Frontier Fiber 2 Years Later: Keep an Eye on the Bill!

[@OldMan_PJ]

With regards to the Roku/KZbinTV issue, make sure the Roku's get their power from a wall outlet instead of the USB port on a TV, when the power goes out the Roku can lose its memory.

[@LonSeidman]

Good point - I'll check on that the next time I'm over there.

[@Chucka1463]

I've had Frontier FIOS here in SoCal for nearly 20 years. Customer service has been fantastic in my area, as well as reliability. I've had less than a handful of outages in 20 years. Right now I get 500/500mbs for a net of $29.99/month. No additional taxes or fees. It's the lowest speed available. They offer up to 7gbs in my area. Aside: We have no "pole attachments" as everything is underground.

[@Paveynator]

@@Chucka1463 Do you still have Verizon gear? Haha. Going from Verizon to Frontier then back to Verizon, what a trip.

[@Chucka1463]

@@Paveynator Hah, the box on the side of my house says "GTE Americast". They're the ones that dug up the street and installed fiber to every home in my city back in 1999. That's when I got fiber. Then Verizon bought GTE Americast and eventually Frontier bought it from Verizon. Now back to Verizon. Whew! My house is wired for both Spectrum and FIOS but I only use FIOS. I have a FIOS ONT. That's the only gear I get from FIOS. My personal router and mesh wifi is connected to the ONT via a Moca adapter.

[@oliver.hood28]

I’d recommend setting up your parents landlines with the Ooma telo box. I’ve used it in New York for 8+ years and it’s only cost me between $5-$7 a month and I’ve had no issue.

[@Paveynator]

My isp is a small wisp turned fiber provider and they had 65 for a gig price lock, and now three years later it went up to 85 dollars for new customers.

[@kumarp3074]

At my parent's house I cancelled their Verizon TV and phone service in 2019 when they started charging over $150 for the TV, phone and internet bundle. I switched them to internet only and got them an Obihai box for free phone service. They already have an rooftop antenna for TV broadcasts and have Sling service for the rest. Total cost was around $70 a month and it's still about the same now.

[@nrnoble]

Yeah, when it works it works great (xFinity with fiber to neighborhood hubs), but when something goes wrong it requires a lot of technical knowledge and effort to get the problems resolved. I have skills to resolve technical issues on my end, but when I need to get my ISP tech support involved it often is a long and frustrating process. I do not like talking to someone on the other side of world who is reading from a script instructing me to turn devices on\off, etc. Thankfully, I have an extremely high up time (98%) without any problems thus getting my ISP involved is very rare. It would appear they know high reliability reduces customer support costs. When it goes down, it often comes back up without having to call. It has taken 25+ years to get to this point.

[@gutwallst6645]

that fiber tour video was awesome, and I suggest everyone watch

[@schlittytube]

Have never understood the industry wide ISP approach of trying to ticky tack gouge and run away your loyal customers. It's so bizarre. It's a two or three time a year dance with customer service just to keep your bill fair and reasonable. The initial offer/savings I can understand, but it's NEVER just that, that goes up. As shown here. Heck, my ISP introduced a 5 dollar fee to lock in your price earlier this year... Yes, a fee to keep your price. I whined my way into a 5 dollar lower bill then added that. Has shockingly stayed the same price so far. So far...

[@tatsumaru12345]

Shoot our Frontier bill just went up to 160$, just for 12mbps Internet and phone. We called last month to see if we could do anything. Instead, it went up 3$ I was about to go starlink, but then they added that 100$ congestion charge

[@mapguy]

I have noticed if you open it in an incognito tab it works. When they updated the portal its been broken since.

[@brucehall1600]

Wait till they want to charge a fee to pay for her bills with credit card. I had a few of my bills say they're going to do unless it comes out of a bank account.

[@GregM]

I am in Canada here we have 3 major incumbents that have divided up Canada into their little fiefdoms. Here 500/500 is $100 CDN per month. That is fiber to the home to an ONT box. 3Gbps up and down is $130 CDN a mth no data caps with either.

[@jerrygeorgopolis8015]

Excellent overview ! Thanks Lon !

[@ForeverMan]

Unite states is clealy insane, the cost of living X wages are absurd Im living in Portugal and pay 53 euros for tv + 200mb internet+ landline + 2 unlimited mobile phones plans, how crazy is that

[@irocz5150]

There is no benefit jumping to 2-5-7Gig if you dont change your home equipment...in my case I needed to change switches,firewall,NIC cards it will add up very quick.

