is fiber better than cable internet?
January 28, 2025 9:09 PM Subscribe
My building just started offering fiber internet connections at a pretty good price compared to what I'm paying now. Is/how is fiber better than cable?
I know that's a question with a long history and a bazillion answers, but my entire 20+ year internet connectivity history is cable. All I know is that fiber is a thing that is a thing. I need real world advice. Here are my current parameters:
- We currently pay for Xfinity gig-speed internet, which runs me about $75/month. I generally have no problems with it except I don't love Xfinity as a company
- The router we have is an Asus Zen Wifi mesh router with one satellite, for a 1500ish, two story SF place. Again, no issues with the router, it's about two years old and I believe it would work with fiber from the little bit of Googling I did, but I don't know for sure
- Using that router and that internet plan, I currently get about 480Mbps down/41 up on my phone, according to speedtest, and 131/39 on the Chromebook that I'm writing this on right now, both of which are perfectly acceptable speeds for what I need, if nowhere near a gig. And in general, with two people working from home and streaming meetings/music all day, and streaming stuff most evenings/weekends, we never have issues.
(NOTE: every connection made via this router in our house is wireless, there is no cat5 or any other hardwired connection available or desired, so please don't compare wireless v wired speeds for either cable or fiber because they are not relevant to me)
So my question is kinda that: is the $45/month "Up to 1GBps synchronous internet" the fiber provider in question says it will deliver going to be delivering equivalent or better real-world speeds than the ones I'm currently getting?
I don't want to switch if the only benefit is to save $30, but on the other hand I also wouldn't mind saving $30 if there's a bit of speed improvement possible. This is the provider, if it makes a difference.
Are there other pitfalls here I should look out for? Is the fact that this is a small local company a red flag? I can't find any reviews or info about the company online at all so I feel like I'd be kinda taking a leap of faith but I don't know, maybe these are common?
I know that's a question with a long history and a bazillion answers, but my entire 20+ year internet connectivity history is cable. All I know is that fiber is a thing that is a thing. I need real world advice. Here are my current parameters:
- We currently pay for Xfinity gig-speed internet, which runs me about $75/month. I generally have no problems with it except I don't love Xfinity as a company
- The router we have is an Asus Zen Wifi mesh router with one satellite, for a 1500ish, two story SF place. Again, no issues with the router, it's about two years old and I believe it would work with fiber from the little bit of Googling I did, but I don't know for sure
- Using that router and that internet plan, I currently get about 480Mbps down/41 up on my phone, according to speedtest, and 131/39 on the Chromebook that I'm writing this on right now, both of which are perfectly acceptable speeds for what I need, if nowhere near a gig. And in general, with two people working from home and streaming meetings/music all day, and streaming stuff most evenings/weekends, we never have issues.
(NOTE: every connection made via this router in our house is wireless, there is no cat5 or any other hardwired connection available or desired, so please don't compare wireless v wired speeds for either cable or fiber because they are not relevant to me)
So my question is kinda that: is the $45/month "Up to 1GBps synchronous internet" the fiber provider in question says it will deliver going to be delivering equivalent or better real-world speeds than the ones I'm currently getting?
I don't want to switch if the only benefit is to save $30, but on the other hand I also wouldn't mind saving $30 if there's a bit of speed improvement possible. This is the provider, if it makes a difference.
Are there other pitfalls here I should look out for? Is the fact that this is a small local company a red flag? I can't find any reviews or info about the company online at all so I feel like I'd be kinda taking a leap of faith but I don't know, maybe these are common?
Fiber is better than cable in terms of bandwidth, yes, though you may not really realize it since the bottleneck will likely be your wifi performance, not your uplink. And though you don't need (and likely can't make much use of) the expansion in available bandwidth, saving a little money and supporting a local business may be worth the one-time hassle of the install (especially if it's building-wide it may be quite painless indeed). I'd also expect the customer service to be better, since the bar for your current provider has historically been located below the sub-basement, so it's hard to see how it's likely the fiber folks could be worse.
