Pigs Fly...

Jeff Lee, LittleT Broadband

…well, maybe here in Otto. Frontier technicians came to our house yesterday and finally connected us to fiber.

My quest for high-speed internet started 8 years ago when a small group of us in Otto formed LittleT Broadband. It took 8 years... talking to service providers, countless project and grant proposals, Frontier going through bankruptcy, a pandemic which created awareness of the need for rural broadband expansion, new grant funding (again thanks to the pandemic) to entice providers to undertake rural broadband work, many meetings, emails, working with Macon County, the Southwestern Commission, regional partners, and the state of North Carolina. Though grant projects to build fiber started in 2021, large construction projects take time. Thankfully, the availability of StarLink in 2022 helped bridge the gap for many of us while we have waited for fiber builds to be completed. Fiber construction projects are far from finished in our area, but some of these are nearing completion and many of us are now getting connected.

I have been in a position to see the grant projects get started and then watch and monitor progress. The ironic part of that was watching many parts of Macon County get connected while we continued to wait at our home. I watched Frontier contractors build fiber along the road where I live, talked to technicians doing the install, splicing, and testing, and then tried to wait patiently for Frontier to advertise service. Like many of you I put my address into the Frontier website on a periodic basis in hopes of a hit. Last week I got lucky and instead of “Fiber is Coming” I got the response “Fiber is Available” and I was able to order service and schedule installation. It took less than a week from my order until installation.

My installation appointment was scheduled for the afternoon, but a Frontier technician showed up in the morning and said I was their first order on this new hub (box that serves an area) and they could start earlier if ok. Of course that was ok with me though might have been inconvenient for others, and I was happy to be a guinea pig. I knew my install would be a challenge as there is at least 600’ between my house and the pole with the fiber connection up at the road. Another tech showed up to help with the install, and the guys were done in a few hours, though a crew still needs to come back to bury the fiber laying across my yard. I was ready for the install and all we had to do was plug a cable into our existing network. Others will likely have a more involved setup with new wifi, passwords, etc. The new connection delivered 800Mbs down and 1.05Gbs up immediately, though the latency seems a bit high for fiber at 22-24ms. I’ll take it.

I will say that Starlink has been great. It was a complete game changer starting in 2022 compared to the intermittant 1Mbs DSL we had previously, and it has been pretty solid. The speed goes up and down, there have been some outages, and there are other anomalies one may experience that do not happen with a more conventional service provider like Frontier. With the Helene experience in mind, we will put StarLink in standby mode and keep it as our backup internet connection. Though the Frontier fiber service seems pretty solid, the fiber does come up our valley along the power poles and will be subject to outages due to storms that bring down branches and trees. Starlink was an incredible lifeline in the aftermath of Helene, and placing it in standby mode allows us to keep it active for only $5/mo... hard to beat for insurance. Even with keeping Starlink on standby, the total cost for both fiber and Starlink will run less than half of what I was paying for full speed residential Starlink.

It remains to be seen if Frontier will deliver better service quality than they have in the past. My experience with their DSL product was not great. I have heard good reports to date from others who have had Frontier fiber installed so I will remain hopeful. Frontier was recently acquired by Verizon, though they are still retaining the Frontier name at this time. I’m sure this will affect the price of service over time, though there may be opportunities to bundle services and billing for those of us that also have Verizon mobile service.

So, my personal saga in the quest for high-speed internet nears the end, though many of you are still waiting. Patience is all I can offer as there is so much construction work still in progress. If a frontier contractor has built fiber along your road, I would encourage you to go to the Frontier website, put in your address, and keep looking for service. In southern parts of the County (Otto and Scaly), BalsamWest may be the provider and you should reach out to them via their website or phone number to see if service is available. Charter/Spectrum has recently entered the County and begun fiber construction in the Northeast. Charter has a similar website interface and folks should check that as well for fiber availability as their service will roll out over the next couple of years.

If you have recently been connected to fiber, please let me know through the contact us form. This helps to build a picture of where connectivity is expanding in Macon County.