[@BackForwardPunch]

Had a ton of issues with Frontier in California Customer service is abysmal- have to call several times and they will tell you they have made changes to your account, but they haven’t. Also having billing issues- which can’t be resolved because of the bad customer service. If you have an alternative- which I really don’t - I’d suggest using a different provider

[@aurthorthing7403]

COX just came to my small town (16,000 people) and installed fiber everywhere. I'm waiting till they work out most of the bugs in the system before I do any switching. I heard they aren't any better than the local cable company.

[@drsysop]

Many areas in CT is on Cox (Hartford area), Comcast's Xfinity (New Haven & New London counties) & Cablevision's Optimum (Litchfield & Fairfield counties except Danbury which is on Xfinity).

[@jrr851]

Some of Hartford County is Comcast. I grew up in Canton when it was TCI, then AT&T Broadband, then Comcast.

[@jirawatliw180]

@@drsysop Change to Gonetspeed, it's better

[@tdadp]

I remember when my dad Verizon and switch to frontier in Florida. It’s funny frontier dropped the cable service. Verizon still has Verizon one.

[@johnstouchpad6437]

Lon are your parents eligible for any senior discounts?

[@billbell3737]

I tried Roku a while back for something on an older TV that didn't have some apps I wanted. I could never get it to work reliably. I have 3 Samsung Smarts TVs that all have KZbin and KZbin TV builtin. I have had no issue with KZbin or KZbin TV. I have a premium KZbin account so I can play KZbin music on the TV. Samsung has some amazing deals during the holiday season. HINT for your mother's Christmas present.

[@Jean0987654321]

Bruh, you need to cut your mom's home phone service especially if she has a cell phone. Thats robbery nowadays especially with Ooma being a thing

[@bbgarnettTotallyNotABot]

Keep up the great work

[@fredWaxBeans11111]

I'm in Connecticut, and Frontier STILL has not "migrated" my area over to Fiber yet. We are paying $54.99 for internet and we have about 7.5 Mbps download speed and maybe 1 Mbps upload. You read that correctly, for $55 bucks. We've been waiting patiently for the fiber to be switched on (I remember the Frontier trucks stringing up the fiber up our street about 2 years ago). I'm actually thinking about ditching the internet totally, and just using local library wifi mobile hot spots for our internet until Frontier get's it's ass in gear. Or maybe go with Tmobile home internet. $55 for 7.5 Mbps download speed is insane. We don't do streaming in HD, don't need much bandwidth, but especially the 1 Mbps upload speed is just about useless, if I want to occasionally upload a video, etc.

[@gutwallst6645]

so I take it you cannot get Starlink?

[@wiziek]

Is that dsl on phone cables?

[@fredWaxBeans11111]

@@wiziek Yes. It's DSL on copper telephone line.

[@fredWaxBeans11111]

@@gutwallst6645 Starlink is (from what I see) about $120 per month residential. I want my bill to go down not up. I don't need blazing fast internet, but something faster than what I'm getting now would be nice. the Frontier $30/month Fiber 200 plan would be great....super fast compared to what I have now, but cheaper per month, but it's not available yet.

[@jirawatliw180]

How about Gonetspeed

[@CantankerousDave]

My Nvidia Shields have been repeatedly logging out of the KZbin app lately, too.

[@coolerking7427]

I switched from Spectrum to T Mobile Home Internet and I love it. My bill is 65 dollars a month vs $200 a month with everything. I work from home and its great.

[@polarvortex6601]

what kind of speeds are you getting? also are the speeds reliable for even gaming? i'm paying 121 to cumcast because i'm paying the extortion tax in order to not being penalized if i get over 1tb. and i'm afraid to go the att fiber route because i had nothing but bad memories with them during the DSL years

[@Paveynator]

@@polarvortex6601Wait, you have a choice of fiber or cable and you chose cable? I would switch in a heart beat, but that’s me.

[@simplydan]

​@@polarvortex6601we have ATT Fiber. It's been a few years now and it's been great. No issues at all.

[@eat.a.dick.google]

@@Paveynator It kills me listening to people and how often they make weird decisions for all the wrong reasons.

