 OSIU
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OSIU
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2019-Jul-30 12:03 pm
MMMMMMMM...... Fiber! (Medina County, OH)» www.medina-gazette.com/M ··· nty.htmlIt does mention fiber to the home and I have seen some of this work happening. I wonder if the local municipal fiber business has anything to do with this? Probably not, because competition doesn't work. /sarcasm |
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I sensed a great deal of arrogance with Beqaj in this article. "We are exceedingly good at what we do. In a competitive situation, we tend to do better. We look forward to whatever the market conditions are. We are tough competitors." Let's see, Medina County Fiber Network charges less (almost half for 500Mbps), has no data caps, and has symmetrical download/upload. » www.medinafiber.com/Home ··· vicePlan Wonder if Armstrong will try to compete on any of those aspects? Congrats to those in Medina County for breaking free of the Armstrong monopoly chains. |
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 dslwanter20 years on this site
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That's not a bad price for 500/500 symmetrical (medina fiber). That is the start of the rumored GPON transition without a doubt and they're doing it because there's competition. Edit: The master of our domain quote made me go instantly to Seinfeld's "The Content" episode  . |
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This is great news for Medina County residents. Any fiber option is great, and seeing Armstrong keeping pace shows that having muni fiber cultivates healthy competition. Look at Armstrong’s other Ohio markets like Boardman/Youngstown and Ashland, where there’s no fiber option and Armstrong isn’t (publicly, at least) announcing any intention to improve infrastructure there.
I’d move to Medina County for that muni fiber. We’re moving in the next year or two anyway. I wasn’t even considering a city that didn’t have its own fiber to the home or AT&T Fiber. I don’t think these communities whose residents and city councils that are fighting bond issues to build or expand their muni fiber realize that, like good schools and access to highways/transportation, having fiber-to-the-premises attracts residents and businesses. And it will continue to become more important as younger people buy homes, and work in industries where work-from-home is more common and demands better connectivity. I know I’ll never move to another city where my Internet options are limited to one overpriced cable provider and one pathetically slow DSL offering.
If AT&T is winding down their effort to expand their FTTH footprint, and other providers like CenturyLink, Windstream, and Charter/Spectrum aren’t interested in picking up the slack by expanding their FTTH anytime soon, muni fiber is the only way that it’s going to happen in the next decade. |
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comp
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Evans City, PA ·Armstrong
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2019-Jul-30 7:38 pm
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said by OSIU:»www.medina-gazette.com/M ··· nty.html
It does mention fiber to the home and I have seen some of this work happening.
I wonder if the local municipal fiber business has anything to do with this? Probably not, because competition doesn't work. /sarcasm I am sure the Muni Fiber accelerated Armstrong here, but it was going to happen either way |
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to dslwanter
said by dslwanter:That's not a bad price for 500/500 symmetrical (medina fiber). That is the start of the rumored GPON transition without a doubt and they're doing it because there's competition.
Edit: The master of our domain quote made me go instantly to Seinfeld's "The Content" episode . Oh it Started They have been digging up Cranberry since January The plan i was told was to be done at the end of the year but i think the date is slipping due to digging issues |
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dslwanter20 years on this site
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said by xpxp2002:This is great news for Medina County residents. Any fiber option is great, and seeing Armstrong keeping pace shows that having muni fiber cultivates healthy competition. Look at Armstrong’s other Ohio markets like Boardman/Youngstown and Ashland, where there’s no fiber option and Armstrong isn’t (publicly, at least) announcing any intention to improve infrastructure there. I am on their Boardman system, when we built our house last year they buried a dual rg6/fiber drop for easier switchover. They acquired 2 surrounding areas east and west of the existing system in 2008, these are FTTH. Techs have all confirmed a GPON transition, nothing officially announced though like you said. |
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comp
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Evans City, PA ·Armstrong
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comp
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2019-Jul-30 9:33 pm
