I got a flyer in the snail mail the other day that said “surf fiber internet will soon be available to you”. My Mom has fiber internet in another state, and I know it’s fast for her (albeit she has verizon fios). I live in the USA Midwest Chicago area- and I have had comcast xfinity for 20+ years here. They are a ripoff. I am charged 88.95 a month USD. I have no TV or any other services other than basic internet (I think it’s the second lowest speed- they may call it “performance internet”)
What I did notice (and this may be a coincidence) was that they must be doing some construction on my street because they made survey marks on my property and painted where the gas line and water lines are. Could this be because they are putting in the fiber cables?
Thinking of switching but want to get opinions of others. Besides cost reasons, comcast can suck off because they are basically part of other hollywood support corporations that are part of ACE. (this is the other reason I want to do it)
Price locked fiber? Crazy
I scoured their website and they completely fail to explain what they are actually doing on a technical level. I assume it would probably be a GPON network, just based on the offered speed. Not the best type of fiber connectivity, but probably pretty normal for the USA market.
That said, single mode fiber is absolutely the way forward and if you replace the devices on the end it can scale almost indefinitely. So I would jump on the occasion of having some laid to your house.
They don’t have IPv6 and they don’t offer static IPs which both kind of sucks, but it might be acceptable: https://support.surfinternet.com/surf-broadband-fiber-faqs No data caps is good at least.
Concerning your question about the markings, they spell out their process on this page, it does include marking existing utilities: https://surfinternet.com/fiber-optic-installation-process/
When you cancel your Comcast, telling them you’re moving internationally ends things much faster than saying you’re switching providers.
Similar tactic for cellular service: tell them the company you work for is giving you a phone. That has worked for me in the past. It’s impossible for them to compete with free.
Lol when I did this they had the balls to ask me if I knew who was moving into the house I was currently selling so I could move to Germany. Fuck Comcast.
Incredible, right?! Telling them you’re moving internationally speeds up account cancelation, but they’ll still keep you on the phone for like ten minutes!
I assume you have a good story behind this
You probably don’t need 2GB. Maybe even not 1GB. I have 1GB Internet and love the speeds, but unless I’m downloading a game from steam, I never really max it out.
That said, for someone who grew up before the Internet and experienced 28K modems (and slower), it’s hella rude to sometimes just run ookla speed test for kicks.
What is actually being offered here? It says ‘2 gig’ in several places, I assume that means 2 Gb/s? No way that’s actually 2 GB/s, right?
I hate imprecise language in advertisements, smh
Network speeds are pretty much always advertised in bit/s not bytes so yes.
I’m closing in on 50, so I remember my 14.4 modems! I had aol! I don’t use steam even when shower, if I do it would be too hot! Honestly I only play 2 games, they are both for MS-DOS and I’m an avid linux user. Rather than play new fancy games I reverse engineer and modify old ones. My executables are like 1mb each. I am learning x86 dissasembly.
According to their “About Us” page, they were a small business that is now financed by Post Road Group and Bain Capital. Creating competition for Comcast is a great thing, but I’d bet over the years those capital partners are going to demand enshittification for profit. I’d still drop Comcast like a rock though.
The excavation in the street sounds like the same thing Google Fiber did in my neighborhood, microtrenching fiber in the street along the curb. Has worked great for me for almost 10 years now
Bain capital? Run. Just run away as far as you can. Never ever do anything with them. They fuck up the world.
It would take literal decades of enshitification to be as bad as Comcast 🙏
Dunno, decades of enshittification might happen overnight, like a singularity. A shitgularity, as it were.
But Comcast/Xfinity is truly, truly horrible. Their tech support sucks and there are some account-related things you need to talk to them for. I feel stressed just thinking about it.
No idea, but fuck comcast.
Nepo baby operated company that wasted 100 billion dollars on brain dead business ventures while taking money from US taxpayer and failing to invest it as instructed, ie infrastructure. I guess they might be upgrading it now
They suck all around, I would never use them unless they are THE ONLY CHOICE.
I don’t really torrent much, and would use a vpn if I did anything I would worry about- however I do leave my computer up most of the time sharing a ton of old music on soulseek. I have never had a problem.
Hey, look, I found the one and only person who’s never had a problem with Comcast.
We’ve never had a problem with our Xfinity service either. We use both their cable internet and mobile service.
To be fair, I work in IT, we use our own equipment and the service was already hooked up when we bought the house so they just activated it in our name.
We’re a low need customer as I take care of most things myself.
I also work in tech, and was what you’d call a low need customer.
The Xfinity service in my entire neighborhood would go down almost daily, and sometimes more than twice a day. On top of that, it would sometimes cut out just long enough to disconnect my remote shells, causing me to have to reauthenticate. It was horrible, my new (community) fiber is a huge improvement. I think it’s gone down once since having it installed almost two years ago.
I’d go for it. Fuck, I’d go for anything right now. I’m paying $60 for a an average speed of about 1 mb down from T-Mobile, and that’s the best option here.
Rural?
Semirural.
Thank you to everyone that has been replying! When I say I “haven’t had a problem with comcast” I mean I wasn’t targeted for sharing anything. I had 1 letter back in like 2019 sent when I downloaded a fresh episode of a popular tv show. Besides that- never, but I’m not a good model because I don’t like anything new, popular or hollywood.
You would probably get better answers by looking for reviews of their service. Seems Surf Internet is a regional ISP, so it’s unlikely there are many of their customers here.
You may as well call them and ask. Main things you want to find out are what plans/prices they offer and if they have any data caps. And/or if it’s still under construction definitely ask to be put on their list of interested customers.
Honestly just about anything fiber is going to be an improvement over Comcast cable internet… if I were you I’d at least inquire if they have a 1 gig download/upload plan and work from there. Good luck!
I wish I could get fiber. I’ve got pretty solid coax internet, but my upload speeds are maxed out constantly. Backing up my server can take days at 40mbps(max).
Call them and ask.
My block has buried lines. A block away, they have overheads. The new local fiber provider is only running lines along overheads for now, with plans to tackle buried lines in another few years. Despite sending me half a tree worth of mailers, they won’t run fiber to my house yet and the only way I was able to find that out was to call them up and talk to them.
If they can’t dot the i in fiber, I question the company. See first line
I would guess that there’s no dot in the i just because of the font they used, so it’s intended.
I don’t know this company but fiber came into my area (central WI) a few years ago and I couldn’t be happier.
Prior to that the infrastructure I was on for cable internet was old and would have frequent problems.
The brand new infrastructure is figuratively worth its weight in gold, imho, even if the company itself is just as crap and your price ends up the same.
Even better, the fiber cables run underground, so other than having them severed when digging, they won’t go out unless there is a major widespread outage. No random branch taking out your service in a wind storm or whatever nonsense.
It’ll save you nearly $50 a month. So even if the customer service is exactly the same, you get to keep another $600 each year.
I switched to my local provider from Xfinity about three months ago, and my internet speeds are twice as fast for the same money.
