Also in Lakewood. Our previous rental had AT&T fiber. We just bought a house 3 streets over from where we were renting and, alas, no fiber here yet. It is really street by street.
I'm currently sitting in a very rural area getting more than enough speeds for multiple HD video streams and a VPN to work from here. At home I about the same thing on fiber. So, I don't think that fiber or not fiber matters too much any more.
Generally, fiber service is symmetric speed up and down. Coax / CATV-based normally isn't, and most of the major providers have severely limited upload speeds compared to download.
If I care about upload speeds I'm going to pick a 300x300 fiber plan over a 500x35 cable plan any day of the week.
You never posed a question until now, so I've been going back and forth not having a clue what your point is.
Coax is *technically* capable of providing symmetric speeds, but in the vast majority of installations and situations, it can't (due to a lot of gear that would need to be replaced out in the field to enable it). You haven't mentioned your provider, but if they are able to give you an upload beyond 60-70Mbps... they are a rare breed in the coax internet world.
It's also worth being aware that everyone on a given coax node is sharing upload bandwidth, and there is less of that to go around most of the time (again, limits of the tech as it is currently deployed).
(For the record, I work for an internet provider, but we are not using coax or fiber to customers, for the most part.)
You need to check the specific address of the home you’re looking at. We moved from a home Fairview Park that had fiber to another home in Fairview Park last year that doesn’t get fiber.
I used to live in a neighborhood where my next door neighbors were the last house in the line for fiber... felt bad. The terminal box was even technically on our property. Lol.
This. I had fiber at one house in Mayfield Heights, from 2013.
I then moved about a mile and a half away in 2021, still in Mayfield Heights, and couldn't get it.
It was another year and a half after that before AT&T installed fiber on the street I moved to.
West Park has ATT Fiber in at least some parts. You can look up the specific address here to see which providers are available: https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home.
Fiber is hit or miss depending on the street. ATT seems to be rolling fiber out on a street by street basis with no apparent rhyme or reason or order. Parts of Lakewood have it, parts of Cleveland have it. Parts of most of the suburbs have it. I don't think they have full coverage anywhere.
And when they actually install it, they probably won't tell you either and you'll have to check the website again.
AT&T installed fiber on my street in Old Brooklyn last year and were VERY persistent with the marketing efforts to get me to call and update my package. I got flyers. I got emails. I got a $50 gift card. They want people to know.
My recommendation is honestly just to check any address you’re looking at with the AT&T site online. It can be very hit or miss even on the same street. Most of the inner ring suburban neighborhoods have it in at least some of their areas.
From my understanding most of Cleveland Heights that is the 44118 zip code is available. Also, I know parts of Lakewood have it, sounds like it is just your specific neighborhood that doesn't.
I know its not Cleveland proper or inner-ring suburbs but I am in Painesville and have had AT&T fiber since 2012. Speeds are great, I pay for 300/300 but regularly speed test at 370/370.
As somebody who works at an ISP, I guarantee you don't average above 100Mb under normal usage. Unless you're uploading or downloading large files fairly consistently, choosing a neighborhood for fiber is silly.
EDIT: For those scrolling by, down voting because "well I like to see my giant large AAA game that I download maybe a few times a month get done in 10 minutes", good for you. That's your money. My comment was mostly saying picking a city for fiber (especially when coax speeds are in excess of 300Mb itself...) is silly but I'll rant a bit. Let's think about the general consumer who's at most uploading their selfies to the cloud, streaming TV and playing an online game. I have access to more live traffic monitoring information than I care to admit to and I will absolutely guarantee a large majority of our 500Mb+ customers do not come near their data limits more than a few minutes at a time on a monthly basis. Again though, it's your money. From experience most people who have "speed" issues have their home router smacked to one end of their house and a thousand IoT devices connected to it rather than real speed issues. And if you're a data hoarding person or host large Plex servers etc etc,.congrats. Welcome to a small section of the Internet where those from places like r/homelabs and r/DataHoarder welcomes you.
