Armstrong Internet → Fiber going live: more progress made on the Boardman system

That's awesome. I can't wait until I'm able to sign up for fiber as well.

Rather quick install. Took less than an hour. Adtran 12877887F1 micro ONT, GPON but oh well I'm only running a gig at this time.

But at that price is not gonna last. ha Don't get use to it.

Still cheaper than Spectrum selling 940/35 for $124/mo. Never in my life would I have thought Armstrong would have more affordable prices than its peers.

I think a quick phone call with a threat to switch would fix that up. Or, I would get on the $79 I see now. I'm impressed and it's been a while since I said that about Armstrong. But this is a really good setup. You can see the difference clearly in responsiveness of apps on tvs, phones, we've pages, etc. I didn't think I'd notice since I was already running at a gig. I'll test it out hard with Thursday night football and everyone else streaming later. Here's a pic of the ont.

While we are at it, I'll take this time to show you my rack. Not the cleanest wiring lol. Amplified antenna distribution left.

So the ONT goes right to the Edgerouter. 24 port TP Link switch below the patch panels. Added a netgear 8 port as well because I have no less than 2 runs to each room. Too lazy to trace and label, but that'll come eventually. Was built for fiber, now it finally has it.

Awesome!

I did see that Armstrong is now offering me $75/mo for 1 year for 1 Gig. It is a nice try, but I am still sticking with the local fiber company. Maybe another year or two and Armstrong might make it worth it...... Probably not, but here's hoping.

If they'll keep this promo going, it gives them the advantage over AT&T. Another interesting market development is a press release today that indicates Comcast is expanding into parts of the area to include Poland and Boardman, which have been Armstrong territory for 40 years. I am trying to understand this »www.wkbn.com/news/local- ··· -valley/

I know Comcast already has a small system around New Middletown. That’s probably why they chose those adjacent areas. Surprised how much expansion and fiber buildouts are happening around the area, though.

Yeah that was my comment on wkbns Facebook page. Especially with att doing their build out. I wonder what happened with the Armstrong franchise agreements in these areas.

I wonder if it was for only a certain amount of time. Or maybe just for copper installation and not fiber.

At this point I think it would be ridiculous for a competitor to come in and deploy anything but xgs-pon.

I agree. AT&T's future deployments should be all XGS-PON by now, including everything done around the Youngstown area so far.

Though I think Armstrong's ongoing deployment is still GPON, if I'm not mistaken. At least that will be a relatively inexpensive transition to XGS-PON or NG-PON2/NG-PON2+ when they're ready to do it, just swapping out ONTs and optics.

Comcast has experimented with fiber in a few areas from what I've read, but mostly as field tests. It sounds like they are still heavily invested in CableLabs, with mid-split and FDX being their short-term plans for standard deployments. If they obtained permission to operate video services in these communities, my guess is that it will be HFC but using their new Xumo IP-based set-top boxes and/or apps for third-party hardware: Roku, Apple TV, etc. That's the direction Charter is going.

Charter is at least starting to dabble with fiber in the field through their RDOF-funded areas. I hope that helps them build an internal process for bringing fiber to more areas sooner. Charter is still working on high-split and ESD to roll out through 2025. I don't think they'll finish that quickly, but we'll see. After that, I suspect they'll sit on their laurels again for another 5 years, then maybe finally start rolling fiber to more select areas to replace HFC plant -- probably NYC and other markets where they already have fiber competition.

I think you're right, it's a combo PON solution »www.adtran.com/en/newsro ··· solution.

I think the ability is there to swap the customer ont out if needed, but I believe the backend supports both. You can share gpon and xgs-pon over the same fiber.

My sister lives in Poland, I will be keeping an eye on the build out for Comcast and see what plant they are building. I just can't see anything but fiber.

Oh, that's an interesting read. First I've read of Armstrong actually building with XGS-PON in mind for the future. As opposed to, say, jumping directly to NG-PON2+. But it makes sense.

This is why those of us stuck with Comcast/Charter (at least those of us here on DSLR) are dumbfounded by those companies' resistance to just ripping off the bandaid and just deploy fiber to the premises like Armstrong chose to do. It will only cost more in the future, and in the meantime they'll be further behind the telcos who aren't wasting any more time.

