milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN
| Fiber through the Cable company
We recently learned that a local cable company(charter) is selling fiber services in our area. They have all the basics covered SLA, guaranteed bandwidth, monitoring.... and the pricing is good $125 per MB + build out cost versus a whopping $1250 per T1 that we pay now(sucks being 110 miles from the POP). I'll have to backhaul it from another nearby city but that also gets me a new POP at the same time. I know several people on here use DSL for their trunk, anyone using a cable provider and if so are you satisfied. The local sales woman and engineer are coming tommorrow, I'm really hoping for some cheap and reliable bandwidth here.
BM |
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milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN | Please move the to wireless service providers, forgot I in this thread when i posted.
BM |
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superdog
I Need A Drink
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-13
Lebanon, PA
| reply to milbrath
I have chatted with my local cable CO(Comcast), and they were also willing to sell me bandwidth at a fairly decent price, I just didn't take them up on it yet.
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milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN
| I had comcast residential HSI cable service for about a year while I was in grad school. It was flawless. Charter residential service on the other hand is not that great. The only reason I am considering it is because the local State University recently moved to a fiber connection with them. It is my hope that the fiber connection through them will be reliable as I see no reason why a nearby State University(10 miles away) would sign up with an unreliable primary connection.
They are currently figuring out the build out cost to get fiber to a water tower in a nearby city. After I have that I'll post more. And if I do get it, I'll post about it a few months down the road.
BM |
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sbrown
join:2006-07-17
Sandy, OR | reply to milbrath
Our schools use Charter for fiber back to the local Internet Exchange - seems to be flawless - good pricing as well... |
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milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN
| Yes their sales engineer is supposed to get back to me towards the end of the week. Hopefully we can say good bye to $1250 T1's. Hard as hell to make money when you can get DSL for $35+tax,and we pretty much have to price accordingly. 1/2 of the county is covered by frontier who puts in DSLAMS everywhere! According to the local techs there is more than one with under 5 people on it. The bottom half of the county is belsouth territory, thats where we are going next. Thankfully they don't seem to leave city limits. I wish the telco's had to pay what we do for bandwidth. I pretty much hate them with a passion. Hopefully soon I can say goodbye to them, well atleast my wallet can.
BM |
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thewildthang
join:2005-12-21
Winfield, AL | reply to milbrath
Milbrath, what about your ip's, is the cable company going to give you a range of IP's to use? |
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milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN | Yes,
Charter will initially provide me with 4 class C's, or however many I want. I asked for 4 class C's. Still waiting on build out cost & final pricing.
BM |
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cmaenginsb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-19
Palmdale, CA
| reply to milbrath
The only negative will be that the line will have some level of oversubscription on it. So I would probably count on getting maybe 80% of what you could with a T-1. Considering the pricing difference that would be more than acceptable.
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CCNA, Comtrain Certified Tower Climber |
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milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN
| They have guaranteed me an SLA. Not sure what the acceptable percentage is yet. I will assume 85%, will know more when everything finalizes. I will still be extremely pleased with 80% at $125 per Mb. The two current T1's we have seem to max out at 2.6Mb bonded of course. So $2500 for 2.6mb - vs- $1250+ buildout for 8.5mb, I'll take it. Plan to start out with only 6mb though, for a monthly bill of $750 +buildout. Hate to spend money when it's not needed. According to charter they can provision additional speed overnight. |
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keefe007
Premium
join:2004-02-24
Germantown, WI
| reply to milbrath
I think you're going to find that the build-out costs are much higher than you think. I quoted in Charter fiber here in Wisconsin and it was quite expensive. It may be different in your market though. My facility is roughly 1 block from the fiber ring and Charter quoted: $986 for 3M, $1275 for 4M, $1544 for 5M, $2654 for 10M, with $2500 install and 5 year contract. It is still a pretty good deal, although the reviews around here have been mixed about the service. |
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milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN
| I'm somewhat fearful of that too. I have been told the price per mb is $125 per mb, not sure what kind of taxes go on the fiber link. The location in question is just down the street from a fiber node according the sales engineer. They said I'd know by the end of the week. I'm hoping to get something cheap enough to cancel our AT&T contract. It's got nearly a year left and the cancellation fee is quite high.
BM |
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superdog
I Need A Drink
Premium,MVM
join:2001-07-13
Lebanon, PA
| I have a local ILEC(At least I think that's what they are?)come after me to sell me bandwidth. The name of the CO is TelCove?. The prices they quoted me were all depending on whether or not I could pull the bandwidth from a current location that they had an ethernet drop at. The price difference was dramatic, as I was told if they do not need to drop in a new fiber to ethernet drop, they would save themselves a lot of money and could pass that on to me?.
The problem I have been having is trying to find a location that I can get roof rights at, and then, if I can get roof rights, I need LOS to one of my PoPs just to get the bandwidth to my network, so to this point, I haven't had much luck?. 
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BurstNET
join:2004-02-14
Scranton, PA | reply to milbrath
Beware Telcove.
They initially tell you one price, and then come in with official quotes much higher.
Old bait and switch technique...
Hopefully Level3 will whip them into shape.
SMA
PRES/CEO
BURSTNET |
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mrbueno
join:2002-08-03
US
| reply to milbrath
Do they even allow resell of their services? I have tried to get a confirmation of this but my sales guy in our area is clueless to this info. The contract says a rider can be written, but the guy won't even bother to call someone in a higher position than him to verify things. His actual words were "how is anyone going to know?" Totally unacceptable to build a business on. |
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Diddy1
join:2003-07-19
Sidney, NE
| said by mrbueno  : His actual words were "how is anyone going to know?" Totally unacceptable to build a business on. And yet I know of some folks that have done this. Not for the primary backbone, but for backup links. I've considered this myself. The problem is, as you said, you can't build a business upon a non-reliable link. This is why some of us get a T1 with an SLA when we don't need that much BW. But, some people are doing this and getting away with it. Who would be the wiser? So, if you have a re-sellable T1, and you need a little more BW, why not? You always have the T1 to fail-over on if the link goes down. There are many exuses you could give that are actually true for the sluggishness? I guess I'm evaluating this more for my own thoughts. The philosophical and moral side is obvious, but the realistic side is what I'm considering.
Aaron |
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milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN | According the the sales engineer they do allow re-selling. He said they would rather get our buisness than let it fall to a telco. They are also giving me an SLA. Just waiting on pricing. |
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cmaenginsb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-19
Palmdale, CA
| reply to milbrath
An important lesson I learned from supporting ISPs since 1998 is that SLAs are really only good as toilet paper. Companies with bad networks will offer them and they are of no use to you when there is a problem that they can't sort out.
A bad upstream connection will do 10x the amount of financial damage that is covered by the SLA (which only covers the cost of the circuit).
After saying that I do think in this case with close monitoring you would be fine.
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CCNA, Comtrain Certified Tower Climber |
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milbrath
join:2006-03-27
Dresden, TN | yes there will be a detailed talk about reliability. Out two AT&T T1's have never "both" been down.
BM |
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Chele
join:2003-07-23
| reply to milbrath
You should try to establish a POP at one of the cable co's drop-offs, it will save you the build-out cost and possibly a great deal of time. From what I've heard, the build-out can take months due to city/county permits and funding from the company itself. |
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