IS FIBER ALL THE SAME?

Is Fiber all the same? Short answer is, not at all. So how can you tell what fiber you have or are buying? There are several factors of fiber products that can make a big difference in how well it works for you.

Are you really getting fiber service?

How can you tell is your fiber is really fiber? The definition of a fiber circuit should be fairly simple, it is a circuit comprised solely of fiber optic cable. However, there are major carriers that have products like "Hybrid Fiber Coax" aka HFC, Fiber is optical and coax (cable) is electrical, so how can it be both? The answer is that that can't, but that doesn't stop irreputable providers from calling it fiber. The truth is that HFC is actually a fiber enhanced cable circuit that is only slightly more reliable than cable and is more expensive than cable, but less than dedicated fiber.

There are other products, such as EFM Fiber, EFM stands for "ethernet first mile". this is a circuit that does start out as fiber, but is delivered as cable, so it is also a little more reliable than cable, but is really just enhanced cable. it is priced similar to HFC, but looks and works more like cable.

Broadband or Dedicated

Broadband fiber shared service, much like cable. The quality and speeds vary according to what other users, nearby and far away, are doing. Broadband is much less expensive and can be good for some purposes, but is usually not the best choice for a business. The advantages are lower cost and faster installation. The disadvantages are lower level of security and erratic quality and speeds. On some platforms, carriers will not support voice services and other 'mission critical" applications over broadband fiber. Broadband speeds are always quoted as, "Up To", since the speeds can and do vary. Like cable, the reliability guarantee is, "best effort", meaning the carrier will do everything they can to keep it running, but if it fails, you still pay the bill. Broadband fiber is sometimes called Business Fiber, which is not really a high quality, business grade product

Dedicated fiber, like the name implies, is a dedicated circuit, meaning a connection for just one customer. This does not mean that the carrier runs a separate fiber run for the customer, instead, they partition off a section of existing or new fiber for just one customer. Dedicated Fiber fiber is more expensive than broadband, but is much more secure, reliable robust. this means that the speeds do not vary due to other users, the circuit is much more secure since it is like a hallway with only one door at each end, rather than having many on and off ramps like broadband. Dedicated circuits have a guarantee called an SLA or Service Level Guarantee, usually of 99.999% up time, or they pay the customer.

Synchronous or Asynchronous?

Synchronous means that the upload (data coming from the customer) travels at the same speed as download (data going to the customer). Asynchronous circuits quote their speed in two number such as 100M / 20M. meaning that the download is 100M and the upload is 20M. Dedicated circuits guarantee the same speed for upload and download. The reason for thi sis that asynchronous circuits were designed for residential users that do a lot of downloading, but not much uploading. this allows the provider to split the signal and use a much smaller facilities for upload than download. Synchronous circuits use full duplex circuits which use the same infrastructure for both up and down traffic.

You might think, why do I care? Well, if you are using your service primarily for streaming videos and music and apps like Face Book, you really shouldn't care. However, if you use your service for VoIP phones, interactive and mission critical purposes, then you really should care. Imagine your phone service is a two lane road, you are talking at 500MPH and listening at 20MPH, which is what an asynchronous circuit can deliver. You and the other party would be talking over each other spaced by periods of silence, at times and have clipped and lost words at other times. This is not business grade and would reflect poorly on you. The same applies to interactive applications, like gaming and worse for video conferencing over Zoom and other platforms.

So all dedicated, synchronous circuits are the same?

There are many other factors that determine the quality of a fiber circuit. Some circuits are linear, like a single road with many on and off ramps. These work fine until something happens to teh road and a lot of the customers on one side of the dame, lose service. Higher reliability circuits use a series of circular circuits instead of a straight line to deliver service. These are called Mero-E circuits, they can reroute traffic around the trouble automatically, which results in fewer outages. You also have to consider if the circuit is "on net" meaning that the carrier you buy form, actually owns the circuits, instead of renting space on another carrier's facilities, which is called "off net" Off net is not necessarily bad, but the cost will be higher and response time to repair is longer.

So, other than these factors, all carriers are the same?

All carriers are not the same. We are often asked, "which is the best carrier", the answer is not simple. It depends on many other factors, customer location, type of product, how the service will be used, and sometimes, most importantly, what is the recent customer satisfaction of a carrier in that area, for that product. This changes constantly, we often have to put carriers in "Time Out" because of a merger, acquisition, law suit, bankruptcy or many other factors that are common knowledge in the industry, but are not usually in the news. The best way a business can choose a telecom service or provider is to use a an independent agency, like OTA. We are carrier agnostic and our only agenda is to find teh right fit choice for our customer.