Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Frontier Offering Free Apple TV 4K to Customers Who Choose New 2 Gig Plan
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Another satisfied Frontier customer here. The service itself has been rock solid for the 6 years since they took over for Verizon FiOS in my area. Their website is garbage - with Verizon you used to be able to change plans directly on the website without the hassle of talking to a human. Still can't do so with Frontier. But that's pretty minor overall. I don't understand why people in my area say they're bad when the actual product has been very consistent compared to the competition.
It's not totally clear from their website whether you can get the 3 months of tv+ without switching to 2gig. The language is pretty vague, so it's not clear if the whole promo requires 2gig service (and only new 2gig customers get the tv device, whereas existing customers who switch only get the 3 months of tv+), or whether everyone who doesn't get 2gig is still eligible for the 3 months of tv+. Existing customers have to talk to customer service which is annoying (of course, useless website!).
Regardless of either promo, I can't imagine 2gig being worthwhile when I'm on 500/500 and 99% of download speeds are limited by bottlenecks external to my local connection.
It's not totally clear from their website whether you can get the 3 months of tv+ without switching to 2gig. The language is pretty vague, so it's not clear if the whole promo requires 2gig service (and only new 2gig customers get the tv device, whereas existing customers who switch only get the 3 months of tv+), or whether everyone who doesn't get 2gig is still eligible for the 3 months of tv+. Existing customers have to talk to customer service which is annoying (of course, useless website!).
Regardless of either promo, I can't imagine 2gig being worthwhile when I'm on 500/500 and 99% of download speeds are limited by bottlenecks external to my local connection.
I have 1 Gigabit fiber and I have yet to see it be saturated by any particular website or service. Even direct connections uploading and downloading to and from our fairly beefy dedicated web server at work are like half that speed. I prepaid for a year and locked in a yearly forever rate that is pretty good (and with inflation maybe it’s for the best) but sometimes wonder if I should’ve signed up for the 500Mbps instead. We’re to the point where web infrastructure can’t handle the latest download speeds in many instances.
US telecom prices are so expensive.
In France for €12 you can have a 80GB 5G (€9/months if 4G) mobile plan and for €15 you can have unlimited Gigabit fiber FTTH plan. And you can cancel those plans whenever you want with zero fees.
How can the same thing could be so differently priced, that's insane!
In France for €12 you can have a 80GB 5G (€9/months if 4G) mobile plan and for €15 you can have unlimited Gigabit fiber FTTH plan. And you can cancel those plans whenever you want with zero fees.
How can the same thing could be so differently priced, that's insane!
Call them. I just got 300/300 for 55, which is plenty for me. They have a new policy - no hidden deals. Everyone gets same offers, new and old. No device fee, no data caps (for me), and 300 is plenty for one household. Gig was 80.
I just do the pass through to ubiquiti gear and it’s been flawless for a couple years now. The Mac spoofing always felt like a gimmick.
Comcast is pricey and they continue to raise prices every year and not much change in service thinking of going for a jail broken Apple TV
Look into T-Mobile or anyone else's "fixed wireless". It'd be a 4G/5G wireless base station in the house/apartment.
Also look into any regional co-ops, esp in rural areas. These and fixed wireless are crush terrestrial providers.
I once had the misfortune of being forced to use them
Make no mistake Frontier is absolute dog ****
You think you’re getting something good because eg I bought 100/100. But you’re forced to use their router so it feels nowhere near that fast, it very frequently was unreliable and needed rebooting, and if you needed customer service it was truly pathetic. The people were friendly, but the waits were always ridiculously long it would always take 2-3 hours to address a relatively basic issue and still ultimately not get it resolved.
On cox now and have had zero issues ever
To me the important take for this is that Frontier is offering an Apple TV, not a Roku or an Amazon Fire. Spectrum also offers an Apple TV for sale or lease on their streaming plans. For all the negative hoopla on MacRumors about how superior other streaming boxes are to the ATV and how overpriced it is, could it be that these providers have found that the ATV is more reliable and stable, easier to set up and use for their subscribers.
This is why we should never assume that the nastiness toward Apple on tech blogs represents the real world, ever.
This is why we should never assume that the nastiness toward Apple on tech blogs represents the real world, ever.
Wow, I want an Apple TV+ too! How much better is it than the regular apple tv? Does it do 8k?
?
(I assume you just meant “Apple TV”. Apple TV+ is the streaming service)
Do you have a cheaper option than trying to get a UDM pro for $400 to do this? Seems ludicrous to spend that much just to bypass ATT crappy routers.
On a unit cost of Mbps that isn't too bad at $.075/Mpbs. I pay $45 for service that ranges from 1-30Mbps which works out to $1.50/Mbps even at the fastest speed I've ever achieved, 30Mbps.
For what it's worth, they don't charge for equipment. Customer service still sucks the hind tit.
What part of my post do you disagree with?
Wow, that is a lot of streaming. Could you let us know what you are streaming and how many simultaneous streams are going that 2Gbps is needed?
To be fair, you didn't say exactly what part of my post you are in disagreement with, but I suspect that it was 1Gbps is overkill for most families. I would say that if that is the case, your family wouldn't be the typical use case.
But, I am still curious at what you are streaming.
The various streaming services vary in bitrate, but I will use Netflix as it is pretty consistent to demonstrate how 1Gbps is overkill for most, especially when the biggest draw would be streaming.
@1Gbps, you could have over 280 simultaneous streams of 1080p Netflix.
@1Gbps, you could have over 50 simultaneous streams of 4K HDR Netflix.
@2Gbps, this could be over 100 simultaneous streams of 4K HDR Netflix.
Now, lets say we drop it to 200Mbps, which I think would still be overkill for a lot of families:
@200Mbps, you could have over 50 simultaneous streams of 1080p Netflix.
@200Mbps, you could have over 11 simultaneous streams of 4K HDR Netflix.
Some other streaming services have higher bitrates, but not anything that would dramatically change the outcomes, even @200Mbps service.
So, what are you streaming?
Apple TV may be a bit overpriced but the other boxes are not superior or even close
Ouch! I'm also in San Diego, and switched from Cox to AT&T a year or so ago when they deployed fiber in our area - went from 200 mbps down / 10 up with Cox over coax to 940 mbps down and up (with no bandwidth cap) with AT&T for actually a little less per month (was a lot less for the first 6 months - promo rate - plus they throw in HBO Max). I hope they can roll out fiber to more areas in town soon. And yeah, whatever "gentleman's agreement" the cable companies have where they conveniently don't compete with each other anywhere is pretty annoying.