Has anyone got Quantum Fiber's new 2Gbs Internet Service?
 

Has anyone got Quantum Fiber's new 2Gbs Internet Service that's now available in some parts of the Villages?

I know this is probably way more bandwidth than anyone needs here in the Villages but I'm curious to understand what the Quantum Tech did to install the service and how it works. It's supposed to be 2Gbs download and 1Gbs upload speeds.

It's interesting that Quantum is offering such a leading edge service when the cable companies here in the Villages are not.

I don't want to get into a discussion over whether you need these speeds, just looking to see if anyone has got the new Internet service or knows of anyone who has it and any feedback about it. Why they got it? How was the install? What speeds are they actually getting?

Maybe the service is too new?

If you could get 2Gbs service would you consider or get it and why?

- As long as I'm happy with what I currently have I am not likely to change (inertia)
- A significantly lower price would make me unhappy with what I currently have
- I have no need for anything over 200Mbps (and probably not even that much) so a faster speed would not justify a higher price for me
- Poor customer service when I need it would drive me to change on general principle

Right now I am paying $50 for 200Mbps.
If I had to change, $35 for 940Mbps sounds quite attractive
I might be willing to pay up to $75 for 2Gbps understanding that I would be paying $25 more than I am now for bandwidth I might never use. I would be okay with being wasteful with that extra $300.
If I could get 940Mbps for $35 I would probably not be willing to pay another $500/yr just to double that.

LOL, why they got it without talking about why they need the speed? Only Village gamers would need this speed. Lookup the speeds required for various devices sometime and you will laugh at why 2GB is not needed by most all Village people. It’s a marketing thing. Also, why get it if I need to constantly monitor it against the claim? Might look at this post,
https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...hlight=Quantum

No. The nominal bandwidth I have now with QuantumFiber, 200 megabits per second up and down for $40 per month inclusive of all taxes and fees, is probably about 10x what I can use.

The 2B is $95 a month
They are running a special on 1G (940Mbps) for $35/month

Not a promotional rate, you keep the rate as long as you keep service.
It’s tempting - i need to understand their router and the coverage it provides

Read the small print for their offers.

Seamless 360 WiFi coverage at no monthly charge for initial period.

The quantum website shows I can get 8Gb service! Wow! I could wifi the whole block with just one of those!

Here is everything you need to know about the Quantum Fiber install.
BTW which Village do you live in? The $35/month rate is only offered in specific areas of the Villages.
https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...670-post1.html

They say this to cover themselves if they ever need to charge for the equipment. I've had Quantum Fiber for over 3 1/2 years and they once tried to charge for the equipment but then decided to included it with the price of the service. And even then, the price was still cheaper than cable.

Also, if you get this $35 or any rate that says its "price for life", the fine print also says you can't suspend or make any changes and you have to be in good standing, meaning paying your bill on-time.

The reason for this is because this offer once done is taken out of the system so they can't just turn it back on for you.

Yes, please read that link, "Quantum Fiber Awful Service" and you will find out the person who was complaining had a unique problem that I was able to fix in about an hour. There have been some what I call "Questionable Installs" but I created a thread here on Talk of the Villages to help people identify all the potential issues and their fixes so you don't always need to call Quantum support. I've found if you are installed correctly, the system will run without issue and when something happens, since no service is 100%, its usually easy to correct.
https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...670-post1.html

So this is a great example of Quantum's "price for life".

My good friend in Fenney got this service. It was initially $30 for 200Mbs. A year or two later as cost started rising, Quantum raised the price to $40 with no cost for the equipment. From what I understand, even with the $10/month increase, the price was still competitive and a little cheaper than cable for the same or similar service so many stayed with Quantum.

For quite a while now Quantum has been standardizing on $50 for $500 Mbs, $75 for 1Gbs and $95 for 2Gbs which compared to pricing across the US is still very cheap since they are including the WiFi7 mesh network with these prices.

