When I lived in Worcester, the nodes were always super saturated so you never got the speed you wanted. While there is a contract with Spectrum, I also heard if Verizon offers fiber they have to for the entire city and the multi unit houses are costly to bring a connection into if only a few people want it. This leads to a “doesn’t make financial sense for us (Verizon) to do it so we won’t”. I live in Northborough (20 min east of Worcester) and have the choice of fiber or spectrum and have fiber. We just upgraded to 1000mbps and it’s great since I’m on Zoom calls all day long while the kids are doing other stuff. At the brewery we have spectrum business and it’s passable. It’s fast when it works though goes out 1/month. My $0.02 Eric

On Jul 24, 2022, at 19:46, Joel via WLUG wrote:

 Unsure of any towns in the Worcester area offering fiber for Internet.

I have Spectrum the past 10+ years in Charlton and they are pretty o.k. for service based on price. I have their basic tier of speed.

Eight years ago their Charter DNS servers would all fail more than once a month. Easily solved by pointing router somewhere else for primary DNS lookup.

They mostly provide the 200mbps down and 20mbps up they claim. Price is reasonable at around $50 a month.

I like them much better for Internet than I do for cable or wired telephone.

Have heard bad things about their cell phone service too (service and billing messes). It think they resell / share on the Verizon cell network.

Joel

...

On July 24, 2022 4:57:57 PM Joshua Stone via WLUG wrote:

Hey all,

My wife and I have been on the market for a home, and we feel that Worcester would be a great city for us to move to. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Worcester has much if any options for fiber internet which is important for both of us working from home. The fastest provider appears to be Spectrum, and I've heard only bad things about them.

Last I heard, Worcester has been held down by a monopoly from Spectrum, and I don't know if the city government has been working to change this with municipal fiber or trying to get other ISPs in the area to improve competition. It seems like the kind of issue that network engineers from WPI could assist with.

Anyone have more information on this?

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Joshua> My wife and I have been on the market for a home, and we feel Joshua> that Worcester would be a great city for us to move Joshua> to. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Worcester has much if Joshua> any options for fiber internet which is important for both of Joshua> us working from home. The fastest provider appears to be Joshua> Spectrum, and I've heard only bad things about them. Joshua> Last I heard, Worcester has been held down by a monopoly from Joshua> Spectrum, and I don't know if the city government has been Joshua> working to change this with municipal fiber or trying to get Joshua> other ISPs in the area to improve competition. It seems like Joshua> the kind of issue that network engineers from WPI could assist Joshua> with. I'm in Boylston and we have a mix of Fios on some streets, and Spectrum for the rest of the town. I'm on spectrum and it's been quite reliable for 23 years now, with only a few outages. Cost... that's another issue. The only town in the area with it's own Internet is Shrewsbury, but I don't know how fast it is. I don't think it's fibre to the house though. You're going to have to ask carefully if the current owner has Fios or not. But with my wife and I working from home and the kids also at home a couple of years ago, I didn't run into any problems with Charter's up speed generally. Good luck in the search! Tatnuck is a great area, as is the Salisbury or Greendale areas, though you have to be careful where you pick to live. Schools are a concern... not sure if you have kids or not. John