[@martinez392]

@polarvortex6601 if I was you I would be going to AT&T website right now and ordering AT&T fiber..... heck with comcast and 5g internet

[@crosslink1493]

Not surprised with the problems your parents are having with Frontier. I dropped them a few years ago due to lousy connections that would drop out, billing snafus, and landline phone that was all but unusable (my employer was paying me to keep it). I shopped around, signed up with Spectrum for a discount internet/phone plan, and its been rock-solid for me. The plan goes for about another year then I'll shop around to see if I can get a lower cost plan (a 200/200 plan would work for me).

[@bobblair2682]

We’ve had nettalk for a VoIP phone for years and it’s been cheap and reliable.

[@eat.a.dick.google]

No way I could go back to cable. It sucks.

[@sciatl2505]

Is Verizon buying out Frontier

[@johnstouchpad6437]

Yep

[@jaredhuang2225]

Next mission Lon, get your mom onto OTA + some cheaper streaming service.

[@philipleeds3846]

Televes antenna for mom solves a couple of issues

[@simplydan]

I remember him saying that his mom likes to watch some channels but I think only KZbin TV has or something like that. Also depending on location OTA might not work as well.

[@daveschmarder-1950]

I have competition here. We have Spectrum and we have Charter Communications. What? They are the same company? Ok..... Nevermind.

[@99999me1]

$25 for a landline service is ridiculous...

[@johnstouchpad6437]

Magicjack is about 35.00 for a year.

[@joe10117]

price wize they all go up in price

[@Sno_opy_ten_14_29]

Verizon is scary.

[@cr-pol]

$70 a month for TV? Glad I get all the videos I can handle via YT Premium 🙂

[@wojtek-33]

Here in Texas when Frontier down, it's going to days. Spectrum, hours. I'll stick to overpriced spectrum.

[@willgallatin2802]

Frontier is a joke in Ohio. They can't even keep a phone working correctly, let alone internet. I dropped them a decade ago for Spectrum. A wee bit more cost per month, for no issues for a decade is a reasonable trade off. Though looking at these folks bill, I'm paying a fair bit less $$$.

[@rgblack316]

The cost to bill from the bank account versus the credit card is lower. That is why they offer the bigger discount when paying directly from a bank account versus the credit card.

[@LonSeidman]

It doesn't cost them $5 more - and if that was the case they should have offered 5 vs. 10 initially vs. the rug pull.

[@INVAZOR33]

Roku is terrible. Their updates always break things on their tvs, on porpoise and by incompetence. Never again .

[@ChicopeeRadio_2009]

If you need a cheap portable WiFi just get a Verizon MiFi

[@patricknelson]

I see you have that happy robot “🤖 Chat” button overlapping important content there in the bottom right, too! Those useless chat bots are a plague. The worst ones are, by far, the ones that disrupt what you’re trying to do, popping up and interrupting you, overlapping things or (worst case, which I *have* seen) stealing focus away from what you were doing on the site, like if you’re typing, it will rip that focus away and start plugging it into the chat window! Insane. Sorry, had a lot of pent up frustration there… 😅

[@ZaberfangX]

comcast in MA, wants me to do auto pay for a $5 discount, and I try to get on a plan but end up saving $10 then not being in a plan so I'm on a planless option atm, and I'm still looking at a $245 bill each month that with cable basic, phone and internet

[@gartennelke]

So this is my UK equivalent; Lon's Mum's Internet $64.99 My (flawless) Internet $21.31 (£16) Lon's Mum's 'phone $25 My 'phone $10.65 (£8) Lon's Mum's TV $72.99 My TV ~ Amazon Prime $10.55 (£7.92) + NOW TV $42.62 (£32) = $53.17 Lon's Mum's Taxes $12.88 My TV Licence Fee* $17.65 (£13.25) Lon's Mum's Total $175.86 My total $102.78 * The UK licence is controversial but it funds the BBC & pays for transmitter infrastructure so none of this ATSC 3.0 nonsense

[@Paveynator]

No offense but the entirety of the UK can fit in California, with many millions of more people. It’s not surprising you would have cheaper options.

[@gartennelke]

​@@Paveynator Good point & I live in the crowded South of England so we have a lot of options nowadays.

[@mthuhn]

I recommend you switch your mom's ruku's with the Chromecast with Google tv or the Google TV streamer never had them log me out of youtube tv

[@johnstouchpad6437]

I thought Chromecast was end of life product?

[@mthuhn]

@@johnstouchpad6437 yes if he's concern about support than get the Google TV streamer but Google said that they will continue support for the older models and I know that they could pull support but I find them to be more reliable than the ruku's