Cincinnati Bell gives Cincinnati a 21st century upgrade

When it comes to telecommunications, Cincinnati stands out a bit in the way it is set up and maintained. While most major cities are served by Verizon or AT&T (or one of their holdings), Cincinnati is served by Cincinnati Bell (CB), one of the few regional and independent carriers left. While other cities had to live through the telco buy-outs and merges over the last couple decades, we were left with a familiar face and very little change.

Over the years Cincinnati has benefited from this in terms of services like Zoomtown and Fuse internet, and Cincinnati Bell Wireless which delivered high speed data to our homes and mobile devices.

The downside of this familar face and stability was an aging telecommunications infrastructure due to a lack of competition and innovation. The old copper systems have their limits and as the city grew and as our internet usage and needs grew, Cincinnati Bell had to change and grow with them.

You may have heard of other cities beginning to be able to order something called 'Fios', which is fiber optic service to the home. This allows the communications providers to start delivering a new class of service to the house, one that is not limited by an aging infrastructure and the limitation of last-mile copper connections. This means faster internet connections and an alternative to cable and satellite tv.

Cincinnati Bell has begun to roll out this upgrade in the form of their FiOptics product, which I am lucky enough to be part of. My FiOptics were installed this week and I want to break down my initial impressions as well as a comparison to my previous service with Time Warner Cable (TWC).

With more and more services becoming web-based there's an increasing need for faster internet connections at home. There are a few options in town, but the majority of us are either using Cincinnati Bell's Zoomtown or Time Warner Cable's RoadRunner service. Both are good, and keep bumping their speeds, but both also have some serious drawbacks and technical limitations.

Zoomtown is a DSL service, which means your speeds greatly vary depending on your proximity to your central office (CO). Cincinnati Bell sells it with speeds up to 5Mbps, but unless you're close to the CO you're more likely going to train up at less than that. Distance and line quality matter greatly with DSL-based services, as do the age and quality of your home's phone wiring.

RoadRunner uses the coaxial cables that your TV already runs over, which allows them to promise much greater speeds, however in most instances cable modem services operate on a shared bandwidth model. Your entire neighborhood or area is sharing the same wires, the same switching systems, so you can definitely run into issues where the tubes get a bit crowded.

FiOptics has neither of these limitations - what Cincinnati Bell is doing is replacing Cincinnati's aging copper infrastructure with fiber optics. This eliminates the bottlenecks in the network and the issues around CO distances. The last mile to your house is now fiber and your connection to the CO and subsequently Cincinnati Bell's main systems is literally the speed of light. It's also still a DSL type system so there's no share bandwidth bottlenecks. The speeds start at 10Mbps and go up from there and is really has no limits (besides what CB will actually sell you). Cincinnati Bell is also delivering TV over this network since they now have the infrastructure to support it and we now have another option in Cincinnati when it comes to our television needs.

Price-wise, it's a no brainer. FiOptics with a similar setup to your existing Time Warner cable/internet package will be cheaper. In my case it is $50 cheaper a month, and I'm getting faster internet out of it. The TV service is more or less the same, but as this is a brand new service early adopters are going to have to endure some growing pains:

• The channel line-up isn't apple-to-apple with TWC. It's close enough, but if you're a real TV junkie, check the listings before you buy.
  
  
• On-demand channels and content pales in comparison to TWC. Again, it might be a big deal to you, it might not.
  
  
• While the CB dvr/box (Cisco Explorer 8540HDC) is better than TWC, the interface isn't quite as pretty and some functionality is missing (or I just haven't found it yet)
  

Cincinnati Bell FiOptics also still uses your houses internal coaxial wiring, so there's no need for new jacks or holes in your wall. They run the fiber optics box to your house's demarc and simply plug your existing cable lines into their box.

Hands down the FiOptics internet connection is better. The latency is non-existent, and the speeds are top notch. I opted for the 20Mbps service and Speedtest.net results comes back more or less on-par with that. One note I will make is that the internet side of your FiOptics still runs over your home's phone line (just inside your house), so make sure your wiring is good. Most new places use CAT5 and should be totally fine, but if you have old wiring, might want to have it verified. Chances are if you already have Zoomtown it's nothing to worry about. Just remember, it's fiber to your house, not to your bedroom.

The service area is currently very limited as Cincinnati Bell slowly re-wires the entire city; however, if you are lucky enough to be in a building being wired, I say go for it. Links are below where you can check your address, but chances are if you are in a house or complex that is FiOptics ready, CB is already knocking on your door. They are aggressively marketing this product to anyone and everyone who is eligible.

Cincinnati Bell FiOptics page - http://www.cincinnatibell.com/fioptics/

Time Warner Cincinnati - http://www.timewarnercable.com/cincinnati/