Not to mention the fortune being spent on the rip-and-replace of every node, amp, passive, and tap in the HFC plant just to get to 1-5 Gbps down/1 Gbps up. By the time Charter's done with that, if they even actually make their 2025 target, AT&T can just drop some new OLTs in their COs and announce 8 or 10 or even 25 Gbps service with no additional OSP work necessary.

AT&T has been using separate splitters for XGS-PON in upgraded GPON areas for some odd reason. They are on different wavelengths (other than the few areas with "alt" optics), so they could reuse the same fiber and gradually transition customers to the newer OLT without a splitter move. I assume going forward they'll pull the legacy GPON gear as more areas convert everyone to XGS-PON and just reuse the same splitter and different wavelengths for future upgrades.

Yup, I cannot understand Comcast & Charter. It's almost like they're thinking it will be cheaper to keep maintaining the HFC plant instead of going all fiber. Nodes, taps, degrading coax, and all of that goes away with fiber and the system becomes passive.

Side note, I learned the infrastructure a bit more from talking with the technician. Instead of PFPs with 250 or so subscribers like AT&T, they have substations throughout. Almost like a power distribution system. From what he described, there's one in Austintown that delivers service to this side of the system. I believe it is by the Steward Health Center right there by Ohltown Rd. & 46 before Mahoning Ave. It looks like a AT&T Remote Terminal at first, but then you look at it with large fans and several cabinets. So, a little different than AT&T but probably higher capacity trunks to each station. I am curious to see what happens as more are transitioned, right now I have great pings and bandwidth, but being the impatient that I am I've been checking my account daily for the conversion message. Had a beer with my neighbor last night and he said he got an auto call yesterday.

I’ve been wondering why I haven’t seen PFPs mounted on poles so far. That explains why. Sounds to me like they’re reusing the legacy hub sites that they would’ve needed for HFC.

I’ll have to look for that next time I’m in the area.

Yeah it's in front of the medical center, when you pull into the parking lot to the left. I'll snap a pic next time I'm over that way. You can tell it's nothing at&t.

Looks like Comcast is pissing off Poland Township: »www.wfmj.com/story/49723 ··· t-begins

Meanwhile, this is literally a sucker punch to Armstrong. From what I gather, they haven't done much in Poland yet with respect to fiber. It will be quite interesting to see how this plays out. Based on the content of that report, it is in fact fiber being installed. Apparently, amendments made a few years ago at the state level allow for this competition, irrelevant of franchise agreements. I was completely unaware this was happening until I saw WKBN's original story on it. My sister lives in Poland and this will be interesting to see how this plays out. I would think there's some sort of unspoken brotherhood rule in the cable industry about treading on territories. Then again, if a monopoly has fallen due to other competition go for it.

There most definitely is. In fact, "unspoken" is putting it kindly.

I sat in some meetings with Comcast Enterprise for a bulk managed services agreement discussion, where they would be the managed provider for us (a previous employer) across all of our locations nationally. We were primarily looking for the best broadband we could get for the price, which at the time was almost always cable/HFC. Of course, that meant that in some areas they would be ordering and managing Cox, Charter, TWC, Comcast, and broadband circuits from local/regional cable operators. In fact, they selected Armstrong for a couple of our Ohio and Pennsylvania locations. They outright admitted during one of the meetings that they largely respect each others' territories, and generally don't compete with each other. Based on the context of the conversation, I took that to also mean that they leverage their symbiotic non-competing relationships with other MSOs to bring business to each other and presumably offer their best pricing to each other, perhaps in part, to ensure that they can retain their respective monopolies in the regions where they operate.

That being said, the world has changed somewhat since those discussions were had. In today's world where video services are becoming less relevant, states like Ohio are superseding local-level franchise agreements, and the future media for data connectivity coalescing around fiber/xPON and FWA, I don't feel that those "fiefdoms" are as relevant anymore. There isn't just one "coax" or HFC provider and one LEC in a given neighborhood anymore. And I'm not just referring to overbuilders or VoIP services from the cable company. There was talk a few months ago about AT&T partnering with Frontier to expand their backhaul into non-LEC territory, and Verizon has been encroaching on other LECs outside of their territory for a couple years now with their "5G Home Internet" product. Verizon's OneFiber project has also led them to expand their cell site backhaul in markets where they are not the LEC, potentially opening the door to more out-of-market competition in the form of FWA or xPON in the future. And while they weren't a legacy operator on the landline side, T-Mobile has made some impressive inroads convincing people to switch from wireline broadband to their FWA product, too.

