Verizon Wireless vs. Metronet Fiber..... Thoughts?

ISU3PtLand

Well-Known Member
Jan 31, 2007
298
520
93
54
Ames, Iowa
Got an email from Verizon that our place is eligible for Verizon Wifi Internet service for $35 a month, guaranteed for 3 years. We've had Metonet Fiber for about 5 years and are paying close to $100 a month for it.

My questions are....

Does anyone have Verizon Wifi? What do you think of it?

I'd welcome any advice on whether to make the switch or not.
 
Got an email from Verizon that our place is eligible for Verizon Wifi Internet service for $35 a month, guaranteed for 3 years. We've had Metonet Fiber for about 5 years and are paying close to $100 a month for it.

My questions are....

Does anyone have Verizon Wifi? What do you think of it?

I'd welcome any advice on whether to make the switch or not.

If you want to stay with fiber, call metronet, you should be able to get a $70 2gbit offer.
 
Had Verizon Wireless and it worked great. My uses were pretty basic: streaming TV and surfing net. Not a gamer.

My dad had T-Mobile and it experienced higher speeds and might have been he had direct line of sight to their cell-tower about half mile away. Not sure if that helps speed wise.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ISU3PtLand
If you want to stay with fiber, call metronet, you should be able to get a $70 2gbit offer.
I called Metronet last week and was able to "haggle" my way into them dropping some bogus fee that was costing close to $20 a month. THey didn't mention anything about 2 Gbit for $70.

Not that we need that much data. The home tv and 2 computers and 2 cell phones are the things we'd use it for.

My dilemma is that $35 is pretty damned good for 3 years vs. $70 a month. I'm really tempted but want to know if Verizon Wifi is dependable. Don't want to get it JUST because it's a cheaper option if it isn't reliable.
 
  • Like
Reactions: cyfanatic
You get what you pay for here. Fiber service is the gold standard for home internet. Top notch download AND upload speeds, very low latency, and very reliable. But it does cost more than some of the options from the wireless companies.

Going to depend on what your usage looks like. If you work from home or do anything that depends on large uploads I would stick with fiber. Any online gaming I would also stick with fiber.
 
I didn't have a contract to get $50/mo rate I had with Verizon. I have another cellphone provider.

For the $35/mo and 3 year price guarantee do you need to sign a contract?
 
Metronet just got bought by T Mobile.

Had them for over a year and it's been fantastic. Would recommend.
Metronet is great. (Especially for someone like me who switched over from poopy butt Mediacom.)

Call them and ask for the T-Mobile fiber price match (or something to that effect.) Gave me the option to drop my 1Gig plan by $20/month or I could upgrade to 2Gig plan for $10 less a month. I took the speed upgrade and $10 discount.
 
If you're ok with variable wifi connection and high speed data isn't important, give it a shot. But cellular wireless wifi can be as unpredictable as using your phone to surf the Internet.
 
  • Winner
  • Agree
Reactions: aauummm and Erik4Cy
You get what you pay for here. Fiber service is the gold standard for home internet. Top notch download AND upload speeds, very low latency, and very reliable. But it does cost more than some of the options from the wireless companies.

Going to depend on what your usage looks like. If you work from home or do anything that depends on large uploads I would stick with fiber. Any online gaming I would also stick with fiber.
Totally.

I play online games and I NEVER lag with Metronet fiber...I mean...ever.

Wife works from home (and always is streaming a show for background noise while working), we've also been streaming on like 3 other devices and my online games don't skip a single beat. 11ms latency at most last night iirc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: aauummm
One thing to consider is diversification. If you have Verizon for phone and internet you are out of luck with any outage.
This is a good call. I have Verizon for phone and T Mobile home internet. There's only been 1 time the past 3 years I had an outage with T mobile. It was only a couple hours but during a time I nèded to be available for work. Verizon hot spot saved me from being a lame duck on an escalation call with a client.

Only real gripe with any cellular home internet service is it can make your location seem out of whack due to how cellular services handle IPs. Not sure if its still a problem but a few years ago Hulu basically didn't work because it thought you were in a different location. T Mobile always thinks you're in Monneapolis when in Des Moines because that's where the towers fiber network is hardwired too.

It can lead to not getting local channels on streaming services but YTTV has it handled and gets the correct local channels.
 
This is a good call. I have Verizon for phone and T Mobile home internet. There's only been 1 time the past 3 years I had an outage with T mobile. It was only a couple hours but during a time I nèded to be available for work. Verizon hot spot saved me from being a lame duck on an escalation call with a client.

Only real gripe with any cellular home internet service is it can make your location seem out of whack due to how cellular services handle IPs. Not sure if its still a problem but a few years ago Hulu basically didn't work because it thought you were in a different location. T Mobile always thinks you're in Monneapolis when in Des Moines because that's where the towers fiber network is hardwired too.

It can lead to not getting local channels on streaming services but YTTV has it handled and gets the correct local channels.

Definitely true. I've had my verizon service geolocate out to virginia before.
 
Thanks for all the recommendations and advice. I think we'll stick with Metronet for now. I'll be very curious as to if there will be a discount when T-Mobile and Metronet finalize their merger. I really appreciated the comment about having everything be everything being wireless and then cell service going down. Really made me think there. :-)

Thanks again for all the good advice!
 
  • Like
Reactions: wenkeej
My wife called Metronet a couple weeks ago and got our bill dropped from 110ish down to 62 bucks for the 1G service. No issue with the actual service, just the price.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ISU3PtLand
I saw some T-Mobile trucks going around our neighborhood a couple weeks ago and they were using the MetroNet service hatch to run some additional fiber-optic. That makes a bit more sense now if they merged.

I'm paying $60 a month for 200MB. I looked and I could have had 500MB for the same price. Ugh. I should have checked sooner.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ISU3PtLand
I saw some T-Mobile trucks going around our neighborhood a couple weeks ago and they were using the MetroNet service hatch to run some additional fiber-optic. That makes a bit more sense now if they merged.

I'm paying $60 a month for 200MB. I looked and I could have had 500MB for the same price. Ugh. I should have checked sooner.

Call and say you're going to switch to get faster speed but don't want to pay 100+ dollars. All my wife said was that we were going to T-Mobile 5-G and they dropped it to 62 for the 1G with router and an a extender.

I'm guessing they're readjusting their pricing since being bought by T-Mobile. Their website is offering 2Gig service for 70 bucks and it's price locked for 10 years.
 
  • Winner
  • Like
Reactions: aauummm and StratCY
I saw some T-Mobile trucks going around our neighborhood a couple weeks ago and they were using the MetroNet service hatch to run some additional fiber-optic. That makes a bit more sense now if they merged.

I'm paying $60 a month for 200MB. I looked and I could have had 500MB for the same price. Ugh. I should have checked sooner.

You should be able to switch to the 500MB service using the Metronet portal without even having to call.

https://portal.metronet.com
 
Metronet is great. (Especially for someone like me who switched over from poopy butt Mediacom.)

Call them and ask for the T-Mobile fiber price match (or something to that effect.) Gave me the option to drop my 1Gig plan by $20/month or I could upgrade to 2Gig plan for $10 less a month. I took the speed upgrade and $10 discount.
This is tempting. My home network has basically nothing that can leverage 2Gb ethernet but it will at some point, and I'm already paying $70/mo for 1Gig
 
  • Like
Reactions: Erik4Cy

Latest posts

Help Support Us

Become a patron