Actually, not such as good example of their "one price for life". When I transitioned from CenturyLink to Quantum Fiber, they told me the $30 per month was a "one price for life". It really wasn't as they increased the price to $40 after 2 years. I suspected this would happen because the "one price for life" was not in print on their website. When I questioned them about this they assured me it was "one price for life". I knew the rep was clueless and the only question was "how long before they raise the price?". Granted, $10 isn't a lot but they did lie to not only me but also several others that I know. I have no complaints about their service and I have had CenturyLink/QuantumFiber for almost 11 years and fiber to the house at another location for 5 years before that. I just prefer not to be lied to.

I would assume they will start charging for the equipment in the not to distant future, perhaps after the "initial period, as they indicated.

From what I understand, the equipment is built into the service charge. Although they leave it open legally to charge for equipment, I believe they are going to stay with this model.

I agree. But because of this situation and others concerning this "price for life" sales offer, they are trying to be more transparent in the fine print.

At the end of the day I truely believe Quantum and the Cable companies want to retain their customers. Making changes to offers that are not supposed to change or making the service non-competitive will only cause them to loose customers and that costs them money from lost revenues and retention offers.

While no one can be certain, we will see how it goes and time will tell how much integrity each company has.

QuantumFiber continues to offer a reliable service at a good price. What I particularly like is that they provide a dynamic IP address at an RJ-45 jack, of my choosing, that will accept any router. I don't need their equipment or equipment that they list as compatible. However, I will switch in a New York second if I find a better value. My loyalty becomes less reliable when I am lied to.

Agree, total customers is important and acquiring customers is expensive.
IF you’re an existing customer, lowering your price to compete with another deal is less than acquiring a new customer.

So, if you have a competitor for internet, call and threaten to cancel, they will lower your price.

getting mine installed today. 1Gb $80/mth for life

The offer I got yesterday at my address was 1G (940Mbps) for $35/month

I would never get lower than 1G speeds. I’m paying $39 a month for 1G speed. If I could get fiber 2G for $95 a month, I would jump on it.
Cable networks suck for pure bandwidth. I get 1G down but only 30-40Mb upload. When you get fiber, you get the same speed for uploads and downloads.
If somebody wants to backup a 4TB dive to the cloud and you had a 200Mb download speed and you probably get 10-20Mb upload speeds, it would take you months to backup your disk, plus anybody else in your house uploading or sending somebody a file, it would take hours or longer to do this. I take advantage of technology, plus I hate buffering or waiting for something to start, so the faster speeds help with this and fiber has an ultra low latency compared to copper networks.

I could see those who are working remote using this. Both my wife and I work remote a few days a week and that bandwidth would be nice if we are both on video calls at the same time.

For anyone that has a 4TB drive, is paying for more than 4TB of cloud storage, and wants to copy that 4TB drive to their storage, perhaps 1Gbps or 2Gbps makes sense. For those of us streaming Netflix at 4K while reading emails, commenting on ToTV, listening to Pandora, and monitoring our Ring camera, 200Mbps is more than adequate.

That said, if I was going to pay $35 regardless of whether I received 200Mbps or 1Gbps, I might just as well get the 1Gbps.

Video conference applications use little bandwidth. For example, I believe Skype is typically under 1 megabit per second per session. Pretty much any available nominal internet bandwidth in The Villages is more than you would need.

You want to know if anyone is getting those speeds, but don’t want to hear if you need those speeds. Unless you are up/down loading the library of Congress, you definitely don’t need those speeds. Nor will you get them, at the present time. We run 2 tv’s, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones and graphic artist daughter sending/receiving data intensive files all day long. Never had a slow down or hiccup. And we only subscribed to their 100 Mbps speed, which if you add up all the Mbps we are using per device, is FAR MORE CAPACITY than we could ever use. Considering a 4K tv signal may use 5 Mbps tops, all our devices may only use about 1/3 MAX of our 100 Mbps capacity. I will spend my money wisely. But that’s just me.

I did see the QuantumFiber $35 offer for nominal 1 gigabit per second. I currently pay $40 for 200 megabits per second and I doubt I would switch service levels. First of all, 200 megabits is already about 10x more than I can use. Secondly, the $35 price is for autopay through a checking account. We have QuantumFiber autopay through a credit card and I generally prefer not to give access to our checking account. Thirdly, based on past experience, I don't relish spending anytime on the phone with QuantumFiber, which I am sure would be necessary since I want to continue using my own wirelesss router. At some point, I will probably be forced into a higher service level but I will let sleeping dogs lie until then.