The groundwork is being laid for the concepts of "video service distributors" and ILECs to become a thing of the past. The number of people subscribing to "cable" video services over HFC, or POTS service over copper twisted pairs is dropping by millions per year. Everybody who has last-mile networks is converting those networks or building new internet-first distribution systems. And with this transition, the incumbency of AT&T might not stop Verizon, just like the incumbency of Charter or Armstrong is no longer keeping Comcast at bay. I have a feeling we're going to see even more competition between companies who once operated effective monopolies over the voice, video, or internet service in their region finally challenged in a far broader way than ever before, which for us consumers should be good thing. I think it's going to take a few more years to really reap the consequences of it, but the Mahoning Valley should be one of the first to truly benefit -- thinking of neighborhoods that will soon have a choice of: Armstrong fiber, AT&T fiber, T-Mobile 5G, Verizon 5G, and possibly even Comcast fiber too.

That's some really good insight. I wouldn't even be surprised to see Armstrong expand a bit further into local Spectrum territories, given the lack of Spectrum interest in fiber. However the Comcast expansion plays out will likely decide if they expand even further.

Here in Western PA, one of the largest suburbs, Cranberry Twp, has Comcast/Xfinity building a new system to compete with Armstrong and Consolidated/Fidium (and pissing a lot of people off, their yards are being dug up three times, first Armstrong to upgrade to fiber, then Consolidated/Fidum for their fiber, then Comcast for whatever they are running...)

Fixed Wireless from the cell carriers is great for people who can't get anything else, but if you can get fiber or even DOCSIS, that is going to be a much better experience...

I read an article where Comcast is supposed to be expanding into Boardman/Canfield as well.

I'd really like to see them cover the area between their Medina and Boardman systems. AT&T and Windstream are the LECs in most of that area, but the fiber deployments from both have been fairly slow and cherry-picked. A lot of homes still have Spectrum and DSL, or in some cases only Spectrum, as wired ISP choices.

That being said, I don't think Armstrong has the debt appetite to take on building brand new plant in incumbent territory. Spectrum is notorious for pushing deep promotional pricing cuts in areas with fiber competition, while making people like me with few to no options pay overinflated prices for the same service. I had a buddy who used to work for a city-owned cable operation, and he said TWC would undercut their pricing to the point that they would have to offer their service at a loss to compete. Ultimately, TWC would just hold out until their competition went under, then jack the prices back up. While I'd begrudgingly pay these prices for low latency symmetrical fiber, it would do a lot of good to simply have competition around to force Spectrum to keep their prices under control, especially if they aren't going to invest in better or faster upgrades.Do you happen to have a link? I'm interested to hear what kind of timeline they're looking at, and whether they plan to eventually service all households or if they will target specific areas that are low-cost to overbuild (usually major roads and neighborhoods with aerial utilities) and/or apartments/MDUs where the can make an investment in one or a few buildings and pick up dozens of customers.

I heard the boardman and Canfield expansion as well, I believe it was wfmj where I heard it.

This sounds similar to what my ISP, Optimum is doing. They put cabinets similar to those in every neighborhood and serve PON out of them

I'll find the article

Got my letter today lol. You've got 60 days and they're shutting you off. My guess is this is node by node.

Trunk fiber/main lines hung March 2022
Conduit November/December 2022
OLTs started hanging sometime late last summer
Fiber pull through/pedestal conversions January 2023
Pedestal splicing August 2023
Neighborhood Spliced in August 2023
Remaining OLTs spliced in August/September 2023
Service connected September 21, 2023

Is 3 Gig available to you? I have seen ads for it on the website but here it still only shows I can get 1 Gig as my max. I wonder when/where it will be available......

I may need to call to find out, but when I login to my account and click upgrade, it still has all of the DOCSIS packages lol.