said by dslwanter:said by xpxp2002:This is great news for Medina County residents. Any fiber option is great, and seeing Armstrong keeping pace shows that having muni fiber cultivates healthy competition. Look at Armstrong’s other Ohio markets like Boardman/Youngstown and Ashland, where there’s no fiber option and Armstrong isn’t (publicly, at least) announcing any intention to improve infrastructure there. I am on their Boardman system, when we built our house last year they buried a dual rg6/fiber drop for easier switchover. They acquired 2 surrounding areas east and west of the existing system in 2008, these are FTTH. Techs have all confirmed a GPON transition, nothing officially announced though like you said. It was announced. When they started cranberry it was in the local paper. I think it was a 10 or 15 year plan to cover the entire footprint Cranberry was/is the first town/city they plan to fully convert |
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dslwanter20 years on this site
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said by comp:said by dslwanter:said by xpxp2002:This is great news for Medina County residents. Any fiber option is great, and seeing Armstrong keeping pace shows that having muni fiber cultivates healthy competition. Look at Armstrong’s other Ohio markets like Boardman/Youngstown and Ashland, where there’s no fiber option and Armstrong isn’t (publicly, at least) announcing any intention to improve infrastructure there. I am on their Boardman system, when we built our house last year they buried a dual rg6/fiber drop for easier switchover. They acquired 2 surrounding areas east and west of the existing system in 2008, these are FTTH. Techs have all confirmed a GPON transition, nothing officially announced though like you said. It was announced. When they started cranberry it was in the local paper. I think it was a 10 or 15 year plan to cover the entire footprint Cranberry was/is the first town/city they plan to fully convert Nothing in the media here, of course, we are losing our local newspaper so and our news stations don't showcase a whole lot of "tech". But yeah, it's been confirmed by techs with a goal of completion across the entire footprint 2030, this was last year. Competition will drive who gets it first, as in the case of Medina. Is Verizon FIOS in the Cranberry area? There is no competition in the Boardman area, makes me think we will be later on the timeline. The pre-planning of a dual drop will hopefully mitigate some of the digging issues, but they will still have to replace the main feeder and put in splices. I am wondering if they will be placing cabinets to split F1 and F2 lines. Fiber to neighborhood cabinets (F1) and feeders to homes (F2) as nodes will be probably be going away with the RF plant. In the 2008 build, they stayed with nodes and converted fiber to coax CPE for RF signals, RFoG. |
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comp
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Evans City, PA |
comp
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2019-Jul-31 9:36 am
No they have no competition in Cranberry. However the Median Income in Cranberry is close to 100K for a Family. Probably one of the highest in there footprint so they know they can get there money back there quick |
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dslwanter20 years on this site
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said by comp:No they have no competition in Cranberry. However the Median Income in Cranberry is close to 100K for a Family. Probably one of the highest in there footprint so they know they can get there money back there quick Nice, while I am quite lucky, the median income in this market around $26k per household...so...yeah lol. If any of you guys are seeing construction and you're able to snap a few photos, it would be neat to see. Over in the AT&T board, they've had a deployment thread going for about 3 years. Obviously, ours wouldn't get that large but it would be cool to blog it in a thread as we see it happen. |
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comp
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Evans City, PA |
comp
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2019-Jul-31 9:47 am
I meant to get a photo of the water pipe they busted on Route 19 a month or so back. Last I heard it sounds like they are 6 months behind. Had more issues then they thought digging up along the main road and winter is coming lol |
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dslwanter20 years on this site
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Mineral Ridge, OH ·Armstrong
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said by comp:I meant to get a photo of the water pipe they busted on Route 19 a month or so back. Last I heard it sounds like they are 6 months behind. Had more issues then they thought digging up along the main road and winter is coming lol Oh I can't wait, everything here is buried, they're sure to rupture something. Was it Armstrong or a contractor? When they did the 2008 deployment here, it was an Armstrong construction truck. I know that AT&T & Verizon are contracting out their stringing of fiber, but I am not sure Armstrong being a smaller scale if they would or just do it themselves. |
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comp
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Evans City, PA |
comp
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2019-Jul-31 10:04 am
I have only seen contractors. They may use there guys for the "last mile" work but for right now only contractors so far |
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I’m surprised anyone is doing muni fiber or that Armstrong is investing in fiber. By the 2030 complete date everything may be 5g+ wireless. |
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comp
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Evans City, PA ·Armstrong
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comp
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2019-Jul-31 8:14 pm
