How to approach the neighbors about new internet???

This will be an odd question, but.....A local company is currently operating on a grant to expand rural internet and are laying fiber optic line currently and offering (not introductory) speeds of 1 gig download, and 500mg upload for about half the price of what people are currently paying for 10meg download speeds via wireless.

Wireless is unreliable, and ridiculous expensive for what it is.

For those that may not understand, the offering is speed that is about 100x faster for HALF the price, and reliable in all weather conditions.

I also have dealt with this company personally and very impressed with their local customer service. What is more is once that fiber is run to your home, you have it!! Disconnect later, I don't even care, but to be honest, fiber is where the tech is today.


My old incentive in this is getting the company to come down the road with their fiber and offer service. They won't do that if people won't connect, but as I told the company, "most people have no clue what they have or how much better this can be for them".

I just need to find a non "saleman-ish" way of presenting it to them. I know this company is not doing this level of selling, but I actually run web businesses and know how good this really is. This is literally like getting downtown New York speed, in the middle of nowhere, and a price that is super competitive.

How do I get the neighbors onboard? I already know they will save money because I know what they are paying now.

Since they don't know what they have, then
the only thing they do know is $$$. Go
that way. The other benefits are gravy.

Who says they need the super speed,
probably have to save em some money to
make em switch

Here is one of the biggest things that 'should' sell these people IMO, it friggin works in bad weather! We are in tornado alley and i can guarantee from experience that wireless does NOT work in the rain! Right when you need it, it won't work!

there is also a slower option that is probably about 25% of the price they are currently paying and STILL faster than what they have, AND reliable......

To me, it just isn't a hard sale, but I realize many will have the "too good to be true" attitude.

Before I took a municipal job I was a foreman on a fiber crew
for a while and in Indiana the rural electric companies are
eating up all the grant money they can get to install rural fiber
and there is tons of grant money to be had. You can mention
it to the neighbors but I seriously doubt it will matter. The goal
is fiber to everyone so I?d say unless you are in a cabin off the
grid 20 miles in the wilderness you will get it. We have had
ours for about 4 months now and it is amazing. I sit on some
local boards with the CEO of our rural electric company and
they are about 1/4 of the way into a 5 year project. They are
going to first get it to every rural electric company then they
will come back and start feeding it into the towns that are
within there limits. He was telling me that they are basically
from lack of a better term making a killing off of the idiots that
don?t take it when they come by because it is free to get it to
your house when they are on your phase but if you decline it
then decide you want it there is a $500 charge to run a drop to
your house and as soon as someone hears about how good it
is or tries a friend or family?s they are calling to get it installed.
So I?d say it?s not if but more of when you get it.

A few years back, local phone company ran new lines to everyone out here at no cost. The only catch was, you had to be able to prove there had been phone lines here before. Sadly, we couldn't do that. So have been stuck on over-priced wireless.

Last Fall an engineer from the same phone company came out and, not realizing that anyone lived here (we sit WAY off the road!), he pulled in. He introduced himself and said they were going to be hooking up everyone else that wanted lines run, that it would be at no cost, and asked if we might be interested. Heck yeah!

Still not certain if we have to get a land line number through them, but the cell number we have gets virtually no calls whatsoever, so that's a huge plus. Also, we have unlimited long distance. We can keep that for $20/month...even though we don't hardly use the darned thing.

It seems the internet speeds will be really fast, with the cheapest price being 10Mbps up and down for $34.95/month. Even when we have 4G, it's intermittent, and at best is 2Mbps download, and costs considerably more....AND there's a data cap before it's throttled way down.

This guy wasn't a salesman, but an engineer. He didn't try to sell anything; just asked if we might be interested in getting land line run here. For us, it's a no-brainer. Even folks who have hunting cabins are getting lines run for free.

