kilometers
join:2007-01-24
Sacramento, CA
 ·SureWest Internet
 ·AT&T U-Verse
edit:
April 9th, @03:48PM
| reply to DaMaGeINC
Re: Fiber to the home in condos
Sorry. It's hard to get good pictures with the iphone in a dark area. The door's are locked now so I can't get in.
I talked to Surewest yesterday and got an install appointment for service. According to their system my address is available for service but through a VDSL connection. I didn't think they did VDSL as well. However, it seems like an even more gimped version of what AT&T U-Verse is doing.
He said that I have a 20mbps limit. So in order to get the 10 meg package I could only have two TV sets (since they only do IPTV). And of course there's no HD at all since a steam requires 15mbps or so. I could have a DVR if I only pick the 6mbps internet package. And then the upload is limited to 768 Kbps on a vdsl connection. I don't see why it can't be at least a meg...
I am really hoping this is some sort of mistake on their end. I've read that Verizon uses copper cables and vdsl to deliver fios to people in MDUs except they have more bandwidth available and they serve the video through coax. I guess Surewest can't do it this way since their IPTV service uses up internet bandwidth.
One thing that does confuse me though is where the copper is at. I don't have any copper in my condo. In my master bedroom closet I have a little patch panel with cat5 cable and coax. And then there's two service cat5 cables that drop down from the basement. The other ends down into the comm room. From what I've seen in the comm room was a thick black cable coming out of an underground tube and going up into a hanging box. I guess it could either be a fiber line or 6 twisted copper pairs within a black tube? It would make more sense if it were fiber because there's only 6 homes per building and all are wired with cat5. I would think they could bring a single fiber line into the comm room and share it between the 6 homes. That would at least give each of us more than 20mbps to split between internet and TV.
I'll see what the install guy has to say when he gets here. I'm hoping they could come up with a better solution to serving their MDU customers with FTTH than this because I have heard from people with surewest FFTH that it's the best ISP they have ever had. |