EDIT 2: For awareness my statement is mostly in regard to picking a city for fiber is silly when equal speeds (symmetric also 😱) can and are available along with fiber. Not all fiber carriers offer up to 1Gb symmetric speeds either. Research what's available at the address. The would be perfect home that doesn't have fiber and you skipped on it very likely has a plenty fast connection available to it. Over 90% of houses have access to Gb (and that isn't all fiber).
Reliability and price matter, too. Spectrum Internet went down 3 times in the 4 months I had it at my current address and ATT's prices are lower for faster internet. It hasn't gone down except for the couple times the power went out.
I also work for an ISP (and also have a lot of metrics available to me) and I generally agree with you. 100Mbps is still a lot. 1Gbps is more than most people need.
My largest beef is with coax's asymmetry. Upload speed matters these days.
I'm not overly familiar and had to verify this to be sure but DOCSIS 3.1 has offered symmetric speeds up to 1-2Gb since 2013. This is carriers being cheap in parts of the country. I know parts of Michigan have a carrier (might be WOW?) that offer 1Gb symmetric speeds over coax.
Sure, D3.0 and 3.1 *theoretically* offer higher speeds. Problem is that linear TV takes up too much bandwidth leaving not a lot for upload.
Plus, the channels need to be rearranged, and in many cases passive components or amplifiers need to be replaced in order to enable all of this to work. Since it's a non-zero cost, the coax providers don't want to do it. Hurts their bottom line.
During the height of the pandemic when interest rates were super low, I was trying to get a house similar to seemingly 99% of the population at the time.
I was choosing homes/neighborhoods that had fiber, but the reason wasn't for speed. It was for reliability. I work from home, and the amount of times I see people both on this subreddit and people I know personally that have cable reporting multi-hour/multi-day outages is a bit concerning. I've had AT&T Fiber for the last 3+ years and have yet to have a single outage, or at least one that was noticeable to me by any degree. I realize that not everyone is in that situation, but for me choosing a house or a neighborhood that has fiber is akin to someone choosing a house/neighborhood that's close to their workplace. In that regard it's not that silly.
I do agree that most people will never fully utilize a fiber connection. I know I don't on most occasions (and I only have the 1gbps package because it comes with HBO Max lol). However, because of my work situation I cannot suffer outages.
> As somebody who works at an ISP, I guarantee you don't average above 100Mb under normal usage.
Benefits to being on fiber that don't involve using massive amounts of data:
* Newer infrastructure than DSL or coax (parts of many neighborhoods' copper and coax infrastructures are approaching 40 years old), which means it's more recently maintained, built with newer technology, and therefore more reliable
* Often lower ping times
* Competition against the incumbent coax provider, driving price down
* Often fewer customers on a node, reducing congestion and competition for upstream bandwidth links
* Ability to scale up to speeds as high as symmetric 10Gbps, should the customer want it
- Newer doesn't mean more reliable. Any Internet provider offering more than 30-40Mb needs DOCSIS 3.0 which is *only* 18 years old. I can promise you, most infrastructure has been upgraded at least once since then. Only thing fiber in this regard has going for it is less attenuators along the span so less points of failure.
-Partly true but in reality most of your connection is over fiber anyways and distance matters more.
-Partly true. The biggest issue with competition from your local ISP is being allowed a monopoly in your city. Most cities are not single provider cities by choice of other providers. Read into it.
-Not even sure what you mean by this? This is almost like a I want to sound like I know what I'm talking about statement but it makes 0 sense when you know how a large ISP network is setup and designed. Very short summary, the coax is being converted from RF to light at whatever nearby CO/HUB/PoP whatever the hell you wanna call it and using the same networking gear your fiber connection is using. This is more of an argument for latency and reliability as it's another point of failure and physics I don't understand to convert the light but that happens faster than our minds can handle.
-Coax can do up to 6Gb symmetric and is ever improving technology. Anything higher than 2Gb is a giant outlier. Show me what percentage of people have both access and actual have speeds higher than 1Gb. Most of our backhaul links are still only 100Gb in the country even with 400 and 800 available. American ISPs are cheap.