Try to visit with your neighbors some time when it's convenient for them, but might be a good idea to make it look like a normal social call rather than trying to talk them into getting the lines run. Ask if they have internet. If they do, are they happy with it. Tell them you're trying to find a way to get better internet service for less money. Then maybe mention that you've heard the phone company might try running lines out there for free at some point in the not-too-distant future. Mention that you've heard it's free. If they bite, then give them more info that you've "heard", but don't do a sell thing.

OK, that's it, That's the best I can offer, and I'm a worse salesman than I am a mechanic!
:shock:

You can also tell them they can download an entire movie in seconds! They could
download every book in the county library in under a minute. How does that
sound? Fiber is cheep once the mains and equipment are in. This is what I have
heard. Even in dense enough south Jersey the phone company abandoned land lines
cause everyone has a cell phone. Hey they can go shopping on line, have HD 4K
quality tv. Literally thousands of channels to watch. There is a sales pitch.

LOL, we I have been around sales for the better part of my life. I never really wanted to admit it, but I am sort of good at it. However, I am about to approach neighbors that live a mile or more from me, I have never met, and never talk to again. I guess it is a good excuse to see who I live around, but also want to get this done.

Seems the above poster understands how this works. When the crews are in the area, you REALLY want to make sure fiber gets run to you. I honestly don't care if they sign up, then cancel in a month, the point is the lines get run. Then they exist and there is something there.

Due to speeds required today, even coax is drowning and fiber is needed. 20yrs ago fiber was ONLY used for mains, T1s, huge commercials, etc. It will do nothing but help property values and I guess I will need to find a strategy that works. I am very much hoping that starting with "I own the property down at such and such" will help them understand that I am not a salesman.

How long have you been living where you are located not to know the neighbors a mile away? If very long and the rest of the people in the area have been there and know each other I'd say you're going to have a hard time talking them into anything.As you stated you couldn't care less about your neighbors and they are probably fully of aware of it.

Why do you have to be the salesman for the
company? They need to get their act
together and have an area rep use mail
fliers etc. Anytime I got mixed up in your
situation it was a disaster. Remember this
tech company does not care about you.

By "wireless", I assume you mean fixed antenna-based wireless, not 4G cellular service. It shouldn't be difficult to sell fiber versus cellular because of the lack of data caps. But against antenna-based service, it's probably harder to make the case because people simply aren't using those services that need true high-speed internet. I'd certainly point out all the streaming services they'll be able to use. For folks who use Dish or DirecTV, that means getting rid of those services, which will save them over a thousand bucks a year.

You'll always have a few stuck-in-the-muds who will refuse to sign up, probably figuring it will be cheaper later. We've had natural gas in our neighborhood for over thirty years, yet we still have neighbors who are on propane. Makes no sense.

Once I had super high speed unlimited fiber optic installed at my home I NEVER LOOKED BACK. I can stream 24/7 and receive perfect service. HOWEVER convincing your neighbors I cant help you with that lol Years ago I started with dial up, then DSL, then cable but now wooooooooo hooooooooooo and at a decent price...

John T

Fast line, Our local electric Co op is helping hang internet
cable on the poles around me right now. Haven?t been
approached by anyone about the service. I have satellite
service through my electric co op right now it?s ok way better
than the dial up we started with. I hope that cable is tough as
they have waved us on with the plow trucks I just lift the plow
up. I had to pull them back on the road with my tractor last
year. They had 4 wheel drive just too greasy to get back on
the road. I was told this is some government program to get
high speed internet to rural areas something my dad was
working on with the NRECA in the late 80?s.

Don't they use fiber optics instead of cable for high speed?

I see a lot of fiber optic being burried. The old cables hanging on poles in my hood is problematic.
Daily I see bucket trucks at the end of my road working on them.

Twenty years ago I gave up on cable and went to dish because of poor service.
If this is being offered through your local co op I'm guessing they will get an ad in the mail.

If the service is really good, Work of mouth is the best advertizing.


geo

Talk to the company and to your township supervisors or county commissioners before starting your own campaign. The local company and local government are both probably working hard to make this service available and installed. Odds are that the new fiber optic service is receiving some level of state or federal government support to get service out to less profitable areas, much like REA to get electricity to rural areas in the 1930's and 1940's.

