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Houston Fiber
'Fision' testing residential fiber tiers
User Oddstar writes, "This is really just a minor development, but to all of us that have been waiting on Fiber in Houston it's welcome. Those of us in SBC land cannot count on FiOS no matter how appealing." He's directs our attention to a company by the name of Fision that says they'll be offering 10, 25, 50, 75 & 100Mbps symmetrical tiers. According to forum posts they're only just testing in one neighborhood right now; also see additional forum discussion.
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Chris 313
Because It's Geekier
Premium Member
join:2004-07-18
Houma, LA

1 recommendation

Chris 313

Premium Member

Finally!

Someone gets it right! Equal speeds up and down. What I could do with 10/10. Hell, I'd probably go for the 100/100 if it wasn't too expensive.

Lucky people...

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

4 edits

FFH5

Premium Member

Re: Finally!

Doing some checking I find that OEN has a deal with Houston fiber company Phonoscope which already is running past 250,000 residences. »www.4fiber.tv/OENAssets/ ··· unch.pdf Phonoscope also claims they are within 500 meters of 1.6 million homes in the Houston area. If this news is accurate, OEN could expand relatively quickly.

The symmetrical internet link is enticing as is their triple play capability. SBC could really hate to see this roll out and be successful. The question is "will they be successful"? A startup company with big ideas like this needs a lot of investment money. Can they get it during the years while money is going out a lot faster than it is coming in?

And Fision is the product name. The name of the company is Optical Entertainment Network. »www.4fiber.tv/ Here is a nice drawing of their planned Houston endeavor: »www.4fiber.tv/fisionToTh ··· Home.htm

djrobx
Premium Member
join:2000-05-31
Reno, NV

djrobx

Premium Member

Re: Finally!

Fission? Seems like a play on the name "Fios".

-- Rob

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

1 edit

1 recommendation

FFH5

Premium Member

Re: Finally!

said by djrobx:

Fission? Seems like a play on the name "Fios".

-- Rob
I'll take a stab at the FISION(only 1 S) acronym.
FI Fiber
SI SImmetrical (I know that isn't how symmetrical is spelled)
ON Optical Network

dadkins
Can you do Blu?
MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

1 recommendation

dadkins

MVM

Re: Finally!

They could name it Frank for all I care! LOL!
Just bring some of that Symetrical fiber this way!

roamer1
sticking it out at you
join:2001-03-24
Atlanta, GA

roamer1 to FFH5

Member

to FFH5
said by FFH5:

Doing some checking I find that OEN has a deal with Houston fiber company Phonoscope which already is running past 250,000 residences. »www.4fiber.tv/OENAssets/ ··· unch.pdf Phonoscope also claims they are within 500 meters of 1.6 million homes in the Houston area. If this news is accurate, OEN could expand relatively quickly.
Phonoscope, huh? They used to provide TV directly to a lot of places (mostly apartments/condos) around Houston, then they sold their residential business (to OpTel, now known as TVMax) to focus on the commercial market, and now they're back in the residential cable business, as themselves (that's what accounts for the 250k homes passed figure.)

Houston is really a bit of an anomaly -- most cities don't have that sort of deep competitive fiber build. Atlanta certainly doesn't outside of the major business districts...in most residential areas and in the suburbs in general, the only fiber there is belongs to BellSouth and Comcast or Charter.

-SC

Minvaren
Premium Member
join:2001-07-26
Houston, TX

Minvaren

Premium Member

Re: Finally!

Optel turned into TVMax? That explains some things...

dadkins
Can you do Blu?
MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

2 edits

dadkins to Chris 313

MVM

to Chris 313
said by Chris 313:

Someone gets it right! Equal speeds up and down. What I could do with 10/10. Hell, I'd probably go for the 100/100 if it wasn't too expensive.

Lucky people...
EXACTLY! Symetrical is what fiber is supposed to be!
5/5 would be enough to keep me happy!

Man, 10/10 as the standard service sure makes Verizon look like a Turd Sandwich! LOL!

Chris 313
Because It's Geekier
Premium Member
join:2004-07-18
Houma, LA
·AT&T FTTP
·Comcast XFINITY

1 recommendation

Chris 313

Premium Member

Re: Finally!

said by dadkins:

said by Chris 313:

Someone gets it right! Equal speeds up and down. What I could do with 10/10. Hell, I'd probably go for the 100/100 if it wasn't too expensive.

