I am having it installed in the office as they state that copper wiring will no longer be available. Anything I should know in advance of the installation? Thanks

Pretty straight forward, it will come into a box (ONT-Optical Network Terminal) that converts the fiber signal to “regular” wired network (Cat-5/6) output. It then connects to your router just as the “regular” wired service did.

Your WI-FI or wired connections remain the same.

Most phone company ONTs have both Ethernet and Co-ax interfaces on the LAN side. Select Ethernet if they give you a choice. The LAN port on the ONT will connect to a router and then to one or more Ethernet switches that provide drops to the various devices on the LAN. Somewhere, either between the ONT and the router, or the router and the switch, it would be wise to maintain a firewall of some sort.

The on-site infrastructure may already be in place and sufficient for your needs, in this case, you simply will plug in the cable from the ONT to wherever your previous Internet connection was located. This is not guranteed, but will work in most cases.

You may also need to modify your DNS records so that your Internet-facing IP address replaces the one you had before along with adjusting the configuration of your router and firewall to IP addresses that your new provider will allocate to you. If you have clients connecting to LAN resources from 'outside," e.g. via a hosted VPN, you will undoubtedly need to reconfigure them as well.

But, for the most part, it should be plug'n'play.

Do not cut it……seriously. I had AT&T fiber installed a few weeks back, it runs into my attic and into my living room. The line is pretty small and I am doing some insulation work in the attic. I just happened to be doing work where the fiber and old land line cable (as well as coax for Comcast) entered the attic. Without paying attention to what was bundled together, I decided to cut out the old land lines that I no longer need. Unfortunately that small fiber line was in the bundle with the fiber and it got cut. The AT&T guy was cool, I told him I cut it, shorted him where and he spliced it together and did not charge me for the repair since I was honest. It would have been $200.

Apparently the fiber gets cut often - animals chewing it, people digging in the yard etc. He said most people lie and say they have no idea why it is not working and he has to spend time looking for the problem.

It will be faster than anything you’ve ever had before there!

You will love it. I was at the very end of the copper wire length internet in my neighborhood from the main box and never able to achieve the speed I paid for. Then even when I had a horrible customer service issue and they said they would upgrade my speed for free, they could not do it. Hell, they probably knew that.

Now I finally have fiber and my internet is blazing fast. I was able to negotiate with them to keep it as unlimited usage due to how long I have been with AT&T, how I also use them for wireless, DirecTv, and the other issues. I would not have gotten that if I didn’t fight for it.

I have Spectrum internet at the house. It is fiber optic to the nearest node, and then it's coax into the house. 400+ Mbps down/10+ Mbps up.
Up to 2 Gig speed is available at additional cost.
It works really well and is very reliable.
It's presently $89.95 per month.

We do have fiber into the home up at the cabin. It is a seasonal usage place and the 200 Mbps up/down we pay for is entirely adequate.
I recently got an email from the provider, they have upgraded everyone they service in our region up to 1 Gig speed at no additional cost. That's 1 Gig up and down.
I do understand that within a few months, another email will arrive and I already know what it will say.
"Due to the ever increasing costs of business, your internet will now be priced at $XXX.xx per month"
It's presently $90 per month. They also allow placing the account on "pause" for up to six months out of a given calendar year.
I routinely do exactly that from around January 1 to around May 1. No point in paying for internet when the snow surrounding the cabin is so deep that you can't get there without snowshoes.

Depends on who it's with. I have Frontier Fiber.

Outage list 2025/2026:

4/16/25 - 2 hours
4/19/25 - 50 hours
8/13/25 - 6 hours
9/3/25 - 1 hour
9/8/25 - 54 hours
12/22/25 - 52 hours
1/6/26 - >3 hours
1/14/26 - >3 hours

Now that Verizon has taken over, maybe it'll be better.

ATT fiber, up to now it was the only Fiber game in the area. They were charging $90 a month, but just got a deal where after all promotions it's $35 a month.

WOW Fiber internet is now in the area so that might have something to do with lowering rates.

Just been a few downtime issues, usually the fault of someone damaging equipment or a failure but it's back up quickly.

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
Apparently the fiber gets cut often - animals chewing it, people digging in the yard etc.

Yes, fiber-optic cabling is more fragile than plain 'ol copper wiring. It can't be bent, it'll break.

I sincerely appreciate all the information you have given me. Any more information and suggestions are welcome.
Is the installation going to involve his going into the attic?

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I sincerely appreciate all the information you have given me. Any more information and suggestions are welcome.
Is the installation going to involve his going into the attic?

They installed mine the same way the cable was installed, through the attic and dropped down into my living room.

I was able to get a week's notice by talking to the technicians burying the line.

Asked for 50 extra feet of service line and ran conduit from outside, under the foundation, and under the house through the floor where I wanted the router.

Installer dude was surprised that he didn't have to put anything on the side of the house. I didn't get any additional loss from having mechanical splices.

The service line comes from the pole and plugs directly in to the router and stays in a sealed conduit the whole time.

I put a 'Spectrum' fiber tag on the conduit later.

AT&T just laid fiber cable down our street. Now, their folks are knocking on my door every day trying to get me to sign up.
Question for those who have fiber run to their homes? My home is 30 years old and has the original coax cable. At some point, does the fiber connect to the existing coax, or do they run fiber into the house and connect it to newer routers/modems?

By the way - buried fiber cable does have a shelf life and can degrade over time (mainly due to moisture). I seem to recall that it's 10-15 years. I worked at the Norcross, GA Lucent Technologies fiber plant for 18 years.

quote:

Originally posted by randyman:
AT&T just laid fiber cable down our street. Now, their folks are knocking on my door every day trying to get me to sign up.
Question for those who have fiber run to their homes? My home is 30 years old and has the original coax cable. At some point, does the fiber connect to the existing coax, or do they run fiber into the house and connect it to newer routers/modems?

By the way - buried fiber cable does have a shelf life and can degrade over time (mainly due to moisture). I seem to recall that it's 10-15 years. I worked at the Norcross, GA Lucent Technologies fiber plant for 18 years.

22 yrs old house, had Comcast coax from day one,

switched to Fios last year,
both have fiber on the road, comcast just used the original cable lines to the house, and the stuff installed when we built, re the plugs etc,

Fios ran fiber to teh garage, and added a box/modem/something that tied into the existing phone lines in the house , the plugged the wireless thingy into that,
which has enough wifi range to reach everything in the house,

took 2 hrs, and only because the tech and I sat around BS'ing for about an hour or so,

ground crew came in a few weeks later and buried the outside line