George, I would think it?s fiber optic and it?s easier to hang off the poles around here. They have replaced a lot of poles as they were in tough shape. We have buried telephone around here and nothing but trouble. In a lot of places they put it in the ditch next to the road and not very deep.

We are like the poster from Indiana , right in the middle of a grant to rung fiber to ever home that
currently has electric service. Projected finish latte this year. The project involves replacing
around 4,000 poles and running over 14,000 MILES of fiber optic cable . Sure has been a boom for
local economy. over 400 utility workers from other areas in town to do the project. We are at the
end of nowhere and have been assured we will have service b y mid-summer. As to how to talk to your
neighbor nothing like a good face to face meeting, and have you information, present it and let them
decide.

(quoted from post at 05:58:31 01/05/20) Don't they use fiber optics instead of cable for high speed?

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Around here they are using a hybrid cable; fiber optic and copper. I "think" the voice part stays on copper while fiber optic handles the data, but not sure.

I have been on the REMCs internet for about 9 months now, its fast and cheap. I have 5 kids on their devices plus all TV is thru the internet and it never slows down. The best part was they ran it a 1/4 mile down my drive and hooked it all up for FREE! I am guessing you worked for Jackson county REMC?

In my state the Big Boys of the industry took millions of dollars of federal and state money and installed the fiber but won't run it the "Last Mile" or install the equipment in the homes so people can use it. Some of them are under investigation now. Smaller companies are buying the internet off the fiber companies, installing the equipment in homes and reselling it. I have a good friend in this business. His business is booming, but his initial cash outlay to buy the equipment and install it has been astronomical and he has been unable to get much gov't money. His system is totally wireless and it works great. A lot of his stations are solar powered. The only cheap internet you can get, in my area that is fast and reliable is through the cable companies that make you bundle. TV-telephone and internet together and it is not available where I live.

Our local internet provider went with fiber-optic a few years ago. Since we were already a customer, they hooked us up with no installation fee. Initially we were on dial-up, then upgraded to DSL. The DSL was great. I thought it could not get any better, but then we got the fiber-optic. Lightning fast response on all websites with the exception of YT, which is still slow and glitchy.

3/4 years ago I went with wireless over the air internet. got rid of the phone line period. it got so expensive and internet was slower than a turtle. now I put one of those firesticks on my tv. upgraded to 4g. I can watch anything on Netflix, hula, sling, espn.disney or anything I wish to purchase. weather doesn't bother it. my phone works great. there is different what people call wireless. one is over the airways with a whole lot of providers. theres one that is still tied into your phone company with a small antenna. it is better than land line but not near as good as over the airways. now I am no expert on this by no means but if I were in your shoes I would check on cellar service and your options with them first. you might be surprised whats out there and its getting better. I live in the country side about three miles from town. actually i have fiber optics running across the south side of my property. I inquired but they wont furnish it to me. they keep saying they would but I just got tired of there promises and boy am I glad i did as I dropped my at@t, dish network and am paying 1/2 of what I did before so I guess maybe you can say there paying me now for the money I have saved with great service.

They put in Fiber optic here and nothing changed except the price went up. Speed is as slow as always...youtube vids stop and start all the time and searches take forever...E SD.

Can someone explain to me what "wireless internet" is. Im not familiar with it and have never heard of it mentioned anywhere around in my area. Do you mean through a cell signal? If so that probably explains why. Cell service really sucks here. Its virtually nonexistent in my neighborhood.

I second the lightning fast... have fiber optic at work - it's amazing!

If they are in doubt, take the ketchup approach. Getting it out of the bottle compared to dumping it out of a sauce pan. Jim

Tim,
Wireless internet is the WISP network.
WISPA

If you get all your neighbors to agree to sign up are you sure the fiber optic will be run?

