Fiber & Phones
I got fiber internet back in 2021. Well, I thought it was fiber. It turns out it was something called copper, or something like that, but it turns out it did a more than good enough job. I wasn't planning to update it, but AT&T finally ran fiber to my neighborhood recently and offered a number of specials to convince people to shift. When they offered dramatically faster internet for a slightly lower price than I was previously painting, it seemed stupid not to take them up on it.
On Wednesday, the new fiber was installed. The only real problem is that they weren't able to run to the existing port in my bedroom office, so we now have a new network jack in the wall of our living room, tucked discretely behind the record player. The new wifi router goes next to it. The speed increase is really only noticeable when watching videos and videoconferencing, but at the lower price point I have no complaints. I could spend a lot more money on dramatically faster internet, but until the need arises why bother?
AT&T cannily sent a sales guy out with the installer to try to convince me to switch our cell phone service off of Verizon. Frankly, they made us a godfather deal. We got two essentially free brand new iPhones, two gigantic gift cards, and the top tier of phone service at a price that was about 60% of what we were paying, guaranteed for three years. That'll play, as they say.
The timing was fortuitous. I was still running my first iPhone 7 from 2007. Last month it got slightly damaged while we were on vacation, and the screen was starting to flicker. I was just going to get it fixed, but I'll take the new phone instead. M had finally replaced her circa 2006 iPhone late last year, so she didn't need a new phone. Instead we sold the other new phone; it only took 34 minutes to unload it to a friend at a price that was quite far to both of us.
On a side note, after 23 years I finally have unequivocally faster internet in my house than I did in my fraternity house back in 2001 when I was hooked up to the fiber network of my alma mater.
On Wednesday, the new fiber was installed. The only real problem is that they weren't able to run to the existing port in my bedroom office, so we now have a new network jack in the wall of our living room, tucked discretely behind the record player. The new wifi router goes next to it. The speed increase is really only noticeable when watching videos and videoconferencing, but at the lower price point I have no complaints. I could spend a lot more money on dramatically faster internet, but until the need arises why bother?
AT&T cannily sent a sales guy out with the installer to try to convince me to switch our cell phone service off of Verizon. Frankly, they made us a godfather deal. We got two essentially free brand new iPhones, two gigantic gift cards, and the top tier of phone service at a price that was about 60% of what we were paying, guaranteed for three years. That'll play, as they say.
The timing was fortuitous. I was still running my first iPhone 7 from 2007. Last month it got slightly damaged while we were on vacation, and the screen was starting to flicker. I was just going to get it fixed, but I'll take the new phone instead. M had finally replaced her circa 2006 iPhone late last year, so she didn't need a new phone. Instead we sold the other new phone; it only took 34 minutes to unload it to a friend at a price that was quite far to both of us.
On a side note, after 23 years I finally have unequivocally faster internet in my house than I did in my fraternity house back in 2001 when I was hooked up to the fiber network of my alma mater.