The pitfall I'd most be worried about is that the small local eventually goes under, but at worst that just results in you returning to your cable connection provider.
posted by axiom at 9:24 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]
The pitfall I'd most be worried about is that the small local eventually goes under, but at worst that just results in you returning to your cable connection provider.
posted by axiom at 9:24 PM on January 28 [3 favorites]
Fiber is better than cable. But... the provider you are linking to does not seem to be a fiber provider, they seem to be a wireless provider. Am I missing something?
posted by ManInSuit at 9:24 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]
posted by ManInSuit at 9:24 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]
Count me among those who don't understand why you wouldn't leap at the chance to pay less for better customer service unless your present ISP has you locked into some kind of loyalty deal. Which even if they do, it's not going to take too many months of saving $30 each time to compensate for.
In your shoes I would jump ship yesterday because fuck huge telcos. Worst case: your new cheap friendly local service doesn't perform as well as your old expensive your-call-is-important-to-us corporate one and you choose to jump back.
posted by flabdablet at 11:24 PM on January 28 [4 favorites]
In your shoes I would jump ship yesterday because fuck huge telcos. Worst case: your new cheap friendly local service doesn't perform as well as your old expensive your-call-is-important-to-us corporate one and you choose to jump back.
posted by flabdablet at 11:24 PM on January 28 [4 favorites]
> the provider you are linking to does not seem to be a fiber provider, they seem to be a wireless provider. Am I missing something?
It's possible this provider only offers wireless to customers in detached residential housing ("single family homes") in their coverage area, but they could also offer fixed line fiber connections to large customers such as apartment blocks, commercial buildings etc -- this could be estimated and negotiated on a case-by-case basis . The big up-front capex cost to construct and install a new fiber connection to an apartment building that has hundreds of individual residential customers in apartments can be amortised over all those potential residential customers, so it's much more plausible fiber to larger apartment buildings can be offered commercially even if the density is too low / competition is too high to commercially offer fiber to single family homes in the area.
a wireless provider would have backhaul fiber to the towers, if that went near apartments, might be cheap to run fiber.
posted by are-coral-made at 11:25 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
It's possible this provider only offers wireless to customers in detached residential housing ("single family homes") in their coverage area, but they could also offer fixed line fiber connections to large customers such as apartment blocks, commercial buildings etc -- this could be estimated and negotiated on a case-by-case basis . The big up-front capex cost to construct and install a new fiber connection to an apartment building that has hundreds of individual residential customers in apartments can be amortised over all those potential residential customers, so it's much more plausible fiber to larger apartment buildings can be offered commercially even if the density is too low / competition is too high to commercially offer fiber to single family homes in the area.
a wireless provider would have backhaul fiber to the towers, if that went near apartments, might be cheap to run fiber.
posted by are-coral-made at 11:25 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]
Fibre is better than everything in terms of Internet service. Is it so much better than cable that you will actually notice a difference? Possibly only if you have multiple people in your house gaming (which you said you don't do) or videoconferencing at one time. The key difference that fibre service will typically get you over cable service is much higher upload speeds. On the other hand $30 a month is a lot.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:59 AM on January 29
posted by jacquilynne at 2:59 AM on January 29
Best answer: The first big difference with fiber is the upstream speed -- instead of getting 480/40 from your router, you'd get something more like 600/600 depending on what kind of wifi your router and that specific device use. The big thing here is cloud backup, if you have machines you're interested in backing up. When we got fiber installed, we were able to send a terabyte to backblaze in a day instead of a month or two. You'll also notice that browsing in general feels snappier, especially if both of you browsing, because you won't be clogging your wee little upstream pipe with requests and acknowledgements.
The second big difference is either zero or vastly reduced contention. Do you notice that your internet goes to shit when everyone gets home from work and starts streaming? That basically doesn't happen with fiber.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:10 AM on January 29 [4 favorites]
The second big difference is either zero or vastly reduced contention. Do you notice that your internet goes to shit when everyone gets home from work and starts streaming? That basically doesn't happen with fiber.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:10 AM on January 29 [4 favorites]
Best answer: Just a quick summary answer.