Back in the 1960's a 1 1/2 inch natural gas line was run past south of our farm. My Dad got 6 neighbors to agree to put natural gas furnaces in a mile and one half run. Plus one was going to put in a grain dryer. This was when all the equipment was on site. But they would not do it. So if you go to all the work to get your neighbors to agree to hook on will the company do it? Good luck! I wish I had FAST internet!

Good luck. My experience is that change for most people is hard. And if it will cost them anything, and I
mean anything, they will say no. Especially older people, who may not be interested in the net at all. A
lot of folks are against anything that will cost them money, unless it benefits them or their family,
immediately, and cheaply.

4520bw no I worked for a contractor that is running the drops for Orange County Remc. I live in Lawrence county but Orange County Remc provides our service. From what I understand from the ceo Orange County basically modeled their project off Jackson County?s plan. Believe it or not they have 1/3 of the customers as Jackson county but by capable gigs Orange county?s is over twice the capacity. From my understanding they are over building the system so they do not have to make major upgrades in the next 10 years or if some major industry comes in. There has also been talk of homeland security purchasing some large office space 200 yards from a major sub station so I think they are trying to make it look appealing to them as well

I'd try the "get it or I'll burn your house down approach"!

:shock: :twisted:

Hope you know I'm joking!!!

Rick

I'm a geezer who retired from a (natural) gas utility more than a decade ago. Extending gas lines to previously unserved area was a somewhat similar situation.

My experience was that people had very little interest in gas----They were interested in heat in their house, hot water, and whatever else gas could be used for.

The big resistance was having to commit now for something that might benefit them in the future. They had no desire to junk their perfectly good electric water heaters and propane furnaces just so they could buy new equipment that used "cheaper and better" fuel.

It sounds like you are trying to "sell" fiber optic cable. Your neighbors are more likely to be interested in internet service, TV, phone, security systems, and whatever else the fiber cable could be used for.

You say that you don't know your neighbors, but you do know how much more they are currently paying for???? Are you try to "sell" just the folks who live on your road, or do you need to "sell" an area covering many miles of many roads?

It sounds like this fiber optic cable could improve your situation. Your neighbors are likely to have different wants, needs, and financial priorities. Before you start knocking on doors, you need create some sort of sales pitch which tells what kinds of services the fiber optic cable could provide and some idea of how much it would cost to use these services. This cost would include not only the installation cost and monthly fees but also the cost of buy a new computer, smart tv, or what ever else they would want to use. Some of your neighbors are likely to tell you that they are already locked into some sort of contract that obligates them to continue to pay their current higher costs even if they add the new cheaper and better fiber optic ?????

10 meg is very good, many I know would cut off an arm to have that fairly consistently especially with a high cap, well, not quite an arm, maybe a pinkie. I get about 20 on Verizon wireless any time of day, no data cap of any kind, no throttling, streaming is HD, weather unaffected, and I'm 13 miles from the tower. But, that is the prepaid unlimited jetpack plan, and it's discontinued. Second prepaid line so it's $45/month, less than that if I get discounted refill cards.

That said, of course "more" and "cheaper" are better, as is "reliability". So, those are basic talking points. More speed means more than ~2 HD streams at the same time. I'd go over any commitments if needed, like if there's a trial period, satisfaction guarantee, etc. Also, is it possible to go back if they aren't satisfied, is the current service allowing new installs? It would work better if you knew them, I can't imagine living somewhere and not knowing most neighbors within a few miles.

Tom ..... you're spot on with your comment, how do any of us know what our neighbors need or want, especially if we don't know them.

(quoted from post at 07:20:15 01/05/20) In my state the Big Boys of the industry took millions of dollars of federal and state money and installed the fiber but won't run it the "Last Mile" or install the equipment in the homes so people can use it. Some of them are under investigation now. Smaller companies are buying the internet off the fiber companies, installing the equipment in homes and reselling it. I have a good friend in this business. [color=red:17e0934578][b:17e0934578]His business is booming, but his initial cash outlay to buy the equipment and install it has been astronomical and he has been unable to get much gov't money[/b:17e0934578]. [/color:17e0934578]His system is totally wireless and it works great. A lot of his stations are solar powered. The only cheap internet you can get, in my area that is fast and reliable is through the cable companies that make you bundle. TV-telephone and internet together and it is not available where I live.

