What is the Difference Between Fiber & Cable?

Choosing an internet service provider might be difficult, depending on what you require from them. If you want high-speed internet that doesn’t lag and connects at speedy rates, you’re going to have to pay more. There are still options that provide excellent internet service at affordable rates, just like AW Broadband. Another determining factor might be whether or not you can bundle services with the provider. A lot of providers offer both television services and home phone service, or what is also known as a landline. With so many choices, you’ll want to know what is available to you and what works best for the location of your home or business.

Popular options for internet connections include fiber optic, cable, DSL, and satellite internet services. DSL and satellite internet service do not require physical connections, whereas fiber and cable rely on physical structures. Fiber optic cables are made out of glass and work by bouncing light in pulses at a rapid rate. Fiber optic lines spread from all over the United States and all throughout the world. They are built underneath the ground in the ocean to connect continents. There are numerous advantages to using fiber internet as your top choice of internet service.

What are the advantages of fiber internet?

The way fiber cables are constructed allows them to transfer signals at a higher rate when compared to other methods of internet connection. In the time it takes other methods to download videos, it can take seconds with fiber internet. Most people still use DSL or Wi-Fi. When using DSL at the speed of 25 Mbps, it would take 30 minutes to download an HD movie that is 2 hours long. When using fiber internet at 1 Gbps, it would take 40 seconds to do the same thing.

Another great advantage of fiber internet is the reliability it brings. Wireless connections cannot provide the same kind of soundness a wired one can. Cable and fiber are alike in this manner, but fiber still beats out cable in the aspect that it can handle large amounts of data being transmitted by more than a few devices. The cable also requires maintenance and electricity. If a line is down, it will not be able to transfer the data to the next location, but a fiber optic cable needs only to be intact for it to do its job.

Have you ever wondered why upload speed is always so much slower than download speed? It is because users are more likely to download materials rather than upload them. A larger percentage of people are downloading content as opposed to uploading it. This is true with DSL, cable, and satellite alike, but with fiber, your upload speed will be consistent with your download speed since there is no concern of overloading the system with information.

If you are an avid gamer or movie and TV show streamer, fiber optic internet will be the best choice if you want to enjoy quick-loading games and content. Higher-definition TVs will require better internet connectivity in order to deliver the kind of quality they promise. With fiber, this won’t even be a thought, let alone an issue. It will also allow for the lag in computer games and ones that require an internet connection to be reduced to none. You will never have to go through a game that is failing to load because of a slow internet connection.

To read about how to find the right internet speed for you, click here.

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