1. Yes it's better. Unequivocally.
2 it's not shared. (cable is, so at busy times speed reduces)
3. It's bidirectional speed is symmetrical. So instead of cable where you're getting probably 40mb upload fiber will be the same up as down (so if it's truly gig speed your max is 1000 down AND up (it will be less but still way better).
Thats it. I cannot think of even a marginal reason why you wouldn't take the faster, non shared, lower cost, superior fiber.
posted by chasles at 5:02 AM on January 29 [7 favorites]
1. Yes it's better. Unequivocally.
2 it's not shared. (cable is, so at busy times speed reduces)
3. It's bidirectional speed is symmetrical. So instead of cable where you're getting probably 40mb upload fiber will be the same up as down (so if it's truly gig speed your max is 1000 down AND up (it will be less but still way better).
Thats it. I cannot think of even a marginal reason why you wouldn't take the faster, non shared, lower cost, superior fiber.
posted by chasles at 5:02 AM on January 29 [7 favorites]
For most people, the higher upstream bandwidth from fiber is helpful for two use cases. Someone already mentioned cloud backups like Backblaze. The other is for videoconferencing, including things like FaceTime. With more upstream bandwidth, the people you're talking to via FaceTime, Zoom, etc., will get a better quality view of you.
posted by davybyrne at 5:32 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
posted by davybyrne at 5:32 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Ignoring literally everything else, I would switch for the upload speed alone. Upload is only going to become more important as time moves on.
The fact you can do it and also get both increased download and save money makes it an absolute no-brainer to me.
posted by tubedogg at 5:47 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
The fact you can do it and also get both increased download and save money makes it an absolute no-brainer to me.
posted by tubedogg at 5:47 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
That’s $45 for the first year. And probably with paperless billing and automatic withdrawal payment, otherwise additional fees. Check to see how much it is after the introductory rate expires. I know mine will double in price.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:01 AM on January 29 [3 favorites]
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:01 AM on January 29 [3 favorites]
Fiber is better (I yearn for the days when I had AT&T fiber - it's not available in my current neighborhood) but I would triple check that the service provider you linked is legit and is actually providing fiber service. There is nothing on their website that indicates it is.
posted by misskaz at 6:45 AM on January 29
posted by misskaz at 6:45 AM on January 29
If there are any local groups where you can ask this you might get responses more specific to this company in your area.
Regardless, it might not be a bad thing to tell your company you're leaving, or at minimum that you're looking for a better deal. Sometimes they try to incentivize you to stay.
posted by trig at 6:48 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
Regardless, it might not be a bad thing to tell your company you're leaving, or at minimum that you're looking for a better deal. Sometimes they try to incentivize you to stay.
posted by trig at 6:48 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]
Best answer: My biggest reason for switching away from Comcast was the fact that they were never straightforward about what things cost. Everything was a promo rate with a ratchet at some point, and they had a habit of just deciding to add fees over and above the ratcheting price. Yes, it’s possible to call and “cancel” and get a new retention offer that lowers the price for a while, but then you have to keep doing it and I just find the game tiresome.
As for fiber qua fiber, it’s higher capacity than coax and is generally offered with symmetric download and upload capacity (so, unlike your 12:1 ratio of download speed to upload speed, it’s close to 1:1). Fiber has so much more capacity than coax that Comcast itself generally runs fiber almost all the way to your premises and only has coax for the last little bit (in network lingo this is called “Fiber to the node,” or FTTN). Comcast is sort of getting on the “fiber to the premises” (FTTP) bandwagon, and depending on the size of your apartment building, may already have run fiber all the way to the building itself (but they might still be using coax within the building, because the infrastructure is already there and probably good enough for the purpose). Comcast mostly installs FTTP where competition forces them into it, and they still use asymmetric speeds and data caps as a way of segmenting their users into more profitable buckets and finding ways to increase their monthly recurring revenue from those users.
