Is Fidium worth it for WFH?

Submitted by Alkivar t3_10c25qb in Maine

I have a rock solid reliable provider currently (FirstLight). Problem is they only offer 60/5 DSL service in my area and don't offer FTTH here in town because they stopped doing residential customers.

I know Fairpoint was garbage and Fidium is the old Fairpoint network with upgrades. But 900+/900+ FTTH for $70 a month is tempting as hell, even with slight reliability issues. It's not offered here yet, but coming here later this year.

Not sure if its worth paying for two providers so I don't have outages or not.

Do any of you have experience with Fidiums offerings yet and its reliability? I could probably get my roommate to split the cost of Fidium's fiber service.

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kegido t1_j4db38z wrote

We have had Fidiumfor about 6 months here in Augusta, very little in the way of issues so faršŸ¤Ŗ

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ppitm t1_j4dg41d wrote

I work from home with 4G sometimes, no problem

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Alkivar OP t1_j4dtj4g wrote

i've so far not needed to hot spot my connection. but as i do a lot of remote desktop work as part of my WFH duties, it might do in a pinch, but its not great for long term use.

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civildisobedient t1_j4dkjlc wrote

So far, so good. As far as reliability, the last big storm I knew some folks nearby that had Spectrum outages but our Fidium connection kept working like a champ.

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Alkivar OP t1_j4dv81m wrote

yeah you couldnt pay me to get spectrum. I had a friend who worked for them, and after the shit he told me there is absolutely no chance I would ever get service from them. He had service from them for free as part of his work and changed carrier because of reliability problems.

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Portcitymoon t1_j4e6knw wrote

I have the gig speed Fidium service and it is solid.

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bigspoutwhale867 t1_j4dnmrl wrote

If you have 60/5 now, youā€™d be set with even the 50/50 ($35) or 250/250 ($60). It has much lower latency than DSL (if routing is good) which will make a big difference for video conferencing and more. Just keep in mind that itā€™s intro pricing that goes up $20-25, after the first year. The pricing also assumes that you enroll in paperless billing, and auto payment. You can opt out of each if desired, for $2.50 apiece. I pay about $37.50 for my 50/50, as I opted out of auto payment.

If I worked from home, didnā€™t have a good cell signal for a data backup, and it was critical to be connected, Iā€™d say just go 50/50 and keep the DSL around. You may also want to consider the slight possibility that you canā€™t reorder that DSL service if you cancel it. That would depend on FirstLightā€™s policies, and I donā€™t think Consolidated is starting to block access to copper from Competitive Local Exchange Carriers, at this point. Iā€™m assuming that FirstLight is renting a Consolidated copper line, or two, to provide your DSL service, but I could be wrong.

Iā€™ve had mine since October, and no complaints in that short time frame.

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Alkivar OP t1_j4dugh3 wrote

part of the appeal to changing service was to get more than 50/50 as the roommate games. 250/250 would work too. but for a difference of only $10 the 1GB package sounded better. and i'm fine with paperless billing and auto pay.

my cell signal is fine i've got Verizon, the issue is that I do a lot of remote desktop support, and I dont know if its reliable enough to use on any sort of regular basis for my daily tasks. In a pinch I'm sure I could use it to communicate, i just dont know about remote sessions and latency.

That is precicely why i'm investigating FirstLight told me they will NOT renew the service if I cancel it. My first plan was to see if I could upgrade bandwidth but they said no unless I switched to a business account but the pricing for that is about 6x as much as I currently pay for only a slight increase on the amount of bandwidth

FirstLight is rolling out FTTH in some locations in Maine, but they have no intentions of covering my area with that any time soon.

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bigspoutwhale867 t1_j4dy08d wrote

Gotcha. Iā€™d say just keep in mind the $25 price bump in year 2. As long as itā€™s stable, it would beat the snot out of the DSL. Iā€™d hope any growing pains with Fidium would be worked out by the time your area is live. As long as someone doesnā€™t get the olā€™ fat fingers in your Fiber Distribtion Hub or the Ash St central office, it should be rock solid (barring acts of nature, pole hits, fiber cuts, and the large list of other stuff that can takes connections down).

And if youā€™re in a multi tenant building, just get your landlord on board (if applicable). Fidium will have to run a new drop, and then a fiber jumper to your desired location. They usually run the jumper on the outside and straight in via an ~1/2ā€ hole, unless thereā€™s conduit/interior path established that doesnā€™t require fishing and/or has a pull string.

And I know I donā€™t get why FirstLight letā€™s their FTTX network rot in L/A, in regards to residential service. Oxford Networks was gung-ho on it for a while, and decided to stop selling it to hyper focus on business even before FirstLight bought them out.

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Alkivar OP t1_j4f0hjy wrote

no worries about landlord... I own the building, tenants piggyback off my Wifi (I include it in the rent)... but they aren't around during the day (Bates students) when i'm working so they don't affect my bandwidth much.

yeah absolutely no idea why they are letting it rot. I remember going through having my street blocked for them to upgrade stuff on the poles and to pull fiber a while back so I know there is already fiber 50ft from my house on the pole. Oxford was so much better before Firstlight bought them. At that point in time I had upgraded to 150/20 DSL but when Firstlight bought them they removed that tier of service.

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flyawaysnowbird t1_j4dp9up wrote

Weā€™ve had Fidium for 8 days and it has gone out twice so far.

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Alkivar OP t1_j4dtlq7 wrote

yikes, this is the feedback I was worried about. that sounds a lot like my Fairpoint experience.

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flyawaysnowbird t1_j4duvzb wrote

That was our experience with Fair Point as well. Iā€™ve heard nothing but praise about Fidium, so it was surprising. Following the steps on the website brought it back but weā€™ll talk to customer service about it too

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hike_me t1_j4ehuoh wrote

No experience with Fidium but Iā€™ve had Consolidated (formerly Fairpoint) business fiber for 2+ years and itā€™s been rock solid. No outages and I reliably get +- 2Mbps of the speed Iā€™m paying for. There was a big ass tree that broke the power lines and was hanging on Consolidatedā€™s bundle for days and the fiber kept working like a champ.

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Alkivar OP t1_j4f0sxo wrote

that seems like they at least treat business clients well. but you are paying a lot extra for reliability/service. Fairpoint always treated its business clients well at the expense of its residential clients... hopefully Consolidated didnt keep that as SOP when they took over.

back when I had Fairpoint service I couldnt get a live human to answer a call. On at least 3 occasions I had to get the PUC involved.

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DidDunMegasploded t1_j4dp06q wrote

If you don't have GoNetSpeed service where you live and don't have it by the time Fidium gets around to you, Fidium is the next best thing. Good rates, though we went with GNS because we couldn't find anything positive said about Fidium from Google searches.

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Alkivar OP t1_j4dv03u wrote

i'll def keep them in mind thanks. unfortunately they dont cover my area yet.

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