said by kirk1233:I’m surprised anyone is doing muni fiber or that Armstrong is investing in fiber. By the 2030 complete date everything may be 5g+ wireless. I highly doubt that. Cell companies still can’t get LTE at full speeds to everyone |
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dslwanter20 years on this site
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Cell can't handle saturation. |
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While that is correct right now when most neighborhoods have micro cells spread throughout with 10gig+ fiber backing it up wireless may be a serious alternative. 2030 is a long time for wireless to up its game and the technology is coming into shape to allow it. Part of me will always want a wire backed network at home but I think wireless will be a major force in home connectivity in not so long. |
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dslwanter20 years on this site
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said by kirk1233:While that is correct right now when most neighborhoods have micro cells spread throughout with 10gig+ fiber backing it up wireless may be a serious alternative. 2030 is a long time for wireless to up its game and the technology is coming into shape to allow it. Part of me will always want a wire backed network at home but I think wireless will be a major force in home connectivity in not so long. While it will be a major player, it will never be a true replacement against a solid FTTH connection. As soon as 5g catches up with true, consistent 1gbps, you will be seeing NGPON2 and XG-PON2, Verizon is already starting. Comp is right, they haven't even perfected 4g lte to its fullest potential. While many can't justify the need for more than 1gbps connection right now, there was a time and a place where nobody saw beyond 10mbps. The arrogant prick in the article is right, the fiber they lay will outlive him and generations to come, it will be a matter of upgrading equipment and the sky is forever the limit. The biggest difference between AT&T and Verizon is that Verizon went straight FTTH, AT&T focused on FTTN VDSL and tried to milk the copper plant as much as possible. This is a reason we are lagging way behind on FTTH deployments in this country. |
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With Facebook pushing the long-haul fiber through certain parts of WV, Ohio and Virginia with construction suppose to begin this year if it hasn't started already this might get companies like Armstrong to step up that much sooner with upgrades to their network. |
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Facebook long haul fiber? First I’ve heard about that.
Any links you could share? I just did a search online and I’m not seeing anything other than a Facebook DC going up in New Albany. |
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That's interesting. Thanks.
I wouldn't think that would have any impact on last-mile broadband efforts, but it's possible that Facebook could take advantage of that path to lay some last-mile fiber and backhaul a couple cities in WV to Ashburn for broadband. |
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dslwanter20 years on this site
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Had a B.S. session with an Armstrong tech at a local brewery last night. Was above just being an "installer". Was chatting with someone else about my home network and antenna coax distribution, he chimed in with interest and said he worked for a local cable company, I asked Armstrong? More beer commenced. He confirmed a few things:
-The company wide GPON transition from HFC is happening; starting with Medina and Cranberry which we already knew.
-Other areas will be slower to transition, they will begin targeting areas where deep fiber is already ran for business and expand from there.
-EXP is a transition to prepare customers for an eventual evolution to IPTV.
-The potential is there, though he could not confirm, you might be able to "use your own" device (obviously, not a "modem" when we're talking fiber), to handle connection and authentication such as the Ubiquiti Edgerouter X which has an SFP port that can be configured for WAN, depending on the type of authentication used.
-Speeds will be symmetrical, which I expected.
-They will not be going DOCSIS 3.1 at all.
-Data caps are going nowhere. |
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Thanks for sharing all that. Wow.
Not surprised they're passing over D3.1. It's a waste at this point for them to start, and I wish more providers like Charter/Spectrum would have spent their time and capital pushing deep fiber and bringing GPON online from 2016-2026, rather than kicking the can down the road another decade. D3.0 with 32x4 would've been enough to do at least 500/35 in most plants, and with a little bit of node-splitting Spectrum could've avoided D3.1 altogether and redirected that spending to something more future-leaning.
Even when FDX is done in Comcast and Spectrum territories (likely not coming for another 3-5 years, at least), it'll have to compete with XG/XGS-PON wherever AT&T, Verizon, and other regional ISPs like Armstrong have already built out their original GPON infrastructure. Those XG technologies use different wavelengths, so they can run side-by-side with legacy GPON. Once the headend infrastructure is installed, it's just a matter of staging upgrades of CPE to roll out 2-10Gb speeds to customers. And at that point, not only will the MSOs with legacy coax plants be playing catch-up, but they'll be having to shell out millions to lay new fiber in 2025+ in order to catch up.