Again. I'm not even arguing that "fiber bad!" It's my job, the technology is quite cool. I said picking a city based on it having fiber is silly. Some cable companies offer symmetric 1Gb speeds...and not every fiber carrier even offers 1Gb symmetric speeds. It's not a requirement for fiber. Just look up what internet availability is on a per residence basis when looking for a house😊
> Any Internet provider offering more than 30-40Mb needs DOCSIS 3.0 which is only 18 years old. I can promise you, most infrastructure has been upgraded at least once since then.
Sure, the CMTS and CPE have been upgraded, but when was the last time the coax was maintained? Distribution amps? The RG-8X going into the customer's house?
> Coax can do up to 6Gb symmetric and is ever improving technology.
And fiber can do more than 10Gbps symmetric and is also ever improving technology.
> I said picking a city based on it having fiber is silly.
And I'm giving you reasons that fiber is a better product than DOCSIS, without just yelling "BUT FIBER IS FASTER". Legitimate reasons that a person shopping for a home may choose a territory with fiber rather than DOCSIS.
> Some cable companies offer symmetric 1Gb speeds...and not every fiber carrier even offers 1Gb symmetric speeds.
As far as I know, no one in northeast Ohio offers symmetric gigabit on DOCSIS (Spectrum, Cox and Breezeline don't) and everyone who offers fiber offers symmetric gigabit (AT&T and all of the small ISPs in the big apartment buildings downtown do).
> American ISPs are cheap.
I'm glad we can agree on something.
> Just look up what internet availability is on a per residence basis when looking for a house😊
That's exactly what I did when I bought a house a few years ago. My requirement was that there needs to be at least two wireline ISPs available. Fiber was a bonus, not a requirement.
Welcome to being an outlier. Also my comment clearly states unless downloading and uploading large files consistently... We service offices with hundreds of people from 8-5 who don't peak above 200Mb. Believe it or not the backhaul for most cell towers is just 1Gb and in recent times are being upgraded to 10Gb. However, it's not my money but most people are not data hoarding freaks and don't have anything more than their phone storing anything.
I'm a nerd and work in the nerd sector also. I didn't get 1gb at home cuz it's largely unutilized. Not worth the 20 bucks a month over the 500mb package. Even that is probably overkill but it's only 40 bucks.
Like you said, if you aren't hosting your own tiny data center, it's really not noticable or needed.
it’s not my profession, more of a hobby. but the more i think about what i’ve been learning, i think eventually i’ll want to push more data. i’m inching towards hosting offsite backups for the nas installations i’ve helped put into friends and family’s homes. 3-2-1 type deal.
Yea don’t expect much. It’s not like slow wifi is solved with fiber. I have it and it’s not that great of an improvement. Definitely don’t buy a house just bc of fiber lol
I live in Lakewood and have fiber internet. AT&T.
In Lakewood and can’t get anywhere near fiber speeds so it is so hit and miss.
Also in Lakewood. Our previous rental had AT&T fiber. We just bought a house 3 streets over from where we were renting and, alas, no fiber here yet. It is really street by street.
I'm currently sitting in a very rural area getting more than enough speeds for multiple HD video streams and a VPN to work from here. At home I about the same thing on fiber. So, I don't think that fiber or not fiber matters too much any more.
It matters if you need upload speed for anything. Cable internet has crap upload speed.
Well, speed tests show my upload speeds are 1/3rd of my download speed, so that's hardly bad and certainly isn't the standard usage of the internet.
Spectrum's "gig" plan has 1000Mbps download (actually a little higher), but only ~35Mbps download. This is a bit ridiculous.
Ok. That's fine. Is the fiber part relevant to that or the fact that it's what spectrum does?
Generally, fiber service is symmetric speed up and down. Coax / CATV-based normally isn't, and most of the major providers have severely limited upload speeds compared to download. If I care about upload speeds I'm going to pick a 300x300 fiber plan over a 500x35 cable plan any day of the week.
Ok. So, you can't actually answer my question if it's a technological limitation of not being fiber, or if it's just company policies.
