Who here has made the switch to Google Fiber?

I just subscribed to Sling this last weekend (Orange+Sports Extra) and noticed it explicitly said that I would have access to only one stream. You supposedly have access to 3 concurrent streams on Sling Blue, and four, if you have both.

I’m not very happy with the changes they made to the way they manage the different subscriptions this year. I don’t watch much TV and only subscribe to a service during the college football season. I used to be able subscribe to blue, or orange, and sports extra package to get access to the PAC 12. I’d switch back and forth between orange and blue to be able to have access to whatever network the Utes were streaming on at the time. The didn’t used to limit the number of concurrent streams. After discovering this, I looked around, but didn’t see any better options.

I’m an unusual customer. For the way I watch TV, I’d be thrilled if I had a pay per view option for the few things I want access to.

The Same happened to us.
I read one of the chat forums online that you need to have a Roku TV (or Roku device added to your TV) to make it easier. Also that Sling TV was actually purchased by Direct TV. So, we’re basically watching DirecTV, but through a different portal…?
Maybe @Buhbye or someone else can explain that.

Having used Sling, FUBO and YTTV, here is my quick synopsis:

Sling - has PAC 12 but not local channels. Lowest price
FUBO - Doesn’t have TNT, TBS so not good for March madness or NBA playoffs
YTTV - no PAC 12

So nobody has the package I want, so I end up switching around.

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It’s Dish not DirecTV. DirecTV has their own version of it. At least with Sling we can watch PAC12 networks, and it’s month to month. Maybe we’ll look at Roku soon. The Chromecast can be finicky I s’pose.

Separate from that - and not to steal the thread - we switched to Google Fiber about 6 months ago and for the most part we’re happy but every now and then it seems like the TV stalls, or the service isn’t quite up to the gigs they promised. But we’re happy with the switch for the savings of money

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I’m waiting for it’s equivalent here in our part of NC. Google Fiber is in the Triangle. Sadly that’s too far west for us. Supposedly our local ISP is upgrading. I hope so. More stability would be good.

It’s basically the ESPN channels that you can only watch on one device at a time. I guess maybe the Disney channels too, but we never watch them.

I can confidently say from much experience, that having one device permanently being on Hallmark or Lifetime does not limit what you can watch on other devices.

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If you are happy with Xfinity or anything else, don’t change. We switched to Google about 6 months ago. Today is their THIRD visit to our house in that time because as of this morning, we are getting 13 Mbps down and 16 up. We have the highest plan and most powerful router they offer. As of now, I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. I had Xfinity for 15 years and the only time they came out is if we bought something from them they needed to install (camera, etc.).

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I wish it wasnt 3 times more expensive

Generally when I notice a slowing with my Xfinity service, it is because of a firmware update to the router (or one to my office router). Usually all it takes is unplugging the power from the router, counting to 30, then plugging it back into the power to fix it. Had the same with Centurylink.

My guess is you already tried this and was unsuccessful. Posting in case you hadn’t tried this yet.

I’m so tempted to switch to Google Fiber mostly to send Xfinity a big FU. I watched some workers bury fiber down the street (but not into my HOA, hrm) this summer but apparently the whole south east part of Sandy is still “Upcoming” on Google Fiber’s map. Still waiting.

The thing is, I tried many ISPs since the dark dial-up days of the Internet, and Xfinity has been the most stable of them all. I think a lot of it has to do with my location, the infrastructure may be newer and more robust. Early on I had trouble getting stable high speed/high definition, but mostly because whoever wired the house had put too many splitters and boosters in the line. I was able to reduce that number a few years ago and haven’t had a problem since.

In the early days of COVID-19 remote work, I found that we needed to upgrade to gigabit networking so that my wife and I could do video conferencing at the same time plus some remote desktop work. I haven’t had a complaint about that – while my coworkers kept losing their audio or complaining the application was dropping connections, I was living the high life on Xfinity HD. It made it possible to do my job efficiently.

Given that, it’s hard for me to justify switching. But I just cut the cord for TV because my bill kept soaring over $200/mo for something we barely used. And then I got the lame high pressure sales tactics to add a cell phone to the plan when I simply wanted to drop the cable TV and get the rates I saw on their own stupid web page. FU Xfinity!

Oh, changing my plan this summer does mean I’m contracted with Xfinity for two years, so I guess I won’t switch until that’s up and my bill starts climbing again. FU Xfinity!

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I feel the same way about Xfinity, and felt that way about CenturyLink before.

My problem with Xfinity service was that they very frequently schedule outages after about 12:30 AM, I presume for maintenance, but they assume that no one is using the service then.

My other complaint, is that like most organizations now, you cannot ever speak with someone for service. When there is an outage you listen to an automated assistant telling you that an agent can do nothing for you - we’ll let you know when their service will be back up.

I’m a hopeless insomniac, and as such, for years have nighty listened to podcasts, etc from a small laptop on my nightstand, periodically during the night. If the internet is down for service often, as it was with Xfinity, it’s disruptive to my life. There are lots of technology people out there doing installations and upgrades from home, via internet at all hours of the night, or people who work at home at night. It should no longer be acceptable to shut a service down for hours at night.

