Yes, it’s here: fiber internet.\u00a0 Well, it’s been here locally for just more than a year, but I didn’t want to be a guinea pig.\u00a0 Yesterday afternoon I helped (debatable) the fiber technician install a five hundred foot cable along three telephone poles to get from the junction box to my house.\u00a0 It was about 100F outside, but he is young and quite a trooper.\u00a0 Very polite and professional, too.\u00a0 His fiance stopped by to bring him some food and drinks.<\/p>\n
I say “helped” him install the cable but it’s more like I tried<\/em> to help.\u00a0 That cable has a fiber optic and a steel wire inside, and it is very springy.\u00a0 I did my best, but some of the inner loops started coming out of the coil and it took us another thirty minutes to untangle the mess.\u00a0 He said those longer coils of cable tend to get messy like that, though.\u00a0 In the end, I gave him a $40 tip for his troubles.<\/p>\n Glad I finally made the switch to fiber.\u00a0 The biggest plus so far is the symmetrical bandwidth.\u00a0 No more 20 megabit upload restrictions, which means this goofy website loads faster, too.\u00a0 Hopefully it will be more future-proof and reliable than the old coaxial cable network.<\/p>\n Today it was like pulling teeth trying to cancel the cable internet service provider (ISP).\u00a0 But they have been getting my money for a long time, so I don’t feel too bad. I figure $50 per month on average for tweny years comes out to $12,000.\u00a0 Yeah, not too bad at all.\u00a0 The customer support rep did his level best to sweeten the pot to get me to stay, and I almost took him up on it.\u00a0 After all, having redundant internet would be nice, right?<\/p>\n However, they have kind of been falling down on the job a bit lately in regards to their line quality.\u00a0 I have had at least three visits from technicians and maintenance in the past year.\u00a0 When the city moved some telephone poles in the neighborhood a couple years ago, they just kind of stretched the coax line from my house to the new pole, without replacing it.\u00a0 Then, last summer, a maintenance worker disconnected my drop line during the day (I was in a work meeting) to relieve some of the tension.\u00a0 When I went outside to see what was going on, he told me I had to call another technician to get it fixed.\u00a0 I set up said appointment; the next guy (tatted up, kind of an atitude) came and said he couldn’t fix it because he didn’t have a bucket truck or a long enough ladder, but said it was probably fine as-is.\u00a0 He also said the maintenance crew are kind of jerks.\u00a0 Infighting in the ranks, well that’s typical I guess.\u00a0 But it was working fine so I didn’t sweat it too much.<\/p>\n Several months go by, and a maintenance crew drives by in a bucket truck, sees the situation, and proactively adds an extension to my drop cable.\u00a0 This is great, I think.\u00a0 However<\/em>, it stopped working after an hour and the crew was nowhere to be seen.\u00a0 So, another call to tech support to schedule a fix.\u00a0 Meanwhile my internet is down the rest of the workday, and overnight as well.<\/p>\n A new technician the next day, but I can tell he’s at least got his act together.\u00a0 Despite not having a bucket truck, he gets right up on the pole with a hook ladder and digs into the situation.\u00a0 He quickly discovers that the drop line extension they added the day before had a “suck out”.\u00a0 He cut off the bad connector and showed it to me.\u00a0 There was a single strand of the shielding mesh wire wrapped around the central copper conductor lead!\u00a0 And this guy proactively goes to the supply shop, gets a full spool of reinforced coax, and puts a completley new drop line in from my house to the pole.\u00a0 Finally, some good service!<\/p>\n It has been at least six months or more since the new drop line was installed.\u00a0 You’d think that would have been the end of the saga, but sadly no.\u00a0 Last week I get a voicemail from the ISP saying there is yet an issue on my line, requiring a visit from a technician.\u00a0 I called them to enquire: apparently they are doing “proactive” line monitoring now (like they haven’t been doing anything proactively for years), and they had detected noise on my circuit.\u00a0 I told them about the string of technicians I’ve already had, and could I just keep going as is?\u00a0 To that I was told they may have to put a block on the line.\u00a0 So now I’m actually kind of mad.\u00a0 I tell him I’ll have to think about it, but my mind was made up at that point it was time to switch to fiber.<\/p>\n I will leave the coax lines in place in case I have to go back to cable, but I hope that day doesn’t come at this point!\u00a0 Incidentally, I also use this ISP for my mobile telephone service, and will probably keep that.\u00a0 At least they support the Apple Watch, whereas my previous cellular company couldn’t even muster that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A New Technology For These Parts Yes, it’s here: fiber internet.\u00a0 Well, it’s been here locally for just more than a year, but I didn’t want to be a guinea pig.\u00a0 Yesterday afternoon I helped (debatable) the fiber technician install … Continue reading Canceling a Flaky Cable ISP<\/h2>\n