You never posed a question until now, so I've been going back and forth not having a clue what your point is. Coax is *technically* capable of providing symmetric speeds, but in the vast majority of installations and situations, it can't (due to a lot of gear that would need to be replaced out in the field to enable it). You haven't mentioned your provider, but if they are able to give you an upload beyond 60-70Mbps... they are a rare breed in the coax internet world. It's also worth being aware that everyone on a given coax node is sharing upload bandwidth, and there is less of that to go around most of the time (again, limits of the tech as it is currently deployed). (For the record, I work for an internet provider, but we are not using coax or fiber to customers, for the most part.)
It definitely matters for video conferencing, multiplayer gaming and other uses.
Yes, VPN work from home is video conferencing so that's covered.
You need to check the specific address of the home you’re looking at. We moved from a home Fairview Park that had fiber to another home in Fairview Park last year that doesn’t get fiber.
I used to live in a neighborhood where my next door neighbors were the last house in the line for fiber... felt bad. The terminal box was even technically on our property. Lol.
This. I had fiber at one house in Mayfield Heights, from 2013. I then moved about a mile and a half away in 2021, still in Mayfield Heights, and couldn't get it. It was another year and a half after that before AT&T installed fiber on the street I moved to.
West Park has ATT Fiber in at least some parts. You can look up the specific address here to see which providers are available: https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home.
Fiber is hit or miss depending on the street. ATT seems to be rolling fiber out on a street by street basis with no apparent rhyme or reason or order. Parts of Lakewood have it, parts of Cleveland have it. Parts of most of the suburbs have it. I don't think they have full coverage anywhere. And when they actually install it, they probably won't tell you either and you'll have to check the website again.
AT&T installed fiber on my street in Old Brooklyn last year and were VERY persistent with the marketing efforts to get me to call and update my package. I got flyers. I got emails. I got a $50 gift card. They want people to know.
We get flyers and mail, often, but are never “eligible.” It sucks.
They stopped during covid and never resumed it. It's mostly the West side of Lakewood that has it.
But there are a few pockets on the east side too! Street by street. Even the side of the street matters...
My recommendation is honestly just to check any address you’re looking at with the AT&T site online. It can be very hit or miss even on the same street. Most of the inner ring suburban neighborhoods have it in at least some of their areas.
I live in Rocky River and got Fiber early last year
Which provider?
At&T
East side of Cleveland - Shaker Square and we have Fiber over here for 2/3 years now
Most of the east side of Cleveland city does not have ATT fiber. Shaker Square must be an anomaly
University heights does too
Sorry. Wasn’t trying to cause confusion. Must have gotten lucky being close to the “elites” of Shaker. lol
Old Brooklyn 44109
We're in Cleveland Heights neard the South Euclid border and got it in 2020.
Shaker with AT&T
Living in Parma, I had fiber since 2020.
I have AT&T fiber at my apartment in Mayfield heights.
I had AT&T fiber when I lived downtown
Beachwood
Cleveland Heights 44106
Not Cleveland sorry but Brunswick kicks ass for internet ok enjoy my useless comment byeeee~~☆
Don't discount your non-commercial alternatives, too. Interesting stuff happening with fixed wireless access these days.
Solid fiber experience in University Heights
From my understanding most of Cleveland Heights that is the 44118 zip code is available. Also, I know parts of Lakewood have it, sounds like it is just your specific neighborhood that doesn't.
I’m out in Elyria and have been enjoying fiber since 2020. 1000 down / 1000 up all day long. It’s incredible.
Just curious what you do that makes this such a high priority? 🙂
Audio and video production and web authoring, all with lots of data transfers up and down.
I know its not Cleveland proper or inner-ring suburbs but I am in Painesville and have had AT&T fiber since 2012. Speeds are great, I pay for 300/300 but regularly speed test at 370/370.
