Cost of getting fiber to your house

[Krister 51]

As the title says I'm interested in what you pay to get fiber to your house!  I work for an ISP here in Finland and finance my addiction to flightsimming by selling our fiber connections in my free time and some say it's soo expensive. In my small town of 13,000 inhabitants it costs 295 euros (approx USD 320) to get fiber installed and that's the total sum, ie it includes the fiber converter and everything involved in getting the fiber cable into your house and the service working. In the rural area it costs between 495 euro (USD 530) if the area is "fiber planned" to 1995 euro (USD 2150). It's difficult finding updated info on what it costs in other areas/countries and it's always dependent on many factors so therefore I'm asking! :)

[spesimen 135]

well i cannot say much about it outside of my area, but my impression is that fiber is still pretty rare for residential service in the usa.

even here in tech-centric san francisco, at&t just started making it available last year, and it is still not available in my neighborhood which is just a few miles from downtown. the rate they quote is 80USD per month. but i don't think they have an installation charge, either it is available or it isn't.

i'm guessing if you go the business route you could probably get a quote for getting it to your street right way, but i have not inquired about this. there are certainly plenty of businesses in the city that have high bandwidth requirements but i don't know how many of them host their datacenters in the city limits. although again that isn't really residential related.

i think some of their attention has been further south on the peninsula around cupertino and other silicon valley areas that are more suburban where it might be easier to add more cables. the usa internet provider market is often dominated by a few monopolistic players so there isn't really a whole lot of incentive for them to provide upgrades. my comcast 10mbs connection runs $40 a month or something like that in conjunction with other costs for television.

i heard that google has been trying to roll out fiber to a few other test cities around the usa but has met strong oppositon from the local cable companies and in some cases they are cancelling or backing out of those plans.

good luck with your search for information

cheers,-andy crosby

 

[Krister 51]

Thanks! I certainly would have thought fiber was readily available in San Fransisco. Perhaps many use internet over cable tv which can provide very high bandwith and therefore limits the interest in fiber?!

[JRBarrett 3,034]

40 minutes ago, Krister said:

Thanks! I certainly would have thought fiber was readily available in San Fransisco. Perhaps many use internet over cable tv which can provide very high bandwith and therefore limits the interest in fiber?!

I work for the company which originally invented optical fiber, and is the largest fiber supplier in the world, but fiber internet has only recently available locally - though admittedly, this is a semi-rural area - not a large city by any means. The company rolling it out is NOT a large national telecom provider (like Verizon or Google), but a relatively small regional startup.

I have been using cable internet provided by Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum) for almost 20 years. Though it has been pretty good for most of that time, it does increasingly have issues with service disruptions. TWC/Spectrum is in hot water with several state regulators for selling so-called "ultra high speed" internet service (at a premium price), that does not come close to meeting the claimed bandwidth and speed claims.

I'm watching the new fiber provider with interest. I'm not ready to switch just yet, but if their network proves to be reliable, I might well make the change.

[Glynn 405]

Free to have it installed by my ISP,  £45 per month thereafter for a 200mbs connection

[jmdriskell 178]

CenturyLink in Tacoma is building out fiber thru out the city.  We dropped 12mg/sec cable internet in January 2015 which was costing us about $50/month and switched to 40 mg/sec DSL from CenturyLink that provides phone and internet for about $80-$90/month.  I recommended the switch to my daughter who lives in an older part of the city.  CenturyLink brought fiber to her house and switched her phone and internet to that service.  She's paying about $100/month including the cost of the modem for 40mg/sec.  The installers said that CenturyLink was replacing the copper as they build out.

£45 for 200mb/sec is very reasonable.  Wish we could get that here.

[odourboy 1,288]

Bell Canada provides fibre service in my area at prices competitive to our cable provider. It's becoming quite pervasive in southern Ontario, Canada and if it's on your street, installation is usually free (generally with a term commitment to the service). I even have fibre service at my rural cottage! I should mention though that telecommunications services in Canada are generally considered pretty expensive. (Mobile in particular)

[Krister 51]

Thanks for the answers! I am a bit surprised that you can have it installed for free since at least here it takes quite a bit of effort to get everthing into the ground and then into the house. Here in Fijnland you are not allowed to have a term commitment to a service, only if you have a physical product involved, so perhaps some kind of explanation. On the other hand mobile data is quite cheap here - with no cap on data or bandwith (I typicall download at approx 60-100 Mbps) I pay about USD 23 monthly for a 4G service.

[stephenbgs 169]

Hi Krister

Siro is one Company in Ireland rolling out Fiber to the home there website is http://siro.ie/roll-out/ you might get some useful info. There advertising speeds of 1GBs, There not in my area yet so i cant say about prices but i am currently being charged €55 a month for fiber to the local exchange, which is advertised as 100mb but in reality is 30/40mb due to copper wire from exchange to my house, Phone, line rental, service and modem is included in that price. 

[lownslo 592]

2 hours ago, Krister said:

Here in Fijnland you are not allowed to have a term commitment to a service, only if you have a physical product involved, so perhaps some kind of explanation.

I believe you've hit on it, Krister.  Here in America the ISP monopolies are all about term commitments... and they know how to play those commitments for the greatest profit.  They are, quite simply, sleazy beyond imagination!  I would much prefer Finland's laws on the subject.

Another variable in all this are the local communities themselves.  Town's/cities/counties negotiate with ISP's to build infrastructure, which on the surface seems like the least expensive way to go (communities put the work out for bid... lowest bidder wins).  Unfortunately, many consumers in America are limited in their choices of ISP's (whomever won the bid and built the infrastructure)... which means the service provider can hold the consumer hostage (and usually do).  The lack of competition at the community level here means the consumer is basically trapped by the ISP's.  I feel fortunate in having the choice between 2 ISP's... both of them lousy.  But at least I have a choice... many in my country do not.

Regards,

Greg

[HiFlyer 9,343]

One other thing to consider, especially in rural areas is wireless microwave internet, which can be very fast.

[Krister 51]

microwave internet?! :D

[HiFlyer 9,343]

1 hour ago, Krister said:

microwave internet?! :D

Yup!  http://conxx.net/

[Bob Scott 7,715]

2Gbps up/down fiber to the house available here for $200/month.

250Mbps fiber to the neighborhood (DOCSIS 3.1 cable from the neighborhood interface box) is ~$75/month.

Regards

 

[netshadoe 144]

On 2017-03-31 at 4:27 PM, HiFlyer said:

One other thing to consider, especially in rural areas is wireless microwave internet, which can be very fast.

Yep...have that here east of Ottawa, Canada.  I'm rural, and they just put it in 3 months ago.  I get unlimited data at 40mb/s down, 10mb/s up for $60CDN. Significantly cheaper than my old Satelite internet!