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don't pretend to know everything about government and business, but statements like this make me want to spit FIRE ! What makes him so special? I was in business for 15 years. The government never gave me a single penny. EVER ! If your friend can afford to go into business and outlay the cash to start up this business, he has my support. If he wants my tax dollars to do it, tell him to move on down the road. JMO Greg

When it becomes time to sell a property, connections to public utilities generally increase a property's value by more than the initial cost to get connected: electricity, cable or fiber optic internet, natural gas, rural water or city water, sewer, trash collection, etc. In the long run,the private alternatives are generally much more expensive than public utilities.

There are some exceptions, but the vast majority of home buyers don't want to mess with maintaining private utilities anymore than they want to mess with a wood burning furnace, electric generators, or hand carrying water to the house.

Happy to report that all went well. Talked to several and no one shot at me. Most all of them are using the same 2 wireless services and all complain of the same reliability and speed issues, and were very open to fiber inet, AND had zero idea it was going on.

Only one person, the oldest, turned his nose a bit when I mentioned "1gbps". He said he was already getting 25gbps from satellite..... I did not want to argue but I tried to tell him it was likely 25mbps in which this service would be 40x faster AND be cheaper AND be reliable in all weather conditions.

He also felt that $70/mo was a little pricey..... Told him they do have a slower and cheaper option.... I guess you can't help them all...... Hopefully he reads it carefully to understand this is better in every way.

All in all, it went well. I also found out that I am NOT the minority out there and EVERYONE keeps to themselves. It was at least an excuse to see who lives around the area.

Only one person, the oldest, turned his nose a bit when I mentioned "1gbps". He said he was already getting 25gbps from satellite

Ha! So he's getting satellite downloads 25 times faster than his gigabit ethernet cable can transmit it to his computer. Hopefully he has a bit bucket under his satellite receiver to catch all that extra data when it overflows.

(quoted from post at 10:18:11 01/05/20) We are like the poster from Indiana , right in the middle of a grant to rung fiber to ever home that
currently has electric service. Projected finish latte this year.

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Wow. I wish my state was like that. No one is running fiber near me that I know of. No one running cable either that I hear about, except for one friend who told me they had to pay to have the line installed along the road--many many thousands of dollars. The land-line phone company won't even repair their copper. They just push customers to switch to a cell-based system that plugs into land-line style wire at the house.

We'll be cheering when/if the local fixed wireless company that got some grants actually comes through and gets up and running. For now, I have a mobile hotspot on a cell signal that (often) works, but it's slow and has some pretty low data limits.

And it's not like we're actually rural.... Not even remotely rural by Midwest standards.

Hook a tractor to this thread and haul it over here:

https://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/viewforum.php?f=32&sid=80b2f6c0fbf42db0f3af1bb8814b8b6b

(quoted from post at 05:25:06 01/05/20) Why do you have to be the salesman for the
company? They need to get their act
together and have an area rep use mail
fliers etc. Anytime I got mixed up in your
situation it was a disaster. Remember this
tech company does not care about you.

Click to expand...

I would presume that he lives in a rural area, and most of his neighbors are wary of strangers going door to door hawking their wares. Lots of big numbers and lofty promises, and above all it's CHANGE. People *HATE* change.

He also wants this service, and needs enough of his neighbors to sign up to make it viable for the company to bring service into the area. They won't run the cable down the road for just him.

(quoted from post at 19:24:08 01/05/20)
Only one person, the oldest, turned his nose a bit when I mentioned "1gbps". He said he was already getting 25gbps from satellite..... I did not want to argue but I tried to tell him it was likely 25mbps in which this service would be 40x faster AND be cheaper AND be reliable in all weather conditions.
.

Click to expand...