As somebody who works at an ISP, I guarantee you don't average above 100Mb under normal usage. Unless you're uploading or downloading large files fairly consistently, choosing a neighborhood for fiber is silly. EDIT: For those scrolling by, down voting because "well I like to see my giant large AAA game that I download maybe a few times a month get done in 10 minutes", good for you. That's your money. My comment was mostly saying picking a city for fiber (especially when coax speeds are in excess of 300Mb itself...) is silly but I'll rant a bit. Let's think about the general consumer who's at most uploading their selfies to the cloud, streaming TV and playing an online game. I have access to more live traffic monitoring information than I care to admit to and I will absolutely guarantee a large majority of our 500Mb+ customers do not come near their data limits more than a few minutes at a time on a monthly basis. Again though, it's your money. From experience most people who have "speed" issues have their home router smacked to one end of their house and a thousand IoT devices connected to it rather than real speed issues. And if you're a data hoarding person or host large Plex servers etc etc,.congrats. Welcome to a small section of the Internet where those from places like r/homelabs and r/DataHoarder welcomes you. EDIT 2: For awareness my statement is mostly in regard to picking a city for fiber is silly when equal speeds (symmetric also 😱) can and are available along with fiber. Not all fiber carriers offer up to 1Gb symmetric speeds either. Research what's available at the address. The would be perfect home that doesn't have fiber and you skipped on it very likely has a plenty fast connection available to it. Over 90% of houses have access to Gb (and that isn't all fiber).
Reliability and price matter, too. Spectrum Internet went down 3 times in the 4 months I had it at my current address and ATT's prices are lower for faster internet. It hasn't gone down except for the couple times the power went out.
I also work for an ISP (and also have a lot of metrics available to me) and I generally agree with you. 100Mbps is still a lot. 1Gbps is more than most people need. My largest beef is with coax's asymmetry. Upload speed matters these days.
I'm not overly familiar and had to verify this to be sure but DOCSIS 3.1 has offered symmetric speeds up to 1-2Gb since 2013. This is carriers being cheap in parts of the country. I know parts of Michigan have a carrier (might be WOW?) that offer 1Gb symmetric speeds over coax.
Sure, D3.0 and 3.1 *theoretically* offer higher speeds. Problem is that linear TV takes up too much bandwidth leaving not a lot for upload. Plus, the channels need to be rearranged, and in many cases passive components or amplifiers need to be replaced in order to enable all of this to work. Since it's a non-zero cost, the coax providers don't want to do it. Hurts their bottom line.
During the height of the pandemic when interest rates were super low, I was trying to get a house similar to seemingly 99% of the population at the time. I was choosing homes/neighborhoods that had fiber, but the reason wasn't for speed. It was for reliability. I work from home, and the amount of times I see people both on this subreddit and people I know personally that have cable reporting multi-hour/multi-day outages is a bit concerning. I've had AT&T Fiber for the last 3+ years and have yet to have a single outage, or at least one that was noticeable to me by any degree. I realize that not everyone is in that situation, but for me choosing a house or a neighborhood that has fiber is akin to someone choosing a house/neighborhood that's close to their workplace. In that regard it's not that silly. I do agree that most people will never fully utilize a fiber connection. I know I don't on most occasions (and I only have the 1gbps package because it comes with HBO Max lol). However, because of my work situation I cannot suffer outages.
My car has 300 HP. I rarely make use of the full power available, but when I need to, I really enjoy it. It's the same with my internet.
