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I recently bought a house in Utah. Utopia is the best internet provider experience I've had so far (I've had Xfinity and Verizon previously). Speeds are typica

by ubj 2y ago

I recently bought a house in Utah. Utopia is the best internet provider experience I've had so far (I've had Xfinity and Verizon previously). Speeds are typically 10-25 Mbps _faster_ than the advertised rate I'm paying for. Being able to have multiple (~5 or more) provider options to choose between is a welcome change from past monopolies I've been trapped in. Granted this all could change down the road (I hope not), but so far so good.

snielson 2y ago
Utopia provides an active ethernet connection to each subscriber with the specified bandwidth. This is superior to most fiber deployments, which are passive optical networks (GPON) where groups of 16-32 homes share a connection (usually 2.4 Gb down and 1.2 Gb up). I live in Utah and actively worked to get fiber in my small city. Utopia requires cities to guarantee a take rate (40% if I recall correctly) and taxpayers must make up any deficiency. I've never heard of taxpayers actually doing that but it was enough to scare people from adopting Utopia in my city. Ultimately what brought fiber to my city was covid. The monetary tsunami unleashed by the federal reserve and the government made it possible for a local private company to build a fiber network. I just got hooked up last week. It is great. The other thing that happened is that the wireless companies offer high quality internet service. For a time I had both Comcast and T-Mobile home internet. I regularly got speeds of 1.2-1.4 Gb down on T-Mobile (100 Mbps up). Verizon also offers home internet but it was too unstable when I tried it. All this is to say that I have three high quality Internet connections at my home (fiber, T-Mobile, and Comcast), one marginal connection (Verizon), and one garbage connection (Century Link; however, they have also been installing fiber in the area). Competition is great!
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  With active its just the last mile that is not shared, everything after that is shared. So it can suffer from the same oversubscription problem, just depends on how good the ISP is. But adding more capacity on those shared links is easier than fixing capacity issues on a PON deployment.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > Ultimately what brought fiber to my city was covid. The monetary tsunami unleashed by the federal reserve and the government made it possible for a local private company to build a fiber network. Same. Federal broadband funds led to fiber deployment here. We went from one ISP to ~10. We went from 40Mb up w/ 40ms latency for $119 to 1Gb up w/ 4ms latency for $49. Over 20+ years, I've read dozens of articles about major ISPs receiving government money/incentives (billions in total) to improve consumer options. This is the first time I've witnessed an internet company keep that promise. Predictably, it wasn't a major ISP.
- tracker1 2y ago
  Verizon home, where available, isn't too bad... it's definitely a good backup connection for WFH scenarios.
  - snielson 2y ago
    T-mobile business has a backup plan for $30/mo ($15/mo on a promo a month ago) that can be used for up to 7 days of internet per month. I signed up for it so I will still have internet if my fiber goes out (my router will automatically switch over in an outage).
    - tracker1 2y ago
      Yeah, Verizon is similar... I really need to setup the automatic failover on my router, I'd been unplugging one an plugging in the other for the couple times I've needed it. Aside, really want to run a script to reboot the cable modem daily... it seems to build up a number of errors on a couple of the channels, but a reboot has it working fine again. It slows down a bit while it happens, and I only notice when streaming starts buffering a lot.
HideousKojima 2y ago
I also have UTOPIA and I'm getting 1Gbps up and down for $50 a month. And I think there's a slower option (250 Mbps or something like that) for under $40. Works like a dream. My only complaint is that my ISP (XMission) didn't add IPv6 support until relatively recently.

by ubj 2y ago

snielson 2y ago

Utopia provides an active ethernet connection to each subscriber with the specified bandwidth. This is superior to most fiber deployments, which are passive optical networks (GPON) where groups of 16-32 homes share a connection (usually 2.4 Gb down and 1.2 Gb up). I live in Utah and actively worked to get fiber in my small city. Utopia requires cities to guarantee a take rate (40% if I recall correctly) and taxpayers must make up any deficiency. I've never heard of taxpayers actually doing that but it was enough to scare people from adopting Utopia in my city. Ultimately what brought fiber to my city was covid. The monetary tsunami unleashed by the federal reserve and the government made it possible for a local private company to build a fiber network. I just got hooked up last week. It is great. The other thing that happened is that the wireless companies offer high quality internet service. For a time I had both Comcast and T-Mobile home internet. I regularly got speeds of 1.2-1.4 Gb down on T-Mobile (100 Mbps up). Verizon also offers home internet but it was too unstable when I tried it. All this is to say that I have three high quality Internet connections at my home (fiber, T-Mobile, and Comcast), one marginal connection (Verizon), and one garbage connection (Century Link; however, they have also been installing fiber in the area). Competition is great!

Hikikomori 2y ago
With active its just the last mile that is not shared, everything after that is shared. So it can suffer from the same oversubscription problem, just depends on how good the ISP is. But adding more capacity on those shared links is easier than fixing capacity issues on a PON deployment.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> Ultimately what brought fiber to my city was covid. The monetary tsunami unleashed by the federal reserve and the government made it possible for a local private company to build a fiber network. Same. Federal broadband funds led to fiber deployment here. We went from one ISP to ~10. We went from 40Mb up w/ 40ms latency for $119 to 1Gb up w/ 4ms latency for $49. Over 20+ years, I've read dozens of articles about major ISPs receiving government money/incentives (billions in total) to improve consumer options. This is the first time I've witnessed an internet company keep that promise. Predictably, it wasn't a major ISP.
tracker1 2y ago
Verizon home, where available, isn't too bad... it's definitely a good backup connection for WFH scenarios.
- snielson 2y ago
  T-mobile business has a backup plan for $30/mo ($15/mo on a promo a month ago) that can be used for up to 7 days of internet per month. I signed up for it so I will still have internet if my fiber goes out (my router will automatically switch over in an outage).
  - tracker1 2y ago
    Yeah, Verizon is similar... I really need to setup the automatic failover on my router, I'd been unplugging one an plugging in the other for the couple times I've needed it. Aside, really want to run a script to reboot the cable modem daily... it seems to build up a number of errors on a couple of the channels, but a reboot has it working fine again. It slows down a bit while it happens, and I only notice when streaming starts buffering a lot.

HideousKojima 2y ago

I also have UTOPIA and I'm getting 1Gbps up and down for $50 a month. And I think there's a slower option (250 Mbps or something like that) for under $40. Works like a dream. My only complaint is that my ISP (XMission) didn't add IPv6 support until relatively recently.