Spectrum is a leading cable internet service provider in the United States of America that delivers high speed broadband connections to customers. Be that as it may, Spectrum doesn’t currently provide its fibre broadband services directly into consumers’ homes and offices, unlike some of its primary competitors such as Verizon FiOSTM or AT&T Fiber. But they supply internet by fibre optics over the well known coaxial cable infrastructure.
Thus, to give a direct answer to the initial primary question – no, Spectrum does not offer an actual fiber-optic home internet service at the moment. Their network infrastructure and so-called “last mile” connections that run directly into homes and buildings are based on coaxial cable, not fiber. However, they do employ fiber optics in some of the more extensive and significant sections of their interconnectivity.
While Spectrum's cable-based internet speeds can still be quite fast, especially if you live in an area with upgraded network technology, fiber internet offers some advantages over cable.
- Fiber allows for faster speed than other broadband connections; some fiber broadband plans could offer up to 2 Gbps or 10 Gbps. For cable broadband, the fastest for residential is typically around 400-500 Mbps downstream and 10-20 Mbps upstream.
- Fiber typically has lower latency because of the speed at which information is transmitted and the relatively fewer number of times it would go through the network before it reaches the intended destination. This results in a dynamic internet reaction, which depends on the current use and activity level.
- Fiber is future proof bandwidth infrastructure that is designed to support future bandwidth requirements and on the other hand, cable may need further upgrade and nodes splits to accommodate the required capacity.
That rolling out fiber is not being done by spectrum has to do with the fact that it is very expensive and then time-consuming to build out an all-new fiber network. Even if a provider has a large geographic reach, it can take years and significant capital expenditure to deploy fiber lines to that extent.
However, Spectrum’s parent company Charter Communications has only recently started entering the fibre internet market. They are migrating some markets to fiber or introducing fiber services under a Spectrum Fiber brand in some other markets across the country.
The fiber expansion plans look more likely to be addressed to multi-unit residential structures and the corporate world at this point than to home connections. However, in the long run, Spectrum will inexorably transition to fiber-to-the-home deployment on a wider scale.
Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber were among the first players in direct fiber to the home service though the expansion too has been challenging for larger profit generation because of high initial investment on infrastructure. Nevertheless, with the future connectivity standards already in the works for 5G and fiber, Spectrum will have to constantly update their network to keep up.
Summing it up – Spectrum utilises fibre and coaxial cable lines for the provision of cable internet at high speed based on the existing network technologies. But they have not done this for switching over the residentials users to direct end-to-end fiber connectivity. As the requirement for symmetrical download/uplink speed that fiber supports increases in the future, fiber might gradually move further down Spectrum lines to homes. But a complete transition to fiber would be a costly long-term process, that is, potentially expensive.
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