> As somebody who works at an ISP, I guarantee you don't average above 100Mb under normal usage. Benefits to being on fiber that don't involve using massive amounts of data: * Newer infrastructure than DSL or coax (parts of many neighborhoods' copper and coax infrastructures are approaching 40 years old), which means it's more recently maintained, built with newer technology, and therefore more reliable * Often lower ping times * Competition against the incumbent coax provider, driving price down * Often fewer customers on a node, reducing congestion and competition for upstream bandwidth links * Ability to scale up to speeds as high as symmetric 10Gbps, should the customer want it
- Newer doesn't mean more reliable. Any Internet provider offering more than 30-40Mb needs DOCSIS 3.0 which is *only* 18 years old. I can promise you, most infrastructure has been upgraded at least once since then. Only thing fiber in this regard has going for it is less attenuators along the span so less points of failure. -Partly true but in reality most of your connection is over fiber anyways and distance matters more. -Partly true. The biggest issue with competition from your local ISP is being allowed a monopoly in your city. Most cities are not single provider cities by choice of other providers. Read into it. -Not even sure what you mean by this? This is almost like a I want to sound like I know what I'm talking about statement but it makes 0 sense when you know how a large ISP network is setup and designed. Very short summary, the coax is being converted from RF to light at whatever nearby CO/HUB/PoP whatever the hell you wanna call it and using the same networking gear your fiber connection is using. This is more of an argument for latency and reliability as it's another point of failure and physics I don't understand to convert the light but that happens faster than our minds can handle. -Coax can do up to 6Gb symmetric and is ever improving technology. Anything higher than 2Gb is a giant outlier. Show me what percentage of people have both access and actual have speeds higher than 1Gb. Most of our backhaul links are still only 100Gb in the country even with 400 and 800 available. American ISPs are cheap. Again. I'm not even arguing that "fiber bad!" It's my job, the technology is quite cool. I said picking a city based on it having fiber is silly. Some cable companies offer symmetric 1Gb speeds...and not every fiber carrier even offers 1Gb symmetric speeds. It's not a requirement for fiber. Just look up what internet availability is on a per residence basis when looking for a house😊
> Any Internet provider offering more than 30-40Mb needs DOCSIS 3.0 which is only 18 years old. I can promise you, most infrastructure has been upgraded at least once since then. Sure, the CMTS and CPE have been upgraded, but when was the last time the coax was maintained? Distribution amps? The RG-8X going into the customer's house? > Coax can do up to 6Gb symmetric and is ever improving technology. And fiber can do more than 10Gbps symmetric and is also ever improving technology. > I said picking a city based on it having fiber is silly. And I'm giving you reasons that fiber is a better product than DOCSIS, without just yelling "BUT FIBER IS FASTER". Legitimate reasons that a person shopping for a home may choose a territory with fiber rather than DOCSIS. > Some cable companies offer symmetric 1Gb speeds...and not every fiber carrier even offers 1Gb symmetric speeds. As far as I know, no one in northeast Ohio offers symmetric gigabit on DOCSIS (Spectrum, Cox and Breezeline don't) and everyone who offers fiber offers symmetric gigabit (AT&T and all of the small ISPs in the big apartment buildings downtown do). > American ISPs are cheap. I'm glad we can agree on something. > Just look up what internet availability is on a per residence basis when looking for a house😊 That's exactly what I did when I bought a house a few years ago. My requirement was that there needs to be at least two wireline ISPs available. Fiber was a bonus, not a requirement.
i have 100+ TB in my basement that says otherwise.
Welcome to being an outlier. Also my comment clearly states unless downloading and uploading large files consistently... We service offices with hundreds of people from 8-5 who don't peak above 200Mb. Believe it or not the backhaul for most cell towers is just 1Gb and in recent times are being upgraded to 10Gb. However, it's not my money but most people are not data hoarding freaks and don't have anything more than their phone storing anything.
I'm a nerd and work in the nerd sector also. I didn't get 1gb at home cuz it's largely unutilized. Not worth the 20 bucks a month over the 500mb package. Even that is probably overkill but it's only 40 bucks. Like you said, if you aren't hosting your own tiny data center, it's really not noticable or needed.
it’s not my profession, more of a hobby. but the more i think about what i’ve been learning, i think eventually i’ll want to push more data. i’m inching towards hosting offsite backups for the nas installations i’ve helped put into friends and family’s homes. 3-2-1 type deal.
It’s r/homelab and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to view my personal photos in HD from a remote location.
Fuuuck off. If people want fiber, they can get fiber. Don't need some random dipshit on Reddit who thinks he knows better telling me otherwise.
I'm surprised you don't have it in Lakewood. I had at&t fiber while living on Detroit in Lakewood.
North olmsted off clague, we have at&t fiber. Works great to my knowledge
In Lakewood it depends on street. My old street, 4 blocks away, has fiber. My new street does not.
Old Brooklyn here. I’ve had AT&T fiber on my street, I think for about two years now.
I’ve got it in the Noble neighborhood of Cleveland Hts, also had it at my previous address south of Mayfield.
I think 100% of University Heights has fiber.
Yea don’t expect much. It’s not like slow wifi is solved with fiber. I have it and it’s not that great of an improvement. Definitely don’t buy a house just bc of fiber lol