People complain about Comcast having “shared” infrastructure, but IME they’ve gotten much better about making sure they’re not creating internal congestion by overselling individual network nodes. The one time I thought they had a congested node near us, they actually admitted they did and said the new node was already in process and bandwidth issues should be resolved within a week, which they were. And when you get upstream past the node on any network, everything is on shared infrastructure and the question is whether that shared infrastructure is adequately provisioned. There’s just as much of a possibility that the local ISP could run into provisioning issues with its own upstream provider if it’s badly managed. NB: there are no secrets to managing this sort of infrastructure, utilization tends to be really predictable, and there are usually alerts about usage* well before the links are saturated, so I don’t think this problem is likely, but it’s possible.
If you’re only concerned about the price and/or you’re really concerned about switching to a new vendor, you could start by calling Comcast to say that you’re thinking you’ll switch and see what they offer you to stay. (But keep in mind you’ll have to revisit this in a year or two). OTOH the local provider probably can’t have worse customer service than Comcast does, you’ll be more important to them because you’ll be one customer of thousands and not one of millions, and they’re incentivized to provide you with good service because word of mouth helps them get new customers. And if you switch and it doesn’t work out, you can always sign back up with Comcast and get another new subscriber deal in the process.
* Disclosures: I’ve worked for two different ISPs with national fiber networks. At one of those ISPs I supported the software and processes that generated the sort of network utilization reports that would have resulted in a “hey, that circuit is approaching a utilization threshold” alert I mentioned above. I’ve never worked for Comcast, but smart people I worked with at those companies have, and the impression I got was that Comcast was good at running a network. When I was a Comcast customer I didn’t have any long-lasting problems with the service, just the billing. We have Verizon FIOS now. It’s fine.
posted by fedward at 7:33 AM on January 29 [2 favorites]
As for fiber qua fiber, it’s higher capacity than coax and is generally offered with symmetric download and upload capacity (so, unlike your 12:1 ratio of download speed to upload speed, it’s close to 1:1). Fiber has so much more capacity than coax that Comcast itself generally runs fiber almost all the way to your premises and only has coax for the last little bit (in network lingo this is called “Fiber to the node,” or FTTN). Comcast is sort of getting on the “fiber to the premises” (FTTP) bandwagon, and depending on the size of your apartment building, may already have run fiber all the way to the building itself (but they might still be using coax within the building, because the infrastructure is already there and probably good enough for the purpose). Comcast mostly installs FTTP where competition forces them into it, and they still use asymmetric speeds and data caps as a way of segmenting their users into more profitable buckets and finding ways to increase their monthly recurring revenue from those users.
People complain about Comcast having “shared” infrastructure, but IME they’ve gotten much better about making sure they’re not creating internal congestion by overselling individual network nodes. The one time I thought they had a congested node near us, they actually admitted they did and said the new node was already in process and bandwidth issues should be resolved within a week, which they were. And when you get upstream past the node on any network, everything is on shared infrastructure and the question is whether that shared infrastructure is adequately provisioned. There’s just as much of a possibility that the local ISP could run into provisioning issues with its own upstream provider if it’s badly managed. NB: there are no secrets to managing this sort of infrastructure, utilization tends to be really predictable, and there are usually alerts about usage* well before the links are saturated, so I don’t think this problem is likely, but it’s possible.
If you’re only concerned about the price and/or you’re really concerned about switching to a new vendor, you could start by calling Comcast to say that you’re thinking you’ll switch and see what they offer you to stay. (But keep in mind you’ll have to revisit this in a year or two). OTOH the local provider probably can’t have worse customer service than Comcast does, you’ll be more important to them because you’ll be one customer of thousands and not one of millions, and they’re incentivized to provide you with good service because word of mouth helps them get new customers. And if you switch and it doesn’t work out, you can always sign back up with Comcast and get another new subscriber deal in the process.