They did let me speak with an agent when I cancelled my service, and only then offered me some promotions that would lower my bill close to what it had been prior to the recent price increase. Of course, by then I had gone to the trouble of installing a replacement option, and had no intention of considering them further.

It’s a commodity. I now have two of the three major services physically connected to my home. If I ever need to, I’ll have CenturyLink Fiber run to the home, as long as they do it to my specs. From now on, I’ll plan to change anytime I’m unhappy with my current service. From everything I’ve heard, Google will be better than anything I’ve ever had, so I don’t expect to have to change anytime soon. We shall see…

CenturyLink is AWFUL, service, products, etc are all bad. Our other option, Optimum, isn’t much better. I miss the days when we had Xfinity/Comcast, just to give you an idea of how bad our ISPs are.

I would love for Xfinity, Spectrum, Google, any other ISP to come to our area, create competition and force the ISPs to create a better infrastructure. As it sits now, neither CenturyLink nor Optimum have a reason to upgrade.

One thing that probably contributed to my stability with Xfinity is that I own my own modem. Yes, it’s mostly about saving money in the long run but I also suspect it isolates me from any surprise firmware upgrades and having my wireless bandwidth leeched by their hotspot services.

If Google needs me to switch to their mesh hardware as part of the install I’d say “no thanks”. I recently went through the trouble of running cat-6 ethernet through my house so I could put a wireless access point on each of the three floors, wired all the way (via a couple of switches) to a single router. No more dead spots, no more wailing housemembers begging to reboot the wireless router. The problem with a mesh is that your wireless signal is relayed among the devices until it gets to your ISP modem. Good solution for larger homes, but not great.

Circling back on the streaming subject, I found that most if not all streaming solutions allow you to pause subscriptions or pay a-la-carte per month. Considering that I saved over $100 dropping cable TV, I can easily switch to most streaming services to binge one show, then move on the next month, and still save a bunch of money. Some times I can cheat with a trial month and cancel before paying.
So far:

  • Disney+: The Mandalorian
  • AppleTV: Foundation
  • Hulu: The Old Man, Pig
  • Paramount+ (active): Star Trek Lower Decks, Discovery
  • Netflix (active): nothing. I want to deactivate it but then my leeching relatives would complain and I’d incur my wife’s wrath.
  • Amazon Prime (active): nothing. When I am done with my current major project, I’ll probably cancel so I can feel smug in depriving Jeff Bezos of my money. I tried to get into Sandman but it really didn’t grab me.

I did lose my HBO streaming included with Xfinity, but I’ll revive it some day to catch up on my stories. I’ll let them queue up so I can binge in 30 days and then cancel.

I’m still saving a buttload of money, especially considering that I had this streaming strategy before I cut the cord. I might add a TV service later for the sports.

Still waiting for Google Fiber to be an option where I’m at. Due to WFH and being in a tech job, Xfinity is my only option right now. Ugh.

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Anyone else feel this way? Google Fiber is about to make some runs in my neighborhood and I’m tempted to drop Xfinity (may have to wait until next summer because of my contract). I really need my internet to be stable for work though.

Don’t. Trust me. Don’t.

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I had century link internet for a couple of decades, until I could not longer stand all the problems. I switched to the only alternative I had at the time, Xfinity. They provided my service for two years. It was spotty, unreliable, and it was always very difficult to get any useful customer support.

When google became available at my house in SLC, about a year ago, I switched. The transition was painful, as I am super particular about trenching in my yard, how and were wire comes into my house, and the location of the equipment in the house. Once I personally met a member of the installation team, onsite, they did exactly what I wanted, quickly, efficiently and without issues.

After we were past the installation, I must say, I have been more than pleasantly surprised at the level of service. The price is consistent, and much better long term than anyone else (no initial low prices that revert to a standard higher rate over time. The bandwidth, in real terms, is consistently much higher than Xfiniity ever was. I have never, repeat, never, had an outage, and hence don’t have to interact with Customer Service.

I have a summer home in rural southern Idaho, and currently use the cable system there for internet. It is better then Xfinity for customer service, and about the same for bandwidth and reliability. If google became available, I’d immediately sign up. I might again have with some initial installation issues. but would expect improved service after that.

One guy’s experience…

BTW - I bought their service in spite of fighting with the installation sub-contractors for more than two years over the way they trench neighborhood streets and create danger and injuries for cyclists. I’m no longer fighting as they are long gone from my area, but if you live in an area being newly developed, and have cycling dangers of other trenching issues, drop me a board mail and I’ll dig up some of the old details and contacts.

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I was on Xfinity for years and the price kept going up and up and up and up to the most absurd level.

Google came on and gave me a deal for 1GB for like $70 a month and with their cable I was still paying half of Xfinity. Was super happy.

Then they cut their cable and I had to move to fubo and other streaming which did Jack up my price a bit.

For GF I still pay $70 a month for internet 1GB. It’s fairly reliable but 1) never seems as fast as advertised (in fairness I do a lot over WiFi but have a mesh router). And it goes out more and needs to be rebooted more for no apparent reason.

Xfinity was much more annoying and expensive but don’t remember any regular outages. Google decent and way cheaper and less of a screw you job but have slow down and reboot interrupt more (not a lot but more).

I wouldn’t go back to Xfinity for anything. I’m fine with google and the cost savings.