matters to OP, or anyone else for that matter, but I think you mixed two different technologies in your statement. I'm referencing OP's statement "massive fiber putting the ground ". No coax is mentioned.
An amplifier every 500' is old school HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax). And that architecture/technology is not proprietary to Comcast. There are still lots of those old school HFC systems in use all over the world. Still chuggin' along. I highly doubt any of that technology is being deployed new in any green field as it is called.

GPON is Gigabit Passive Optical Network (I assume you know this). Range is 20 km from central location to end user. There is no amplification in that link.

To your point about "Only GPON huh?" (non-symmetrical), there is XGS-PON now, which is 10 Gigabit Symmetrical PON.

I'm glad OP has access to greatly improved service. I'd bet there could be another tier of service available, for a fee of course.

I have more than one post, perhaps take a look at what was quoted? The post you referenced was in reference specifically to comcast's deployed infrastructure and their shitty practices / games employed with it.

Furthermore GPON's deployment doesn't need to truck back to central, it's 20km from the OLT which are easy to put in even a small cabinet. I'm assuming they're not using XGS simply due to the speeds. It's additional expense not really warranted for rural deployments and easy to transition over if warranted.

As for comcast on "new" deployments, I wouldn't doubt at all that they shell game equipment where they can, moving a 3.1 CMTS to a rural area to get more life out of it when upgrading to 4.0.

 

[fordtruckman2003]

Comcast has always had a decent size network. AT&T (the old one) did most the work before they sold it to Comcast. Even crappy old cable TV wiring can carry some significant bandwidth. Greatly superior to the junk new AT&T is trying to push over phone lines. 70+ year old phone lines where I am suck. No idea how old Comcast wiring is but I know it hasn't been changed in 20 years I've lived here. Still easily get 1 Gbps if I want it. Just not fond of the ridiculous high bill from Comcast but they are the only option for high speed at my location. Cellular isn't ready yet and old telephone lines can't handle more than dialup.

Happy that powerboatr is getting out of the slow lane with decent internet. Seriously lacking options for high speed outside of the city for most folks.

 

[snapper9601]

I did not see your other post.

"Furthermore GPON's deployment doesn't need to truck back to central, it's 20km from the OLT which are easy to put in even a small cabinet.

Yes, when I said central location, I meant the location of the OLT and optical filter. Not the Headend or hub.

"I'm assuming they're not using XGS simply due to the speeds. It's additional expense not really warranted for rural deployments and easy to transition over if warranted."

Agreed. There is simply no ROI. Same applies to the census block game you mentioned. But that would also be fairly easy to augment if future needs arose. Assuming the company took that into consideration when designing.

"As for comcast on "new" deployments, I wouldn't doubt at all that they shell game equipment where they can, moving a 3.1 CMTS to a rural area to get more life out of it when upgrading to 4.0."

A 3.1 CMTS deployment cost is about $1 million. A huge amount of that is license fees to the CMTS manufacturer. Just in the area of my old responsibility (I retired in '21), a mere fraction of Comcast's footprint, I had 49 3.1 CMTS's. Those were added onto and replaced 4 times through the iterations of DOCSIS, plus getting upgraded twice in my time. All of the "old" equipment was shipped to other systems for redeployment.

So that's $49 million just in 3.1 hardware/license fees, not counting the previous upgrades. Any company would be foolish to not reuse assets that cost that much if at all possible.

My name isn't Dan Comcast, or Dan Roberts, I am not defending the company at all. But I did work for Comcast for 26 years in the engineering department (36 in the industry). So I have a little knowledge of how they approach capacity utilization and deploying technology to meet current needs and plan for the future. I'll tell you the COVID pandemic sure put our nutz over the fire. Nobody could have planned for that in terms of bandwidth utilization.

I try to be curious, not judgmental. Your perspective is interesting.

And @fordtruckman2003, I appreciate your comments as well.
Especially "Even crappy old cable TV wiring can carry some significant bandwidth."
That made me chuckle. I installed some of that crappy old wiring as long ago as 1985 that may still be working. Nobody knew back then the bandwidth capabilities of simple coaxial cable.

Cheers!

 

[Buyer2021]

after nearly 2 years of massive fiber putting the ground in our county and all points around to get us off phone line DSL

Congratulations!

In my little corner of rural Texas (Bastrop County, ~9-miles from Bastrop & ~20-miles from Austin) there's absolutely no sign of fiber of whatever technology in my future.

I've been here since 1985, I suppose the copper-wire is still running buried down my road but AFAIK no-one has been on it for many years, all my 'neighbors' are on cell-phones (with boosters) and cell or satellite for internet, etc.

Yep, we're a 'legal subdivision' since 1972 with county-maintained roads, lot sizes ranging from 2-250 acres. The county finally 'paved' (well, chip-coat) our road about 3 years ago.

Me, I'm 'making do' with cell aided by an elevated YAGI antenna and booster for phone / internet and OTA for TV.

Still, I wouldn't trade my remote near-the-end-of-a dead-end-road location for anything!

 

[HammaMan]

A 3.1 CMTS deployment cost is about $1 million. A huge amount of that is license fees to the CMTS manufacturer. Just in the area of my old responsibility (I retired in '21), a mere fraction of Comcast's footprint, I had 49 3.1 CMTS's. Those were added onto and replaced 4 times through the iterations of DOCSIS, plus getting upgraded twice in my time. All of the "old" equipment was shipped to other systems for redeployment.

So that's $49 million just in 3.1 hardware/license fees, not counting the previous upgrades. Any company would be foolish to not reuse assets that cost that much if at all possible.

That's just nuts for software costs. Curious how they balance such costs against GPON fiber deployments which have some very economical means of deployment without the need for amps and media converters. Happen to know the cost of one of the aerial media converters? I'd looked at utilizing pole attachments to deploy fiber but the POCO here really thinks their poles are made of gold. They also require "engineering" fees on empty poles with a completely open-ended contract on said service pricing. They've been sued more than once by the FCC for their nonsense fees including per-pole monthly charges. They keep going right back into money milking schemes taking advantage of their ROW monopoly.

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