Lucky people...
EXACTLY! Symetrical is what fiber is supposed to be!
5/5 would be enough to keep me happy!
Sure, but when they are giving out 10/10 as standard, and even higher packages, who complains? People like us certainly wouldn't.

On another note, I'd be thrilled to see their prices.

dadkins
Can you do Blu?
MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

dadkins

MVM

Re: Finally!

Yeah, I suppose they could twist my arm 'til I took 10/10 as the minimum... LOL!

Chris 313
Because It's Geekier
Premium Member
join:2004-07-18
Houma, LA
·AT&T FTTP
·Comcast XFINITY

1 recommendation

Chris 313

Premium Member

Re: Finally!

said by dadkins:

Yeah, I suppose they could twist my arm 'til I took 10/10 as the minimum... LOL!
Believe me, a higher minimum speed is ALWAYS better. It was really nice to see them offering package that REALLY make fiber capability shine...Well, as much shine as can be without having a setup like Japan, etc. has.

devil24
Premium Member
join:2002-06-28
San Antonio, TX

1 edit

1 recommendation

devil24

Premium Member

Fision

Can't wait for this one!

quetwo
That VoIP Guy
Premium Member
join:2004-09-04
East Lansing, MI

quetwo

Premium Member

And the great thing is...

It's another company, and not a muni! No (constitutional) laws, or politics are going to stop this one.

AnnaS8
join:2005-05-26
Annapolis, MD

AnnaS8

Member

Holly burning routers Batman!!!

:::Packing up all my junk and moving to Houston:::
Ok I am officially jealous. I think I need to email these folks and see if they want to set up shop near me. LOL
I think they are going about it the right way. With VOIP you need high up speeds for it to sound good. Most ISPs don't get that. In their defense I can see them not wanting to help out file traders.
It will be interesting to see what kind of price is for all this. Unless they over price things or the service sucks I don't see how this could fail. Though I am left wondering what the TOS will look like. LOL
cyberbeing
join:2005-02-18
Sacramento, CA

1 recommendation

cyberbeing

Member

Sounds good

If they deliver what they are promising I would be impressed. What this company is proposing is a big step up from what Surewest offers. Surewest currently offers only 10Mbps and 20Mbps symmetrical connection along with the triple-play voip phone and iptv. Fision says they are going to offer all a 50, 75, and 100Mbps tier and offer more channels for TV. This is what I wish surewest would do. If all goes well for this company I would be envious.

Here is my guess on what base pricing would be.

$40-50 10Mbps
$70-90 25Mbps
$100-125 50Mbps
$150-175 75Mbps
$200-250 100Mbps

If you expect it to cost a lot less than that here in the US you are crazy. If this company prices it much higher than that then they are just being greedy. If they set prices lower I would be shocked considering how much it costs to install a high-speed fiber network.

houstontarge
Target
join:2005-01-08
Houston, TX

1 recommendation

houstontarge

Member

Re: Sounds good

Well, I'm signed up on their early registration list, but have not heard anything about availability or prices yet, hopefully it will develop soon, 10/10, would be a dream come true
cyberbeing
join:2005-02-18
Sacramento, CA

1 recommendation

cyberbeing

Member

Re: Sounds good

Has anybody in their test neighborhood in houston noticed any work being done. Like streets being dug up or people working on telephone poles. I am curious if they have started laying fiber yet or if this early sign-up is more of a market prospect thing to see if people are interested. For all you know they don't even have construction permits yet. It would probably take at least 6 months for them to get a network built and up and running properly so unless they have already started it may be awhile before you see these services.

I don't think it is a coincidence that the service is similar to Surewest who bought Winfirst when they went bankrupt. Winfirst was originally planning to build 100Mbps fiber networks in Sacramento, San Diego, Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and Las Vegas. Sacramento was the only area that was deployed before they went bankrupt. They already had regulatory approval to build a network in Texas and that left it open for another company to provide what Winfirst was never able to. Now this company seems to be filling the void that Winfirst left when they went bankrupt. Its also worth noteing that it seems like from the video they are using the same Amino equipment that Winfirst used.

