iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| Broken Link Please fix. I want to root for the rurals 
Seriously though, there are three cooperatives (varying from rural to semi-rural/suburban) I know of that are doing FTTN/FTTH. GVTC (»gvtc.com) does FTTH; they don't have a ton of competition so heir residential tiers stop at 20/3 and the business tier stops at 25 Mbps down. Still better than their competition (TWC 15/2).
In the northwest corner of TX you have XIT Communications, another cooperative. I've stayed in a hotel that used them for internet service (I don't think there's anyone else available for wireline) and speeds were fine. The company also offers cable service. They use VDSL in town, with speeds of 1.5 Mbps each way for $39, or 3 Mbps each way for $49. If I had a choice between Verizon's ADSL packages and XIT's VDSL, I'd definitely pick the one with the lovely 3 Mbps of upload speed XIT also has ADSL for more rural areas.
Then there's Hill COuntry Telephone Cooperative. They're expanding into neighboring areas as a CLEC and of course going all-fiber (or wireless; they have a 3.65GHz license for WiMAX and a license for 20MHz of 1700MHz spectrum in their service area and a little beyond). In areas that they already serve, DSL is expensive ($70 plus a phone line for 3/768) but we're talking about areas that *might* be able to get 3G from a company or two, *might* be able to get slow fixed wireless from one provider and otherwise would be using satellite for internet. So it's a big jump.
The nice thing about HCTC DSL is, with all the upgrades they did over the last year or so, the average distance from a DLC (which serves up DSL for most HCTC customers) is 7k feet. So you could probably pair-bond and, with Annex M, push 30/3 or maybe even 30/5 speeds over the system, if there was a need to do so. For now there isn't a competitive reason to do this, since nobody can match 3 Mbps down (satellite doesn't count) in the area, but it is an option. The company is also thinking about deploying IPTV stuff, though we'll see where that goes. Some of this stuff may sound mundane but I remember in one of the co-op's newsletters seeing that the average customer density was four customers per wire mile. So upgrading to FTTN this way was more expensive for HCTC than for practically anyone else to upgrade their network to fiber... |
