Fiber Facts: Benefits, Speeds, Costs, and Why It Takes So Long to Get to Your Neighborhood

What’s so great about fiber?

Taylor has understood for many years that fiber is the very best technology for internet service delivery for many reasons.

• It’s the fastest—significantly faster than cable or DSL.
• It’s the most reliable—the signal is much less susceptible to deterioration due to distance or weather.
• It’s symmetrical—which means the upload speeds (what you use for gaming or streaming) are just as fast as the download speeds. Other internet technologies have slower uploads, so they often advertise download speeds only.
• It’s future-proof and sustainable—fiber networks are not only great right now, but they’re also easier to update later and less costly to maintain.

How fast is fiber?

Fiber is so fast that you will notice a big difference in the time it takes to complete many daily activities. With gigabit internet, it takes:

• 40 seconds or less to download an HD movie, instead of 30 minutes or more over 20 Mbps internet (like what you get from cable or DSL).
• Only 3 – 5 minutes to download your favorite video game, even if it’s graphics intensive.
• Just minutes to back up your entire hard drive to the cloud, including large photos and videos, rather than hours.

So why doesn’t my house have access to fiber yet? And when will it?

Taylor Telecom started constructing high-speed fiber internet service in West Texas in 2006. But it takes a lot of time and money to build the underlying network.

The average cost to build a fiber network is $65,000–$80,000 per mile. As you can imagine, that makes installing fiber much, much more expensive per home in rural areas than in dense, urban areas. Luckily, there are federal, state, and local grants that help defray those costs, but those grants also take a long time to apply for and receive.

There are also hoops to jump through before installation that can be out of the internet provider’s control. Taylor needs to work with each county, the Texas Department of Transportation, and third parties for permits and agreements in order to move forward.

Please hang in there – we’re close! We are upgrading and expanding our network to high-speed fiber within nine counties: Fisher, Jones, Shackelford, Nolan, Taylor, Callahan, Coke, Runnels, and Coleman. We offer nearly 90% of our customers fiber internet, and we’re committed to reaching 100% as soon as we can! Thanks for your patience.