urbanMSP

Yeah, the same fiber can deliver 25Mbps or 100Gbps and doesn't need to be re-run. However, each step up above the current highest offering does consume additional resources before it can be offered to customers: changes to software, endpoint electronics, testing, etc. These aren't free and consume time and money.

Perhaps it will facilitate faster rollout by bringing in additional revenue. At $400/month for 10Gbps, I can't imagine the cost for 40Gbps or 100Gbps! It's hard to imagine many of those contracts being sold though...

Yes additional time and money for vetting newer speed offerings is required but I guarantee you the the people who are doing the fiber installs are not the same people doing the electronics. Also, the labor and materials costs for fiber install completely eclipses the time/cost for exploring and offering new electronics and speeds. Bottom line, I would not worry about the distraction of "offering higher bandwidth" to impede on the build out deployment of additional fiber.

Wow. I really wasn't expecting an announcement like that. There's really no need for those speeds, but they could come in handy if you're running a small business and have 15-20 people on the same network. But it would still be overkill. I know a few people who would be willing to pay the $400/month asking price simply to grab about it.

I think this is a play to get some national media coverage in hopes to get additional funding to allow them to build out the network faster. Or, they could be hoping a move like this could catch Google's attention in hopes an an acquisition. Either way, it's good news for everyone.

That PP article linked above had a quote saying they plan to cover everywhere inside the beltway within five years, so they must be planning to shift into hyperdrive, compared to their current expansion rate where they've taken two years to cover, what, an eighth of Minneapolis?

I plugged in some addresses on CenturyLink's website and found those on 22nd Ave were eligible for 1gig service. I was shocked to see they're charging $110 a month and the price is only guaranteed for one year. Seems higher than what they originally advertised. I thought they said ~$80 a month when they made their original announcement.

edit, I just looked at their original announcement, 80 was advertised if bundled. 110 if standalone.

USI is awful, their basic service within the city is sketchy and slow. you can track when people get home from work and start using the net from home, the service either stops or slows to even slower rate. you call cust service and that's their explanation. so put in more infrastructure to maybe handle the load. i never get the max they state i'm paying for.

400 a month eh. waste of money.

USI is awful, their basic service within the city is sketchy and slow. you can track when people get home from work and start using the net from home, the service either stops or slows to even slower rate. you call cust service and that's their explanation. so put in more infrastructure to maybe handle the load. i never get the max they state i'm paying for.

400 a month eh. waste of money.

Seriously? USI wireless is not the same as USI fiber.

On fiber they have 1 gbps service for $65. The 10 gig service is a business product, obviously.

Yeah I'll say that I've been nothing but pleased with my USI fiber service (we've got the 25 Mbps service for $30/mo). We have no cable so will watch Netflix or Hulu pretty often, and have never had quality issues. I can only count maybe 2 times since June that service was down, and a quick reset of the modem was all that was needed.

Just talked to my brother-in-law when he was over for the holidays today and he said CenturyLink is offering him fiber in Cottage Grove with an asymmetric service (40 Mbps down, something like 5 up). AFAIK fiber is always a symmetric service so I asked him about it some more. It sounds like they're tying the existing twisted pair to the home into a trunk fiber line. That would explain why they claim such a rapid build-out but it seems like a crappy service compared to USI. Does any other company do "fiber" this way? My brother-in-law isn't a tech guy so he may have misunderstood what they were talking about.

And USI fiber is fantastic. Literally haven't had a problem since we got it instaled. Actually, my biggest problem is the crappy WiFi hardware in my Ultrabook. My wife gets much better speeds on her laptop.

That's called fiber-to-the-node, and it is fairly common. It doesn't hold a candle to true fiber-to-the-premises, but beats the pants off of normal DSL. Basically, its competitive speed-wise with cable, which is really all CenturyLink has to care about except in the few cities with true fiber service available.

Thought I would drop by and update on a few reasons for this announcement;

We wanted to prove out the technical decision we made to invest in an "Active Ethernet" platform, ie, a dedicated fiber per subscriber. Seemed we were scoffed at a bit in the beginning that we didn't tow the GPON dominance in this industry.

We wanted to show that when Minneapolis choose us for the wireless platform and they put a requirement that we keep up with technology that we met and exceeded that expectation. At the end of the day I hope history shows Minneapolis made an excellent decision to choose USI 6 years ago. Wireless announcement soon

We wanted to be the first, we always read about Google this and Google that. California this, Singapore that. We wanted Minneapolis not to be just another "us too".

Now for application, the first two customers are not using this for simply Internet access, they have a 10 gig peer between themselves and adding a peer to the USI data center proving out some new application ideas they have.

Practical application, we have a couple customers that have a gig service with us and could use a bit more, well the next logical step was 10 gig, no real reason to get 10 gig optics and limit to 2 gig.

The 2015 build-out schedule should be posted end of January and we are going to increase the speed of deployment. Anyway you look at it, Minneapolis is a large area and it will take time to get everywhere.

Thanks.

-Travis / USI

Here's to hoping you make it down Lake St to Hiawatha. I'm moving and would love fiber

Just woke up from a nap and had a crazy dream.

Someone knocked at my door, asked if they could come in to check something out. I let him in, then he revealed he was with Comcast and offered me Internet for really cheap. I told him that there's no way I'm switching back from USI. Then he essentially begged and started to tell me how he needed me to sign up for Comcast because his family was struggling. I had to apologize and politely decline.

that's def COMCAST

That's called fiber-to-the-node, and it is fairly common. It doesn't hold a candle to true fiber-to-the-premises, but beats the pants off of normal DSL. Basically, its competitive speed-wise with cable, which is really all CenturyLink has to care about except in the few cities with true fiber service available.

I had this at my apartment and really liked the speeds and the absence of slowdowns in the evening (very comparable to mid-tier Comcast minus the #1-worst-company-in-the-world thing). I will say however, that the Century Link modem/routers are absolute garbage. Probably wasted hours talking to customer service. Finally put the modem into bridge mode and used my own router.

Did you update your router firmware? Mine was so bad, thought it was the computer, but all is well after the firmware update (directly connecting it to the computer).

We're moving, and the wife is OK with dropping Cable TV, so while I can't get USI Fiber, I'm a free agent in Comcast vs CenturyLink. I've got Comcast right now and I've purchased a nice DOCCIS 3.0 modem, but I'm not really attached to them either. No real complaints about the service in the past, so I'm wondering if I should just stick with them or look into CenturyLink as well.

I've had 40/20 service from CenturyLink for several years in uptown. Not one complaint about them. Currently paying $25/month.

How do you manage that? Centurylink won't tell me what the uploads speeds are, but they best offer online is $30 for the first 12 months and then who knows what after that.