Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Since Fibrant began its soft rollout in 2010 and blew all of its certificates of participation ($33 million dollars worth) by June 2011 before going into the water and sewer funds for $7.6 million dollars, I understood that Fibrant’s doomsday trump would sound sometime down the road. Fibrant, as expected, was never able to keep up with AT&T U-verse and Time Warner Cable who would lowball them in price, provide better service, offer higher-speeds when profits indicated a need, and out market them. Plus they don’t go into their customer’s emails to spy. Fibrant jumped into a crowded field of deep pocketed incumbents who can foot the bill for the latest in high-tech advances and do everything a lot more inexpensively by volume equipment buying.
I knew Gigapower would be arriving in Salisbury several weeks ago. I heard from the Charlotte grapevine that AT&T U-verse planned rolling out in a number of Charlotte regional cities including Salisbury. Clearly AT&T U-verse was doing a large fiber optic build out in several sections of Salisbury where clusters of businesses and institutions are located.
On Monday AT&T U-verse GigaPower launched in Salisbury. Naturally they lowballed Salisbury in price. Any savvy consumer would gladly fork over $70 bucks a month for GigaPower’s 1 gig than Fibrant’s $105 for its gig. Subscribing to Fibrant also means you are making hidden payments through your water and sewer utility bill and through your taxes which subsidize Fibrant to the tune of $1 Million a year. Added to this mess, Fibrant, despite it ludicrous claims that it turned the corner and was making a profit, was 12.6 million negative in the 2014 audit. The city is laying on its side and breathing hard prior to its nauseating death rattle.
At the lower end of extremely high-speeds, TWC Maxx recent upgrades in speed are far cheaper than what Fibrant tries to pimp.
As for service, Fibrant is well known for not answering phones when their internet crashes and for their spotty service (We’ll be right out after we finish fixing the traffic lights at Fulton and Lincolnton–somebody shot em’ out last night). AT&T U-Verse internet finished 2nd only to Verizon Fios internet in the J.D.Power customer service satisfaction study for the Southern region:
Salisbury has plenty of internet speed with GigaPower and TWC MAXX. Trouble is a whole lot of folks are selling their homes due to Shotzbury’s runaway violent and property crime and the city’s substandard public schools. With all the taxes, high utility bills, bogus storm water fees, and nothing much to show for it, people are looking elsewhere to live.
By the way if GigaPower decides to go to 10 GigaPower its no sweat for them. But at this time there’s absolutely no call for it.