A 4K (aka 2160p) video stream will actually use more like 20 megabits per second. Regardless, you are like us in that we have much more nominal bandwidth then we can use. Before I retired, I ran software projects from home and would move around 50 gigabyte tarballs. Then, more bandwidth was always a convenience but now our usage is dominated by 1 or 2 streams of video at typically 5 megabits per second per stream (1080p).

Agreed.

The fine print for the 1Gbps offer states a $40 price with a $5 discount for autopay through a checking account. You might be able to save $5/month now with a simple change of your payment type.

But like you, until something comes up that forces me to make a change, I'm happy with what I currently have.

I helped a friend make this change yesterday, no need to call Quantum. Log into your account on the Quantum web site q.com.

At the top of the screen, click on Services. You should then see a box in the center of the screen with your current service. Also in that box is a button that says Change. Click that button.

The next screen will tell you what your location is eligable for. If you see the $35 offer you can click on it to start it immediately or at your next billing cycle. Whichever you select you will then need to put in your bank account information or you will pay $40 for 1Gbs. There are only selected areas here in the Villages that can get the offer.

This is much more secure than calling Quantum. Quantum offers a discount to direct bill via a bank account because they don't have to pay that fee to the credit card companies. But if you don't want to do this then stay with what you have.

In reading the fine print, this is not a promotion and is not supposed to change so I anticipate we should have this price for quite a while.

Hope this clears things up.

As already discussed, their website refers to an "initial period". That, by definition, is a promotion. And then there is the thing where they lied to a bunch of customers about "one price for life", but I digress. I have actually been dealing with CenturyLink/QuantumFiber for nearly 11 years. Many of the interactions were painful.

I’ve had Quantum 1G for 2 months now and I’m pretty satisfied. It does seem like their 360 WiFi has trouble keeping a connection to stuff that’s outside like cameras and light bulbs.

My take on it (which actually is worth nothing) is that the "initial period" words were put in to allow them to increase the charges for hardware or fees in the future. Whenever they choose to do that they will declare the "initial period" to be over.

The "price for life" will turn out to be the price to have a 1Gbps stream of data to your home. Anything else, such as billing for that stream of data or providing equipment to convert an optical signal to a wifi signal, may cost extra when the "initial period" ends.

Like anything else we will have to wait and see what Quantum does in the future. For now it may make sense to take advantage of their low pricing and good service since we can always change In the future. I can tell you unlike the cable companies. They don’t have that constant pressure to increase costs because of all the franchise content fees that go up every year, so the Fiber pricing should remain pretty stable.

I don't disagree with you. I am just trying to make sense of why "initial period" appears even though it looks out of place. My guess is they recently needed to raise rates by $10 but found themselves boxed in by their "price for life" claim. By adding the new words they have a way out of the box.

That doesn't mean there is any plan to raise rates in the near future, just that there is a way for them to do that somewhere down the line.

Odd as it is, I almost wish I was paying more for internet today, that way I could justify to myself the trouble of changing to the $35 offer.

Agreed. In today’s world where costs can change all the time they needed to add “wording” to protect themselves.

The other big difference getting the 800Mb and higher speeds is no data cap. If you have 200Mb, you’re capped at how much data you can upload and download for the month before they reduce your speed to a crawl and raise your bill significantly depending on how much you use. Make sure you keep underneath these caps

There is no cap, neither advertised nor experienced, on my service through T-Mobile. I have exceeded 1TB at least once with no slow downs.

I switched to the 1GB service from the 500mb service and my download speeds decreased significantly. When I tested before I would normally get around 300MB both down and up. After switching to the 1GB service I'm getting around 80mb down and 250mb up. I've cycled the NID in the garage and reset each of the WiFi 6 pods in the house and it made no difference. Still ok for working remotely and watching tv, but strange that upgrading the service to increase the speed actually decreased my speed. Those tests were using the Ookla speed test, using my Iphone 13.

There is another post or two in another thread, I believe by jrref, that mentions a problem if the new WiFi 6 pods are too close together. You might want to find that post and see if something in there could help.