Now for some reality. I'm a network eng, and I've been working in the fiber channel field for > 20 years, including the early adoption of something called ESCON, which is a patented IBM protocol and carrier which later turned into FICON with the introduction of optical fiber.

I've been working with dedicated private and public fiber channel switching and delivery since the beginning of fiber. In short, I'm a well-paid expert on fiber channel protocols, and how they are managed.

First, some jargon, and acronyms. For twisted, shielded or unshielded pair, and also for most coax, the metric for speed is measured in MB which equals 1,024,000 BYTES of data, or 8,192,000 Mb or [i:357c69e76f]bits[/i:357c69e76f] of data. This is important in comparing transmission speeds. If a coax user is getting 25MB(most likely not measured in bits), multiply by 8 to get the data rate in bits per second. or 200Mb(bits) which is 1/5 the data rate of 1Gbps(Giga is always capitalized, as it represents a 1x10^9). This is not always true, but almost all copper is rated in Bytes, for 8 bits, and not unitary bits(note the different in caps). Also lets not get crushed by the rounding of 1024 to 1000, although that's important.

Next, when you get down to individual drops, I hate to tell the world, but you are not getting a dedicated 1Gbps into the "internet". You are getting some variable fraction of 1Gbps, depending on aggregated load of a concentrator switch, which is in a building nearby called the CO(central office) where the aggregation occurs. In most cases, there are up to 400:1 ratio of concentration to backend port tie line into a much larger distribution system. It's much more complicated than I want to get into, but the fact is, as fast as the network to each drop, it is not dedicated 1Gbps (Gigabit per second).

Types/classes of traffic: Not all internet traffic is created equal. Some feeds, and nowadays, all feeds get header metadata which identifies traffic, and applies a priority marker. For voice(VOIP), this has one of the highest priorities, because human speech is bi-directional, and is also hard to manage. We don't like it when our speech is chopped up and drops out, so frame and exchange priority of VOIP is very high. Next is video, and streaming audio, and then on down the line. FTP(file transfer) protocol gets the lower priority as it can be chopped up, and the protocol puts plenty of buffering time in so that it can fill low use bandwidth.

Frontend or user traffic: When the data traffic leaves the CO switch(aggregator) and is sent to the individual port, it is relatively seamless. Yes, there are starts and stops, but for the most part, those starts and stops are so fast that humans don't really notice. sometimes if one is on a popular http site, and there is embedded video one will see that video delay for a bit, this is due to buffering within the webpage, and the video snip doesn't carry the same priority as streaming TV, music. It is a lower class of service.

Backend Traffic: This is traffic that is being piped on a very fast set of fibers(trunked portgroups) to an even larger entry into the internet. The protocols are completely different, and bandwidth back there are in the range of 16-64Gb(Gigabit, fiber standard), and sometimes higher for heavy traffic loads. These switches optimize their carrier by using a timing protocol called Dense Wave Division Multiplexing. The last word is the only one that is important to know. For those switches speaking to each other along the backbone of the internet connection, there is no 'down time' on the pipe. It multiplexes by time slice many different data streams to maximize the utility of the connection. This is very fast, very efficient, and very important to maintain. There are often multiple independent links or drops between multiple different switches or nodes between ISPs, and they all have agreements in place to maintain very high up-times.

This fount of multiplexed signals is where the traffic for your streaming internet can go haywire. I have been on fiber channel for months now, and I have noticed some freezing, or latency when watching shows in the prime time viewing hours when everyone on the same switch is doing the same thing as I am. There is a certain amount of buffering done at the router in the home, but if the rest of the data stream doesn't arrive before the buffer is depleted, all it can do is wait for the buffers to be filled up again.

Now the bad news. It's going to get worse. When a new fiber switch is put in, it might only serve 30 or 50 or 200 users. By the time is is fully subscribed, each drop might be sharing the same switch with up to 400 users in highly dense communities. We're working hard to facilitate full demand, for full utility for all users all the time, but the fact is, that since not everyone is getting dedicated 1Gbps to their house ALL THE TIME, there will be drop outs, and some freezes moving forward.