* Disclosures: I’ve worked for two different ISPs with national fiber networks. At one of those ISPs I supported the software and processes that generated the sort of network utilization reports that would have resulted in a “hey, that circuit is approaching a utilization threshold” alert I mentioned above. I’ve never worked for Comcast, but smart people I worked with at those companies have, and the impression I got was that Comcast was good at running a network. When I was a Comcast customer I didn’t have any long-lasting problems with the service, just the billing. We have Verizon FIOS now. It’s fine.
posted by fedward at 7:33 AM on January 29 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: ManInSuit - We got an email from our condo board saying that HighPipe would be the provider of "High speed fiber internet" to our building, to provide services at a certain rate, should we want to choose them as a provider. That tells me they have some sort of contract or agreement with them, but I have not investigated further than their website.
are-coral-made: That does make a certain amount of sense and may be the case here, without having done any additional research.
TWinbrook8: Our condo board has negotiated this as an "ongoing" deal (their email made it sound like a Visible-versus-Verizon type deal, which, yes that sounds good but I would need to make sure that's true), which implies either no end date or more than a one year promo, but that was one of the points I was going to raise with the provider if I took the step of actually doing this.
trig/Fedward: I have been with Xfinity for a long time. I do the dance you mention every year, and this is the first year it hasn't really worked (they offered to knock like $10 off, where normally they're much more willing to do a better deal). The timing of this thing from my condo board is pretty ideal, so I was just hoping to get some info on whether fiber would be worth the plunge, and it sounds like it is, from yours and all the other good advices here.
posted by pdb at 7:45 AM on January 29 [3 favorites]
are-coral-made: That does make a certain amount of sense and may be the case here, without having done any additional research.
TWinbrook8: Our condo board has negotiated this as an "ongoing" deal (their email made it sound like a Visible-versus-Verizon type deal, which, yes that sounds good but I would need to make sure that's true), which implies either no end date or more than a one year promo, but that was one of the points I was going to raise with the provider if I took the step of actually doing this.
trig/Fedward: I have been with Xfinity for a long time. I do the dance you mention every year, and this is the first year it hasn't really worked (they offered to knock like $10 off, where normally they're much more willing to do a better deal). The timing of this thing from my condo board is pretty ideal, so I was just hoping to get some info on whether fiber would be worth the plunge, and it sounds like it is, from yours and all the other good advices here.
posted by pdb at 7:45 AM on January 29 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Hi! I'm in telecom and one of the things I do is sell high-end, high bandwidth fiber connectivity to third parties who then work with apartment buildings to slice it up and sell it to their tenants.
Although this service by the end will end up with consumers, it begins life as an enterprise/business grade product, with superior service (not just relatively, but in terms of guaranteed service-level agreements) and less latency/lag than consumer products. This is true even when it replaces consumer fiber internet and perhaps even slightly moreso when replacing legacy cable products. (The "is fiber itself better than cable?" conversation is a little more fine-grained but yeah, kinda.)
As a side note, providers of the sort I work for also customarily provide bandwidth utilization data, so we do a pretty good job of making sure the buildings purchase enough overall bandwidth. So over-subscription is not typically the issue it is with individually purchased personal internet products. You will probably get closer to the listed speeds.
The bottom line for the buildings is that the amount of bandwidth it takes for X number of tenants when purchased at once as an enterprise solution is far cheaper than X times the amount each tenant pays on their own, so there is an opportunity there to provide an upgrade for tenants while siphoning a chunk of the savings off for themselves.
In short: yeah, it's better. And you don't have to trust the warm hearts of your landlords, as they're not doing it out of kindness, they're just exploiting their buying power to make a little extra income, with the hook that makes this possible being that you're getting something better, too.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:23 AM on January 29 [2 favorites]
Although this service by the end will end up with consumers, it begins life as an enterprise/business grade product, with superior service (not just relatively, but in terms of guaranteed service-level agreements) and less latency/lag than consumer products. This is true even when it replaces consumer fiber internet and perhaps even slightly moreso when replacing legacy cable products. (The "is fiber itself better than cable?" conversation is a little more fine-grained but yeah, kinda.)
As a side note, providers of the sort I work for also customarily provide bandwidth utilization data, so we do a pretty good job of making sure the buildings purchase enough overall bandwidth. So over-subscription is not typically the issue it is with individually purchased personal internet products. You will probably get closer to the listed speeds.
