Mediacom and Frontier Communications both offer small-provider service with big-provider benefits to customers in select areas throughout the US. Both companies are actively working to expand their coverage and boost speeds, with fiber initiatives from Frontier and DOCSIS 3.1-based upgrades coming soon to Mediacom networks. Long story short: keep an eye on plan details, and check the local news for information on network upgrade timelines for your area.
One of the largest DSL and fiber broadband providers in the US, Frontier Communications offers Internet, TV, and phone to consumers and businesses. Their fiber offerings are sometimes marketed as “Frontier FiOS,” and utilize fiber networks the company purchased from Verizon in 2016.
Frontier offers broadband internet, TV, and phone services through DSL and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connections.
Frontier’s DSL offerings leverage the company’s existing phone infrastructure to deliver internet access anywhere with landline access. While DSL is an older technology and offers correspondingly slower bandwidth speeds, DSL is generally more cost effective than its alternatives.
Frontier’s fiber or fiber-to-the-home connections, on the other hand, deliver a fiber optic connection directly to homes and businesses. This direct fiber connection is considered state-of-the-art, creating the fastest connection speeds and lowest latency when compared to other technologies like DSL and traditional cable Internet.
Mediacom is a cable TV, broadband Internet, and phone service provider for business and residential subscribers, offering gigabit download speeds in some areas.
Home Internet, phone, and TV services from Mediacom are made available via their cable infrastructure, which uses existing cable TV coaxial cable to bridge the final distance between the Internet “backbone” and local subscribers.
In most setups, optical fiber cable is laid as far as a subscriber’s neighborhood, at which point data is switched from optical signal to electrical signal for transmission via coaxial cable. This makes the final bandwidth, speed, and latency offerings less ideal than a true fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connection, but offsets the high cost of installing FTTH cables, allowing the company to offer reasonably fast service at a lower up-front cost.
A modem isn’t as tricky to buy and configure as you might think
Broadband Internet providers usually offer hardware needed to connect your home network for a small rental fee, including modem, router, and a few cables to put the pieces together. However, the cost of simply buying this hardware yourself will quickly return when you stop paying that monthly fee, which adds up to around a hundred dollars annually with most providers.
Since modem compatibility varies from company to company, just check with your plan provider first to make sure the one you’re buying will work with their network. With that in mind, consider simply renting if you move regularly since the modem that works with your current provider might not work with another when you switch.
Great customer service can be hard to find
If the providers in your area offer more or less identical offerings so far as speed and price, consider customer service and brand reputation as a tiebreaker. Getting fast resolutions to service issues is critical for anyone who depends on their broadband connection.
ACSI ratings like those above are a great source for general data on how satisfied current customers are. BroadbandNow also uses custom IP-verified reviews based on polls from site visitors, which use an address verification protocol to ensure the people leaving ratings are unique visitors with actual subscriptions to the provider being rated. The result: online reviews you can actually trust.