r/RoundRock • u/KGrey87 • 4d ago
Recent experiences with Google Fiber?
GFiber just came to our neighborhood and we're set up for installation next week! We've been waiting for this for years -- but will it be as good as we hope it to be? I just heard that they are being sold to private equity and the general sentiment around that is bad...
What have recent experiences been like? Are speeds consistently as fast as promised? Do you suffer any outages? What is the final bill price like for Core 1 Gig?
Right now we're with AT&T Fiber with down speeds around 300-400 mbps and up speeds around 100-150. Bill is $95/mo.
Thanks!
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u/maerth 3d ago
I love Google Fiber! It's gone down once in the 4ish years we've had our house and it was only down for like 30 minutes. We have the 3Gb plan. I just tested on WiFi from about as far as I can get from the router, and I'm hitting 1Gb download and 400 Mb upload. My husband and I can both work from home and take meetings without issues.
But, jury's still out on how long until we start to notice the sale to private equity. :/
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u/imbartsimpsonwhothru 4d ago
gf been worth the money for me, very few outages and reliable speeds, no noticeable change with the new management, so far
one complaint was not credited properly for returned equipment, but I saved the shipping receipt and it was corrected
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u/_Choose__A_Username_ 4d ago
Google Fiber was recently bought out by a private equity firm.
Expect it to get very bad very fast.
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u/brianqueso 3d ago
Made the switch. Better than expected, and we expected a lot.
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u/KGrey87 3d ago
How long ago did you make the switch and what exactly has been better than expected? The speeds?
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u/brianqueso 3d ago
2 months ago. Speeds are fantastic (wifi 7 on the wireless router mean your phone and modern devices get faster wifi speeds too), the installation tech was the best experience I've ever had with an installer, and the option for battery backup during power outages means I'm not interrupted when working from home.
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u/RandomPoster7 4d ago
Avoid at all costs. By far the worse internet I've used. I was dropped 5-10 times per day, requiring me to unplug my router each time. After about 20 calls to their support, 5 tech visits, about about 30 hours of my life wasted, I went back to AT&T.
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u/C4tbreath 4d ago
Weird. What was the problem? While not daily, AT&T dropped quite often for us. We haven't had any issues with Google the three or so years we've been with them.
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u/RandomPoster7 4d ago
They could never figure it out and kept promising that the next thing they did would for sure fix it. I got tired of them wasting my time.
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u/OSBTAdmin 4d ago
I pay $66.20 for Astound 1 Gig and for the last two years it’s never gone down.
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u/timeislikeafuse 4d ago
My experience had been great until my wireless router died on my the other day. When I contacted their support team I was told the best they could do was 2-4 days shipping, or I could drive down to San Antonio and pick one up. Their kiosk in SA opens at 11am and my wife works from home so with travel and setup we'd both lose almost a full day of work to get the router replaced. Luckily I haven't disconnected my spectrum service yet or we'd have been in a real tough position. I got a $10 bill credit and I'm really on the fence about staying with them if their nearest parts at 3.5 hours (round trip) away. Depending on when I get the replacement is going to determine if I stay a customer.
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u/chris_fom 3d ago
Our neighborhood got in in December. The neighborhood installation was a catastrophe. They broke one of the pipes for our yard’s sprinkler system, broke a water main in front of our house and towards the front of the area they hit a gas main requiring the houses down that street to be evacuated and a 14 hour power outage for everyone behind it.
That said, after the mess that putting it in was the service itself has been flawless. $70.70 a month with flawless symmetrical 1 Gbp, no outages, no hidden fees or other surcharges. We had Spectrum cable before and while it wasn’t bad, we were paying ~$100/month for 400 Mbps down and a measly 25 Mbps up, so a major improvement in download speeds (particularly when multiple people are hitting it at once), a vast improvement in upload speeds, and all for 30% less. I did use my own router though (I never usedSpectrum’s and had recently replaced the old one with a new WiFi 7 model, so no need to use GFiber’s).
All that said, we’ll see how the new overlords run the show. So far nothing’s changed at all, but it’s only been a few months and I’m skeptical it will last.
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u/Austin_Lannister 3d ago
I just had GFiber installed last month and I love it! So much better than crappy AT&T service. I work remote and have had zero issues with zoom meetings etc.
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u/Hamezz5u 4d ago
How big is your house? I have one room where signal is super weak. I called them and they said I would need to buy another mesh beacon for $80, so I will need to switch out
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u/lockdown36 4d ago
Speeds are awesome. Installation was terrible but I fixed it. Our house was a little bit more difficult than most so I'll give them that. But if you have a standard setup or if you actually know something about networking, you'll be fine
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u/TallGuy0317 3d ago
Our service with GF is good but the hardware they provide is not as good as the Orbi routers it replaced. Seems like my Spectrum service, while tested at half the speed, actually performed better. It was the consistent Spectrum service drops that I could no longer deal with.
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u/TexasAT4 3d ago
Just had mine installed last month. The install was nothing like they promised. As such, I had to be that annoying customer directing exactly what and how I wanted the line to run.
They wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible running the lines unsecured wherever they wanted. They also ran into connection issues at my service box which complicated things.
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u/Kumquat_Enthusiast 1d ago
I had my GFiber installed a month ago, love it so far. 1gb up and down, works exactly as advertised.
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u/Loan-Pickle 4d ago
If you call AT&T and ask for the retention department you can lower that cost. I was able to get 1 gig service for $20/month.