The bottom line for the buildings is that the amount of bandwidth it takes for X number of tenants when purchased at once as an enterprise solution is far cheaper than X times the amount each tenant pays on their own, so there is an opportunity there to provide an upgrade for tenants while siphoning a chunk of the savings off for themselves.
In short: yeah, it's better. And you don't have to trust the warm hearts of your landlords, as they're not doing it out of kindness, they're just exploiting their buying power to make a little extra income, with the hook that makes this possible being that you're getting something better, too.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:23 AM on January 29 [2 favorites]
I want to reinforce from mentions above that HighPipe's website and the listed services they offer state that they are a wireless ISP (WISP) and there is no mention of fiber-optic service on their site. This is fundamentally different from what people are assuming in their answers here. Fiber is much better than cable, but there are downsides to WISPs. (I had one in San Francisco -- the reliability could be bad during inclement weather, for example; and it had issues with sharing bandwidth during peak times. I switched to fiber as soon as it was available.)
I would want to be very clear about exactly what the service that's being offered is.
posted by kdar at 12:02 PM on January 29
I would want to be very clear about exactly what the service that's being offered is.
posted by kdar at 12:02 PM on January 29
Response by poster: kdar and others - I indeed got this clarification from the provider a few minutes ago: "we are a WISP (wireless internet service provider) which means that on both ends of the network it is fiber but the signal from the main building to (your building) is a wireless point-to-point".
So I guess my question morphs into: is a WISP better than cable internet? Thanks all for helping me get this far!
also kdar: How are you defining "inclement" here?
posted by pdb at 12:15 PM on January 29
So I guess my question morphs into: is a WISP better than cable internet? Thanks all for helping me get this far!
also kdar: How are you defining "inclement" here?
posted by pdb at 12:15 PM on January 29
is a WISP better than cable internet?
Should be. Most WISPs are pretty good at the technical challenges of their work: dead spots, signal strength, interference, etc., and the tools to work around these things aren't expensive anymore. Add in that they're only asking for month-to-month commitments, and the pressure should be there to make sure they get everything right.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:50 PM on January 29
Should be. Most WISPs are pretty good at the technical challenges of their work: dead spots, signal strength, interference, etc., and the tools to work around these things aren't expensive anymore. Add in that they're only asking for month-to-month commitments, and the pressure should be there to make sure they get everything right.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:50 PM on January 29
Assuming you can continue to use your existing asus mesh network and ignore whatever equipment they provide (which is probably true), switching to their service should be easy. And switching back again if necessary, even easier.
So if it were me, I'd at least try it for a month, if only to know that I had two viable alternatives that I can switch between based on price.
I doubt you'll notice any significant performance difference.
I think your upstream bandwidth is already overkill for videoconferencing. (E.g., Zoom says at highest quality they require 3Mbps https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0060748 .) Cloud backup is the use case I thought of too.
posted by bfields at 7:16 AM on January 30
So if it were me, I'd at least try it for a month, if only to know that I had two viable alternatives that I can switch between based on price.
I doubt you'll notice any significant performance difference.
I think your upstream bandwidth is already overkill for videoconferencing. (E.g., Zoom says at highest quality they require 3Mbps https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0060748 .) Cloud backup is the use case I thought of too.
posted by bfields at 7:16 AM on January 30
Fiber and cable are just two different technologies to deliver a service they are not indicative of the quality of service.
posted by jmsta at 6:21 AM on January 31
posted by jmsta at 6:21 AM on January 31
I used to have Xfinity and switched to fiber some years ago. I get a much better value for my money from fiber than I ever got from Xfinity, even factoring in promo pricing, especially since I'd regularly blow past my 1.2TB bandwidth allotment (I work from home). For anything wired up to my router via ethernet cable, I usually get at least 900Mbps down/900Mbps up with my gigabit plan. Even if you're not maxing out your Xfinity plan, I'd recommend switching unless you have a contract with an early termination fee.
posted by Aleyn at 12:44 PM on January 31
posted by Aleyn at 12:44 PM on January 31
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posted by pdb at 9:11 PM on January 28