Our household is like many of the households in Holly Springs. At any given time, it’s possible that our internet signal is being split up to about six times.
We have a teenage son that spends every possible non-productive minute on Xbox live. I’m pretty sure that the bulk of my data goes to the Xbox. While he’s on the Xbox, he’s streaming YouTube to his laptop. My wife and I are left fighting for the remaining signal on our laptops, and my poor daughter comes last on the tablet. I pay for a significant package with one the local carriers, and although I pay for a download speed of 100 Mbps, that varies on time of day and many other variables. I think every house in the neighborhood is online after dinner, cutting my bandwidth considerably. A test last night revealed a download speed of 105 Mbps on my wired computer, and a whopping 11.52 Mbps, through my WiFi, and that was with the Xbox off.
You can go to Speedtest.net if you’re curious as to what your speed is.
There has been some buzz about Ting, but it seemed that there was a lacking of hard data and facts. I called the company to get the scoop, and to better understand what their plans were in coming to Holly Springs. I had some questions for them, and they were happy to provide answers.
Here are the results:
SL: How much faster will it be than what I currently have?
Ting: Much, much faster. Fiber fixes problems like streaming movies that take forever to start and that pause to buffer, video chats that break up, lagging online gaming, big uploads or downloads that take forever to complete..
By the numbers, the FCC defines the bare minimum speed required for a connection to be considered “broadband Internet” is 25 Mbps for download and 3 Mbps for upload.
Crazy fast fiber Internet from Ting is what’s called “symmetrical gigabit” service. That means 1 Gbps (1,000 Mpbs) download and upload speeds.
Ting Internet, then, is 40 times faster to download and over 300 times faster to upload than the nationally accepted definition of what is broadband.
SL: Are there real-life advantages of the faster service?
Ting: Whether or not an individual chooses to use the service at home, they benefit from the infrastructure. Health and education are places where “the gig” really shows its power to change things. Think about having medical offices securely sharing data in near real-time, instead of waiting for the Internet connection to catch up. Private enterprise also gets a big boost from having the best Internet access available.
For individual subscribers, the benefits of gigabit Internet are many. We try to sum it up by saying “everyone in the house doing whatever they want to do online without getting in each other’s way.”
SL: Will my Wi-Fi be faster too, or just my direct connect?
Ting: Wi-Fi will absolutely be faster. Without going too far down the technological rabbit hole, the only speed limitation will be in the device you’re connecting. If your smartphone, tablet or laptop supports 802.11n (and most made in the last couple of years do), you’ll be able to pull in up to 450 Mbps wirelessly. Older devices (802.11 a/b/g) will be slower. As newer Wi-Fi standards come in and take over, you’ll get full gigabit connectivity wirelessly on all devices.
SL: What could disrupt the service?
Ting: While there are certainly redundancies built in and we always aspire to 100% uptime, the network is a physical thing. Fiber networks are being considered as infrastructure for the next 100 years so there’s an expectation for reliability already built in. That said, it’s physical infrastructure and as such, is susceptible to some of the same things that can affect any physical infrastructure.
Fiber networks also have the benefit of being brand new. We won’t face the same maintenance-related issues and outages as the aging infrastructure the incumbents are using.
So, assuming squirrels don’t get a taste for fiber optic cables and local construction workers know what it is they’ve uncovered if they happen upon a buried fiber cable, we’ll be in good shape.
SL: Will it slow down at peak usage hours like my cable does?
Ting: Customers will not see any slow down during peak hours. Let me provide a little more context than that, though.
Practically speaking, it’s impossible to design a network to operate at full throughput for every connection on that network. The key difference between our fiber Internet and traditional copper is that there’s a lot more headroom to work with in fiber; it’s faster and offers more data transfer capacity by its very nature.
By contrast, it’s easy to reach the upper limit of a 25 Mbps connection delivered over existing copper. When a lot of people are online at once during peak hours, older network technology gets choked and the result is a network-wide slowdown. We’ve all experienced it.
For context, an hour of HD video, a 1 GB file, downloads in as little as eight seconds.
SL: Are you using any of the existing fiber network in Holly Springs?
Ting: Yes, we’ll be lighting up portions of the existing fiber network and using it as a local backbone.
SL: When will Holly Springs residents be able to get service?
Ting: We have a pre-order mechanism in place and we’re using it to gauge where the most serious demand lies.
We’re in the network planning and demand generation phase right now. Everything we’re talking about is demand dependent, and it’s that demand that will guide all of our activities here in Holly Springs. It’s tough to assign very specific dates, but we can say that the first Ting Internet customers in Holly Springs could be online as early as the summer or as late as the end of the year.
SL: What’s the cost to the customer?
Ting: We have two core offerings: Symmetrical gigabit home Internet access for $89/mo. and symmetrical gigabit business Internet for $139/mo.
Initial installation costs can vary but are never more than $200 for a home of $400 for a business.
The Ting Internet Box is required equipment and can be purchased outright for $199 or rented for $9/mo.
We have a low cost 5 Mbps / 5 Mbps connection too. That will be $19/mo.
SL: How long is that rate valid?
Ting: We don’t do a good enough job of explaining this so I’m really glad you asked. This isn’t some introductory or time-limited offer. I’m comfortable saying the price you see today is the price you’ll pay for the foreseeable future.
SL: What about customer service issues?
Ting: You’ll can call us directly. We will have support in Holly Springs.
Whether it’s a problem, a question or you just need a little help, a real person will pick up. Customer service is a core tenet on which we’ve built Ting over the past several years, and we’re really proud of the way the team takes care of customers.
