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<p>I just dumped my Comcast Business Internet and Comcast
Residential Cable service at the first of the year. At that time
Comcast was raising the rate on the monthly router lease which I
only begrudgingly got because they said that was the only way I
could get a /29 static subnet so I was paying for the 50/10
internet service, the modem and the static IP block. I went with
AT&T GigaPower fiber. I'm getting 995/956 as of my last speed
test yesterday. So to address Joey's comment about it not being
fiber to the side of the house, I can claim with 100% certainty
that I have fiber all the way into my second story room where my
router sits as I watched the tech run the fiber up to the box and
plug it all up. Then again the ADSL service I had years ago before
going with Comcast was delivered over fiber to the beige box in my
neighbors yard across the street where it went from the ONC to
copper to the side of my house, but in the past couple years
AT& brought the fiber the last 25-50yards give or take to the
side of the house. <br>
</p>
<p>So far in the 2 full months I've had the service I've had no
outages and I'm pushing TBs up and down through it. The only port
blocking I've encountered is their old grandfather's firewalling
of 25/tcp outbound but nothing stopping ports inbound so far that
I've found. I have the same /29 subnet worth of static IP
addresses at $10 less per month than Comcast and AT&T doesn't
charge a monthly fee for the router and the installation fee was
waived for me. I'm currently paying half what I paid for Comcast
and have over 20x the bandwidth. I was paying $150 to Comcast for
the Business internet and they were raising that so I went with
AT&T for $75 a month.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/4/2019 7:24 PM, Jeff Hubbs via Ale
wrote:<br>
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<p>After many years at the status quo (AT&T UVerse and POTS
land line) I'm finally looking into a rework of the home
telecomm situation.</p>
<p>I have two main drivers that are forcing the decision:</p>
<ol>
<li>Even after the shortest of power outages, upstream UVerse
service goes dead and stays dead for 10-20 minutes. This was
not always the case but in the last few years it's been the
"new normal;" my wife works at home via VPN enough that that's
a problem, and it's no good for me either. Yes, I have UPSses
out the wazoo on everything and it doesn't matter. I've tried
to get through to AT&T by phone to at least get the
problem acknowledged but that's been impossible.</li>
<li>There's a good chance I might be leaving town for my next
job for an unknown amount of time, but that won't mean that
I'll stop being the "IT guy" for the house; I will simply
*have* to be able to shell in from the outside. If there is
such a thing as a "reflector" service that sits on the
Internet - even if it's my own server somewhere - that gives
me a way to tunnel in reverse through some kind of connection
that's initiated from inside the house, I don't want to be
dependent on it.</li>
</ol>
<p>Being able to run my own Internet-reachable web and email
servers in the house is anticipated but is secondary to those
two main drivers. </p>
<p>It is my understanding that only AT&T and Comcast serve my
street. <br>
</p>
<p>I've spoken to a rep for Comcast Business and they're telling
me that within reason (with respect to affected region(s) and
length of outage, I presume) their service will remain
unaffected by power outage. That handles 1. above, and they also
offer as few as one static IP address which should be sufficient
to handle 2.</p>
<p>I have not yet called about any of AT&T's business
residential offerings but when I got a flyer in the mail about
some kind of fiber service being available in my neighborhood
and called to inquire, I couldn't get anything even remotely
like a straight answer but the upshot was that no, the fiber
service wasn't available to me. I'm quite rather done with
AT&T, to be honest.</p>
<p>Comcast says they can give me a VoIP-like service that can
optionally use my old phone number. I'm undecided on that; the
phone rings with random robocalls and other solicitations 3-5
times a day (Do Not Call list notwithstanding) and there are
only 3 living persons whom we know who ever, *ever* call that
line.</p>
<p>We would like to have a TV service with DVR available and it's
my understanding from talking to Comcast that it would have to
be Xfinity piggybacked on the Comcast Business service. It would
be either that or satellite to still have DVR. I've never dealt
with satellite service before but the houses to either side of
us have it. I've built an HDTV antenna and mounted it in the
attic but I haven't completed the cabling to know for sure how
well it will work, and if we went that route, there'd be no DVR
unless I went the whole MythTV (or equivalent) route and I'm
really not willing to try that again.</p>
<p>I'm all (rabbit) ears, so let your replies rip. <br>
</p>
<p>- Jeff<br>
</p>
<br>
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