Upgrading to fiber to the home?

[Sclass]

Hey,

AT&T is pestering me to upgrade to fiber to the home at my second home. I am currently on a 24M copper connection (DSL two line multiplexed) that is five years old and I pay $65 a month when all the smoke clears. I use cheap voip hardware for a “landline” phone. The house is kind of a cellular blindspot.

I am almost never there and 24M is quite enough to run the security cameras and alarm which I use to remotely monitor the home. This week AT&T got tired of soliciting me with upgrade offers and suspended my service. When I logged in my account was tagged “suspended as per your request.” Pretty sneaky. I guess they aren’t allowed to cut you off if you are paying so they just said I cut myself off. Anyhow it forced me to call in. They instantly reconnected me but they said it’s time to do fiber to the home.

The install offer is free. I’ll get 500M for the same price I pay for 24M. I’m curious if anyone has done this and had AT&T Jack up their introductory price later? I really don’t need that much speed at this place. They seem so desperate to upgrade my hardware I can only think they have plans to get the money back out of me later in other ways. Or perhaps the copper requires too much maintenance?

My only other issue right now is it’s a hassle to go up there and open the door for the tech. Then I have to reconfigure the gateway to let my cameras poke through open ports. I don’t feel like setting all that up again if it means I’ll get my rates increased in the future.

Anyone done the switchover and had prices go up?

Perhaps I’m being silly. I recall when I upgraded to 24M DSL my rate stayed the same.

Maybe the real danger is them not offering free fiber optic cable installation? I will undoubtedly need a new fiber line from the pole to the home.

[mathiverse]

If the rates go up, can you downgrade from 500M to a plan with a similar rate to what you were paying? If you are okay with anything from 24M up, then you may have wiggle room to downgrade if they increase the rates on you. On the other hand, it's possible 500M is the cheapest with fiber, so it really is something to double check and they could potentially change things in the future. For example, my ATT phone plan had no options between 5 GB of data and 0 GB of data when previously they had a 2 GB plan that was slightly cheaper than the 5 GB plan.

[Scott 2]

Does AT&T have a monopoly in the area? You probably don't have a choice. I don't think you can do satellite any cheaper, and the quality won't be competitive.

From the perspective of property value, it's a necessary upgrade. DSL was obsolete a decade ago.

[Sclass]

There are other providers. I think the price is fine. I was just worried they would get me hooked with the low introductory price.

24M is plenty of speed. But it’s kind of silly if I can get 500M for the same price. I probably should get on board so I can have similar hardware as the neighbors. It’ll likely be more reliable simply because they won’t have to maintain a legacy system. Time to get the process started.

[ertyu]

Yeah I'd be curious what the catch is if they're so aggressive about it.

[loutfard]

I can only speak for where I live. Copper is planned to be decomissioned here in 2025. Copper is expensive to maintain on top of fiber...

[Seppia]

There are other providers. I think the price is fine.

It is incredible what you can get when you’re connected to the retention department.
When in NYC I was able to lower my cost even if the building had only one option!

The steps are easy

1/ call them and say you want to cancel service
2/ when they ask you why just mention you found a better deal (if there is one) or that the service is too expensive
3/ enjoy the discount

One thing you want to specify is you want the discount to be permanent.
You can repeat the process once per year-year and a half.
In my experience you can usually push this up until you get down to a price that’s around 20-30% lower than their normal

I do this consistently, in Italy I pay 14.99 per month for fiber internet when there are no options below 24.99

[Sclass]

There seem to be a bunch of things at work here. AT&T isn’t known for their brilliant business plans. I think they just have an agenda to get people moving to the new system. This started in 2015 and I’m late to get on. Also it likely is easier to maintain the system if everyone switches over to the new equipment. Locally there is also an outcry about old lead sheathed telecom cables ruining the environment. There has been a big push to remove the legacy cabling.

I have been putting it off because it is a hassle to switch over and there isn’t much to gain since I don’t really live there. All I need is a connection to monitor the webcams and alarm.

I try to limit the money the home sucks up and the infrastructure maintenance work.

This is a ridiculous second home I own. I intend to sell it off as soon as I can. In the meantime I stop by once a month and do upkeep. I monitor security remotely to make sure homeless don’t squat there. It doesn’t do much to be able to stream 4k TV there while I pop in to mow the lawns.

Second homes are a hassle. Costly and time consuming. You have to really want it. I’m unable to sell the home for the time being so I just try to maintain it with the least amount of work and money.

[Scott 2]

You need a good tenant.

[loutfard]

Second homes are a hassle. Costly and time consuming. You have to really want it.

Agree. We have one. For us it's about the link to my wife's home country. Bonus points for me liking the place a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up living there some time in the future.

I’m unable to sell the home for the time being so I just try to maintain it with the least amount of work and money.

If you can't sell it, and maybe not even let it, have you considered letting someone super trustworthy live in it for cheap or free in exchange for housekeeping/maintenance?

Also, not really a solution in your case, but I designed our second home to be super modular in terms of use. It can easily be (re)arranged as a duplex or a triplex. We might soon have a recently divorced family friend with three kids living there for a few months...

[fiby41]

I have the opposite problem... I've been trying to get fiber and a local telecom player is protecting his fiefdom from the low cost operators by not letting them come in.

[Sclass]

I have a lot of constraints about how I manage the property at this point.

Right now my strategy is to secure it and sell at a future date. Right now secure means keep the landscaping nice with my lawnmower collection and watching for uninvited guests with webcams.

I have chosen my battles I need to fight already. Each path has a different set of challenges.

At my stage in ERE I need to maximize the profit and minimize the headache. Another dollar of rent isn’t really necessary.

…that being said I’m staying in copper because I just don’t want to deal with this for 475Mb of extra bandwidth I’ll never use.

[Sclass]

Hey I got my fiber to the home installed today. AT&T basically forced me to switch over. They turned off the dsl again and this time said I need to change. So I went for it. The installer even named my Wifi SSID the same as my old setup and kept my password the same so my webcams and smart home stuff just automatically connected.

I negotiated the price down a few dollars too. I’m paying $5 less than I had been paying for 24M dsl. Now I have 500M. Higher upload speed. The fiber reaches all the way to the modem in the house.

[SouthernAlchemy]

I upgraded when AT&T brought fiber through our neighborhood maybe 6 or 7 years ago. 1G - $70/mo 'limited time offer! will never go up!' So far it has not gone up. Questionable whether I am seeing 1G though. I checked around not long ago and there were no better deals to be had. I've never tried to negotiate it for that reason. Google just pulled fiber through a month or so ago. It will be interesting see how that affects the market.