Sad that data caps aren't going away, but it's obvious that they aren't doing this because they face any reasonable competition. The fact that they're keeping caps and doing FTTH in places like Medina and Cranberry first tells me that they see this as an opportunity to upsell. Medina and Cranberry are more affluent markets among Armstrong's portfolio. Armstrong likely sees conceding price-conscious subscribers to Frontier in Medina, Verizon in Cranberry, and AT&T just about everywhere else like Ashland and Youngstown. Then again, once the Capex is spent, Armstrong will have a new infrastructure with plenty of capacity to do IPTV for video as you mentioned. They could very well end up just undercutting the ILECs and sell a "Zoom Fiber 200" for $60/mo, bundle in TV for another $60-80 and still beat AT&T's speeds and pricing on DSL + the new AT&T TV. |
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comp
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Evans City, PA |
comp
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2019-Aug-22 2:28 pm
Verizon is not in Cranberry.. The only competition they have in Cranberry is Consolidated who has a very small footprint |
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said by comp:Verizon is not in Cranberry.. The only competition they have in Cranberry is Consolidated who has a very small footprint Never heard of them. As far as I knew, the ILEC throughout western PA was all Verizon. Sounds kind of like those pockets of Windstream and CenturyLink in tiny areas of Ohio. |
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comp
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comp
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2019-Aug-22 2:57 pm
said by xpxp2002:said by comp:Verizon is not in Cranberry.. The only competition they have in Cranberry is Consolidated who has a very small footprint Never heard of them. As far as I knew, the ILEC throughout western PA was all Verizon. Sounds kind of like those pockets of Windstream and CenturyLink in tiny areas of Ohio. They arent much competition Century Link has a good grasp in Western PA but they havent upgraded anything in probably a decade Verizon is more of the actual Pittsburgh area and the south hills area |
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dslwanter20 years on this site
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said by comp:said by xpxp2002:said by comp:Verizon is not in Cranberry.. The only competition they have in Cranberry is Consolidated who has a very small footprint Never heard of them. As far as I knew, the ILEC throughout western PA was all Verizon. Sounds kind of like those pockets of Windstream and CenturyLink in tiny areas of Ohio. They arent much competition Century Link has a good grasp in Western PA but they havent upgraded anything in probably a decade Verizon is more of the actual Pittsburgh area and the south hills area Around here, the tiny pocket of CenturyLink is Warren and most of Central Trumbull County (old Sprint/Embarq territory). While they haven't done much in the way of upgrades, they do have ADSL 2+ DSLAMs well placed throughout Trumbull County. I can plug in just about any address in Warren, Champion, and Vienna and get offered up to 24mbps. Something AT&T & Verizon did not do is deploy ADSL2/2+ extensively. COs in AT&T territory that did not go VDSL (real U-Verse) were upgraded to ADSL2+ (fake U-Verse, basically all COs in the Youngstown area, the armpit of AT&T's Ohio footprint, the only one AT&T Ohio Market with ziltch FTTH), but they did not deploy ADSL2+ to any Remote Terminals. For example, our CO is ADSL2+, however, the nearby Remote Terminal got ADSL around 2010, presumably when they upgraded the CO DSLAM. I would take uncapped 24mbps for a reasonable price, say under $40/month over 100mbps 1tb for $63, eventually to go $73. |
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said by dslwanter:but they did not deploy ADSL2+ to any Remote Terminals. For example, our CO is ADSL2+, however, the nearby Remote Terminal got ADSL around 2010, presumably when they upgraded the CO DSLAM. I didn't realize AT&T never brought RTs close enough to serve many homes around the Youngstown part of the market. It really is sad how neglected that part of AT&T Ohio has become. My parents live in a development of about 70 homes. They started getting DSL flyers in the mail at least 15 years ago, so I always assumed they were eligible when AT&T brought a DSLAM online a few miles up the road. I just punched their address into the AT&T website and it says it's not serviceable for internet. Unbelievable in 2019. But as I think about it, it kind of makes sense. I'd guesstimate that the F2 run is probably a mile of copper from the house and the F1 trunk probably runs another .75-1mi up the road. That's ~10,000ft. Guessing that would hit 6Mbps with ADSL2+, and honestly don't blame AT&T for not even offering that. There probably aren't even enough ports left in the DSLAM cards up the road that it would make sense for them to sell that service. Thinking about it, though, I can't believe their neighborhood wasn't large enough to get its own DSLAM. Even where I live in bankrupt Windstream territory, they just put in a new VDSL DSLAM at the RT site last year -- only ~5000ft away. They're offering 100Mbps at that distance with bonded pairs, and up to 200Mbps if you're a little bit closer. |
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