I have fiber on the street, but Cox has not put that last bit in yet. Nice thing is that AT&T is now in direct competition so might happen to stave off the beast.
I donno if I would ever notice the difference, I hardly ever max out my bandwidth as it is..

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John E Pombrio
Do not meddle in the affair of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

We all like those BIG BANDWIDTH/SPEED #'s . . . .

but you're right, how many of us really use the FULL potential of what we have @ high speed.

I have 8mbps and I am happy with it.

ATT does not have fiber to anything but the neighboorhood cabinet and then not even that in most places. Verizon does with FIOS I believe.

I've had FIOS here since late Summer. 30/5 tier for $55 a month.(for 1 year) The new tier and prices here are 30/15 for $90 a month. I'm hoping they will offer another deal when my year is up.

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56TB MSS EX490(upgraded CPU-E6300(2.8Ghz dual core Pentium)),
4GB memory, MediaSonic 4 Bay eSATA, 6x MediaSonic 4 Bay USB
32TB unRAID -- 29TB unRAID

I would take full advantage of that speed. I currently have 12Mbps Cable connection and when downloading from Usenet/Newsgroups it downloads at full speed. This is one of the few things I can do on the internet which will use every bit of bandwith you have. I would love to be able to d/l at 30Mbps!

After my "upgrade" with Cox, I am routinely getting 25Mbps on all of my speed tests. Go as high as 31Mbps. I donno if the powerboost function throws this off. Still runs like a bat out of hell after 5.5Mbps I was getting before. Some guy in the left coast was saying that he gets 11Mbps with his fibre. I would expect more but sounds like he lives in SanFran so he splits with all of his neighbors. I live in a lower income neighborhood (mostly retirees) and I betcha that helps.

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John E Pombrio
Do not meddle in the affair of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

Currently FIOS in my area shares around 640mbs bandwidth between up to 32 house/units. They will be upgarding that soon to 2.4Gbs per 32 units.

Currently there are under a dozen people on my node so bandwidth is not a problem. plus most people only have the 5mbs or 15 mbs tier.

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56TB MSS EX490(upgraded CPU-E6300(2.8Ghz dual core Pentium)),
4GB memory, MediaSonic 4 Bay eSATA, 6x MediaSonic 4 Bay USB
32TB unRAID -- 29TB unRAID

I switched from Comcast to FIOS last summer to save money. I saw no difference in speed. Bandwidth tests gave comparable results despite the sligtht difference in speed claims. I never see the speed they claim now a days but it's plenty fast enough.

Both services have been very reliable in recent years. I did try DSL a long time ago and it was slow so I switched back to cable. I actually would appreciate Comcast and verizon FIOS offering a lower cost lower band width option. As the speed as been increased in the bandwidth wars of recent years I have not noticed. I can run bandwidth tests and see that it is faster but for normal use I don't believe I'm using more than a fraction of the bandwidth now available. 1.5 MB down was just as fast for my use as 5 is now. I do like the FIOS 2mb up speed though.

In terms of customer service Comcast wins hands down over Verizon. Dealing with Comcast was always strait forward. Call the number poke the buttons wait and you get someone who can help you. Verizon customer service is very frustrating and time consuming to deal with if you are not a phone customer as well. Can't get started if you don't have a verizon phone number. You get to say agent over and over again to break out of the phone number question you can't answer. Then you always have to talk to multiple people. Issue is not usualy resolved in the first call. The people who you talk to are not well connected to the people who impliment. The message gets garbled in between and goodness knows what the result will be.

Have not needed Tech support with Verizon yet so I can't say how good they are at resolving issues. Comcast tech support has been OK for me. Their solutions work and they correctly diagnose most of the time. The only problem with Comcast I have had in recent years is the filter to block TV off the line going bad every few years resulting in no service but it is easily fixed by them after you promise to be home when they need only work in the street. If comcast was to provide a lower price I'd switch back at the end of my current FIOS contract. If the price is the same I'll stay with FIOS until I find a lower cost option that provides at least 1.5 MB down and up.

I have a friend on fiber in IL and he loves it. He gets pretty good speed all though I don't see much of a difference on Xbox Live. He did get awesome connection during Griffball weekend (Halo 3).

I have 8mb down (with powerboost) and typically get 1mb up. I'm happy with the speed but not happy with the cost. I could always use more download bandwidth because I work from home.

But even with 6 pc's connected to the internet, two of which on separate VPN's to two different companies, and a Vonage line going, I don't see much lag.

Now if I'm uploading a large file to a server and talking on the phone at the same time, I do have problems. It's too bad this big bad expensive Linksys WRT600N router is screwy when you enable QoS.