Frontier Communications is committed to getting 2-gigabyte internet service to Bishop by the
end of this year. That was the message delivered to the Bishop City Council and Inyo Board of
Supervisors meetings this week by Doug McAllister, Frontier’s vice president of external affairs.
McAllister used his home base in Murrieta and the COVID restrictions as an example of the
relatively new demand for, not just connectivity to the Internet, but lightning fast, high capacity
Internet service. With everyone working from home, the need for all of the above was obvious
in urban centers, the suburbs and the Eastern Sierra. While businesses are re-opening, those
whose jobs are wrapped around computers realized they could continue to tele-commute.
For those who started their work life on electric typewriters and land lines, here are some
definitions. Fiber networks, like Frontier, use thin flexible fibers with a glass core through which
light signals can be sent with very little loss of strength. A byte is a unit of digital information
most commonly consisting of eight bits, the smallest, addressable unit of memory in many
computer architectures. A gigabyte is equal to about 1 billion bytes of data.
The advantage of the Frontier system is both speed and capacity. Transmission will be primarily
overhead using existing infrastructure. McAllister stressed there would be little digging to set
up the infrastructure since the company has access to the existing transmission system—poles.
“Seventy-five percent of the system will be aerial,” he said, “25-percent will be buried.”
Multiple devices connecting to the system won’t be an issue, according to McAllister, who
noted the average home has a total of 22 devices dependent on Internet transmission systems.
Frontier’s system consists of fiber distribution hubs connected to fiber terminals that serve
from four to eight customers, then straight to each customer.
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Bishop by the end of the year, but was there any timescale given for other locations in the valley?
Just Bishop, or will this be available in outlying areas?
Well the first impression isn’t comforting. I live in a backyard cottage and at 8 this morning as I walked towards the front of the yard I hear noises in the driveway. I open the gate and there’s a guy in a hard hat walking towards me. I ask him what’s going on and he said they were there to put fiber optic cable on the power poles at the back of the lot. As we walk into the backyard a guy is climbing over the fence from the neighbors. Realizing that the other neighbors dog is loose in their yard I tell the guy to stop so I could go over and calm it down. Just a simple thought I had, how hard would it have been to notify people a day or 2 in advance instead of wandering through peoples yards unannounced at 8 in the morning.
eric
I’m an old skinny man,but if I had someone jumping my fence at 8 A.M. or any other time,for that matter,wearing a hard hat or not,and whether it be workers from Frontier or anywhere else,I think I’d have a big problem with that…
I’d at least want a notice they were coming,what they were doing,and how long they’d be there…
Good dog!
Believe it when I see it…..
Good to have choices. Does anyone know if Frontier will be using their own fiber line that runs south or digital 395? If Frontier uses their old existing line, it only runs south, and when it gets cut people lose service, which is one of the many benefits of Digital 395 as it can be routed to Barstow or Reno.
Suddenlink and AmeriGas are competing for the worst customer service in the United States. Both have offices here in Bishop that have rude and unhelpful staff that put you on the phone with a call center somewhere else to deal with issues. Unbelievable!
Leave AmeriGas. They became so difficult to deal with and all the ridiculous charges they add to the bill. I have gas heat and would have to call them several times in winter when they let the tank run low, but summer rolls around and they were coming by every 3 weeks! The delivery charges were more than the gas! We switched to Hunt Propane and have been much happier. Lower bills and outstanding customer service.
We get nothing useful from the Suddenlink call center. They must be trained to do everything they can to avoid sending out a tech (dispatched call center techs are contracted). If you get to the point that they agree to make an appointment thru the call center, 50% of the time the tech never shows up. Then after taking time off of work to wait on a tech that never shows, you call the call center to find that they canceled the appointment without asking you or even telling you because they can see your problem is solved (really?? cause it’s still happening). Our constant network dropout (their modem by the way) always returns a few weeks later. Their go to solution every time is to “send a hit” to your modem. When you ask them what they did exactly, they have no idea. It’s just a button they can push on their end. So for Suddenlink, I’d put the call center first, above the local office for worst customer service – though – it’s all the same company.
It took over two years to finally get our connection drop problem solved. That is how long it took for them to discover and admit that there was a problem with our particular installation, not just “outages in the area”. Once I got someone at the call center who knew what she was doing (ask for Naira, if you can) she left notes for the tech when he came out. Problem was a bad splitter “they just go bad” creating noise on the upstream side. Replaced it and in 15 minutes the problem was gone – almost a year since I had a lost connection. FWIW the only two techs I have dealt with in 25 years who were competent were both women.
Frontier’s reputation is not that good, but I have to think they would be better than Suddenlink.
They’re actually competing for second place. First place will always be held by government agencies.
Government agency involvement is the only reason this project is moving ahead at all. Just like the digital 395 project that is the only reason the valley has any high-speed internet at all.