Lumen Residential Fiber: How It Compares to Other Providers
High-speed fiber service is also gradually being rolled out across the country due to the push by service providers to create fiber optic networks. Fiber internet provides the highest internet speed, minimal delays, and very stable connections ideal for many users and devices.
An example of a provider that provides fiber internet is Lumen. Lumen uses existing assets to offer competitively priced residential fiber solutions to homes and apartments across an increasing number of states. However, how does Lumen Fiber fare when compared to other top providers such as AT&T, Verizon Fios, and Google Fiber among others? Let’s take a look.
Lumen Fiber Speeds
Lumen Fiber provides equal download and upload speeds with the fastest of 1 Gbps. Their slowest tier begins at 300 Megabits per second (Mbps).
This places Lumen at an equivalent to the fastest speed from most other fiber internet providers. For comparison:
- AT&T Fiber delivers internet connection with up to 1Gbps download and upload speed. The lower tiers begin at 300 Mbps.
- Verizon Fios gigabit connections offer bandwidths of up to 940 Mbps downstream and 880 Mbps upstream. The packages with relatively slower internet speeds include 300 Mbps, 500 Mbps, and 750 Mbps.
- Google Fiber: 1Gbps upload and download speed. Their minimum package is 100 Mbps.
Some very limited providers can offer residential plans with speeds above 1Gbps. Such services include Google Fiber with a 2Gbps plan and AT&T with 5Gbps of service. But 1 Gbps is sufficient for any family, even for one that downloads movies, music, and other large files.
Lumen Pricing
Lumen fiber packages range between $49.99 and $79.99 a month, no contracts are signed, and there are no data caps, hidden fees, or increases in prices after the first year.
This straightforward pricing matches well against top competitors:
- AT&T Fiber: Pricing: $60 per month for 300 Mbps, going up to $100 per month for 1 Gig. It is on the lower speed tiers where data caps are imposed.
- Verizon Fios starts at $40 for 300 Mbps and goes up to $90 for 940 Mbps down. Gigabit connections are offered only in some locations for one hundred and twenty dollars a month.
- Google Fiber is available for $70 per month no matter which of the two speeds is chosen, 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps.
The absence of fixed-term contracts, fixed prices, and the utilization of existing structures also ensures that Lumen fiber remains competitive and relatively cheap in markets where it is available.
Lumen Fiber Availability
A weakness of Lumen Fiber is that it has a much smaller coverage area than major competitors such as AT&T, Verizon, etc. Lumen directs infrastructure spending on targeted metro areas rather than being a national carrier.
As of 2022, Lumen fiber residential service is active or launching soon in parts of:
- Arizona – Phoenix and Tucson Metropolitan
- Colorado – Denver/Boulder
- Florida - Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, and some suburban areas
New Orleans and Baton Rouge are the areas of Louisiana that would most likely be affected by the above-outlined factors.
- Minnesota - Minneapolis/St. Paul
- Nevada – Las Vegas
Virginia has several areas that are popular among tourists, one of the most famous is the Arlington area.
This is in contrast to Verizon Fios’ reach of more than 10 million households in the Eastern part of the United States, or AT&T which provides fiber service to over 14 million locations across the United States, and fiber availability is on the rise each day. Youngest of the newcomers Google Fiber is already present in almost 19 metro areas including wireless service.
Nonetheless, Lumen actively increases the number of locations served by their fiber optic infrastructure. New cities are being developed every couple of months. Thus, if Lumen Fiber is not present in your address yet, it is still advisable to come back from time to time because of the constant expansion of the rollout initiatives.
Lumen Equipment Installation and customers Service
Lumen offers a free WiFi router compatible with fiber speeds for any new sign-up for its services. Professional installation is also free for most homes in most cases. Setting up is done by experienced technicians while considering the health and safety standards.
By once again maintaining costs of equipment and installation at zero, Lumen is still comparable with other market options. The same general offers are given by Verizon, AT&T and most Google Fiber regions also.
Lumen has customer service through a group of people in California, where you can call them at any time, day or night, or even through the internet, including thet, or social media, in case of any problems. Customer support services are comparable to top competitors, so any problems are addressed immediately after the installation or during internet and WiFi usage.
One Differentiator: Services of Lumen Edge Computing
It is where their high-speed connections may open emerging technology frontiers such as edge computing to distinguish Lumen fiber. Lumen provides enterprise-grade edge solutions allowing for advanced applications in settings like:
Smart communities and cities Enter your keywords here. The heady focuses on the following topics:
- Data-intensive research
- Telemedicine and remote health management
- Internet gaming and augmented reality/virtual reality
- Autonomous vehicles
- Mass surveillance and traffic cameras with video analytics
These future-forward use cases leverage Lumen’s cloud using its partner’s high-capacity fiber to process data in real-time the ‘edge’ where data is created and used.
Edge tech is just another revolution after the centralized platform of cloud computing. It is set to revrevolutionizegital experience from consumer electronics, commerce, community, and industrial Internet of things. Today and in the future, Lumen’s fiber deployments enable fiber edge nodes for these innovations.
The Bottom Line
Lumen Fiber offers low-cost, high-speed internet connectivity to apartments in some metropolitan areas and is actively growing. Their pricing, equipment, and customer service are on par with other similar service providers, namely Verizon Fios, AT&T Fiber, and Google Fiber.
While Lumen’s service area is not as vast as some of its competitors, it concentrates on the markets to expand in. And they further segment consumers by deploying and extending cloud and edge computing offerings through high-speed fibfiberansport networks.
So for households that are lucky enough to live in active Lumen Fiber areas, their residential packages offer a rather simple and quite compelling proposition to cut out cable monopolies or DSL. Lumen’s network can increase home connectivity speed significantly, manage multiple smart devices and streaming for members of large families at once, and share data through gold connectivity of fiber-optic connectivity directly to your living area.