MTBikerChris
Premium Member
join:2001-08-28
Erie, CO

1 recommendation

MTBikerChris

Premium Member

Re: Sounds good

»fision Internet/ tv / Dig phone

Pic's of the fiber on my block here in pearland TX sub of Houston. Its all ready to go.I waiting for it to go live.

Ps for all you SBC lovers if this works SBC is dead b4 they even get out of the House. Hmm maybe they (sbc/ATT) can learn something for this. I can only hope but they are dumb so who knows
The Gizmo
join:2002-03-12
Pearland, TX

The Gizmo

Member

Re: Sounds good

You live in Pearland? Heh, I do too... I actually called these people up and they said it would be a while before the service is in this area. He said like 2 years, which basically means 2 bad instead. Hopefully the guy just didn't know what he was talking about. I've had to suffer with ISDN for god knows how long not because I'm out of reach but because a silly cable company has claimed my area and has decided not to do anything in this area they have claimed, when my friend less than a mile down the street can get Road Runner cable with reliable download rates of up to 800KB/sec.... How lame is that? I have seen a whole bunch of construction down on the sides of some roads, digging up a bunch of crap next to the street every like 100 feet, although that could be something completely different than this, I haven't really payed much attention to it.

Like a few other people have said in here before, they can bring that fiber my way, don't think anyone will mind , It'd be a dream come true...

itsallgoodtome
@nycmny.fios.verizon.

itsallgoodtome

Anon

Its a speculative move.

Without competitive pricing, QOS, cutomer service, reasonable deployment scale and time-frames.. its all a bunch of vaporware!!

Hopefully, 25-100megabit symmetrical pricing will blow FIOS out of the water!! This might give them incentive, especially if they move it up north towards Dallas suburbs, tee-hee.
vinnie97
Premium Member
join:2003-12-05
US

vinnie97

Premium Member

Re: Its a speculative move.

said by itsallgoodtome :

especially if they move it up north towards Dallas suburbs, tee-hee.
Here here.

dadkins
Can you do Blu?
MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

dadkins to itsallgoodtome

MVM

to itsallgoodtome
10/10 will obliterate anything that Verizon has!
25/25 - 50/50 - 100/100... from Verizon? I don't think so!

Assault
join:2001-12-14
Garland, TX

Assault

Member

caps

Watch it have a 40GB monthly cap like Surewest fiber.
cyberbeing
join:2005-02-18
Sacramento, CA

cyberbeing

Member

Re: caps

I have the Surewest 20Mbps (actually 20/25Mbps) plan and they don't have a cap on it. I upload 50-100GB per day and download way over 40GB per month. I have even asked them about my usage and they don't care because the 20Mbps plan is unlimited. For all I know they might not even enforce caps on the 10Mbps plan but I don't have it anymore so there is no way to check.

I wouldn't be surprised if Fision does have strict caps. It would really suck if they do though. Surewest's 40GB cap was the the main reason I was hesitant to sign-up with them. Though once their unlimited 20Mbit plan was released it wasn't an issue anymore.
plattypus1
join:2005-04-08
Riverside, CA

plattypus1

Member

I'll dig the trench myself!

I'll dig the trench myself if they'll light the fiber. Come to Riverside, CA, thousands of Charter customers will thank you!

Cjaiceman
MVM
join:2004-10-12
Castle Rock, WA
(Software) pfSense
Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-AC-PRO

Cjaiceman

MVM

Re: I'll dig the trench myself!

quote:
I'll dig the trench myself if they'll light the fiber.
HERE HERE, I would do the same if they bring it to Denver. Were stuck with Qwest or Comcast, THATS IT! Qwest has very small amount of Fiber layed, and they only did it in a new area. Their fastest speeds are 40Mbps down, and 3Mbps up... I would be happy with that, but its only available to a very small amount of people.

Tzale
Proud Libertarian Conservative
Premium Member
join:2004-01-06
NYC Metro

Tzale

Premium Member

Broadband Wars

The broadband wars have arrived in America.

I still can't believe I'm posting this on my 30mbit residential broadband connection. The next five years will be the major change in broadband in America with the switch from copper based broadband to fiber optics and hybrid fiber / coax networks.

-Tzale