Man-of-Leisure So we had an entire production studio and office of two dozen people sharing 35Mb upload.
Sounds like they needed to buy a Metro-E fiber link.
[edit] I’ll add my response here to limit off topic additions to the discussion.
Man-of-Leisure Small business, they couldn’t afford that.
And honestly that’s overkill for anything but an actual enterprise company or university or something.
Apple HQ needs Metro E fiber. A small business with a dozen or two employees does not.
I can see from your response, you wildly overestimate what a Metro-E circuit is today. It’s changed as fiber as spread out.
Apple is its own ISP, they own the entire scope of 17.0.0.0 internet IPs, and for it’s HQ they own the fiber to multiple local colo’s or data centers where they directly link with other providers. They’re beyond Metro-E for their HQ. They use Metro-E for their individual stores though.
Many universities are in a similar situation, depending on their size., and are often beyond Metro-E services for their main campuses and buy dark fiber or wavelength services. Although they’re also spread out with multiple branches and departments, like Apple, so they may subscribe to Metro-E services for their smaller branches. Last one I did was a 100g connection, which is on the upper end of Metro-E services for many providers although 400g may also be available.
Metro-E overlaps cable coax services for some providers depending on the particular services the customer needs but can ramp up wildly for speeds. If coax isn’t cutting it, Metro-E is the next step. Many of the hundreds I’ve connected were 1gbps links to store fronts, now it’s more 10gbps links to simplify logistics, but they can all be provisioned to something less depending on the contracted services. The biggest cost is usually installation, if the provider has to run fiber along the street for any length. The last business I connected with Metro-E was a small law office, in June.
Metro-E connections are provided by Comcast, Charter, Verizon, ATT, and all the other usual ISP providers with a fiber distibution network. Unless you’re familiar with the provider local hostnames or IP ranges you probably couldn’t tell it was a Metro-E connection if you didn’t see the end point device. The expansion of Metro-E services is not particularly recent, starting over a decade ago, but it’s been getting much more popular since Covid.
An office with a dozen or two full time employees will spend many times the connection bill in monthly payroll and other business expenses. Time is money. I guess if they’re fine with sharing a 35mbps upload with questionable uptime/performance they didn’t have all that much to upload from that office and/or could afford to waste the time. Many retail stores will lose more in revenues in an hour of downtime than a Metro-E connection will cost them in a month.
Yes, mid-split, high-split, FDX, etc. will all eat into the lower end Metro-E market due to lower monthly costs, as long as coax plant is close by and customers aren’t looking for a much in the way of service guarantees. Installation costs for coax plant are expensive too. Business DOCSIS is often $200/mo unless on promo, while Metro-E can start at $600/mo. depending on the contract terms, speed, and extras
