Hey all!
Haven’t been coming to Broadband Bulletin too much since the DSLReports shutdown. Need to get in the habit of coming here like I had for DSLReports 😃
Wanted to share some of my recent observations for my area (Buffalo/Niagara County). Verizon has just about finished up Pendleton, NY from what I can tell, which is served out of the Amherst, NY Central Office. This central office was notified for copper retirement back in 2019. Verizon had a bit of a hiatus period where they weren’t constructing anything (probably due to Winter), but it seems they have done a major push and have gotten as many customers as they could last summer. This spring and summer they seem to be filling in some of the most remote parts of the Amherst central office, which extend into the Town of Lockport, and through some pretty rural areas. A lot of farms in the Pendleton area have Fios up and running even.
My area, which is served out of the Tonawanda Central Office, which was also notified in 2019, seems to have some activity happening with it now. I spotted several Verizon bucket trucks and linemen at the corner of my neighborhood recently, looking at the lines while standing on the side of the road. It might be the same crew of techs I spoke with last summer in Pendleton, NY, who mentioned they were working out the plans for my area. So far, no real activity in my immediate area, but I was told they will be starting my area as soon as Pendleton, NY is complete.
Verizon did install some LTE Micro-cells near me, which are in areas where the signal is both weak, and pretty congested due to the amount of traffic going through the area. There’s a bunch of new Fiber coiled up on the poles right by that microcell, which I have a feeling might be to help seed some more Fios, since the Microcell is already connected and online.
Verizon is also under heavy pressure in this area. Greenlight Networks has been aggressively building out areas without Verizon Fios. They are rapidly finishing up North Tonawanda, an area where 5G (C-Band) Home Internet is available in parts, and which holds the Central Office servicing the Town of Tonawanda with Fios since 2008. I’ve seen a lot of people signing up for Greenlight to get rid of Spectrum in N.T. pretty much the moment the service is made active. Niagara Falls, a Town/City where Verizon only sells C-Band or mmWave 5G Home Internet (Depending on where you are - downtown has mmWave, outskirts have C-Band), is also getting Greenlight. Greenlight is building aggressively in the area between Niagara Falls Blvd starting at the Niagara Falls International Airport, to the LaSalle Expressway, the area where Love Canal is located, and pushing West. Another Fiber company, GoNetSpeed, also built out Lockport, NY in the past year. GoNetSpeed sits next to Pendleton, NY, and is in a similar situation as Greenlight. Where GNS became available, people signed up to get rid of Spectrum.
Verizon’s build-out for my area is starting to get sandwiched in. North Tonawanda, where the CO sits, is basically a lost cause. My town, which sits in between Niagara Falls and Pendleton, is half served by Frontier, who is currently in the process of being purchased by Verizon. Verizon may be able to build out Fios to my town entirely, but they are running out of time. If Greenlight begins to take foothold, Verizon is in trouble. We may actually end up seeing TWO Fiber providers competing for one another, with Greenlight selling up to 8Gbps (For $150/m lol) over XGS-PON with the option for a Static IP, and Verizon will need to compete by bringing NGPON2 / XGS-PON/25G-PON to the table. All of their new builds in my area are still using the Decade old GPON tech. GoNetSpeed sells up to 2Gbps, and they are also using XGS-PON tech just like Greenlight.
Spectrum is also expected to begin deploying High Split to my area’s cable system, but I expect that will be pushed back again. My neighborhood has been seeing capacity issues especially on the upstream with Spectrum these days, so I imagine they’re going to begin trying to clean up the Cable system sooner rather than later at this point.
