Staff writer
Choosing an internet provider in Marion County wasn’t always so daunting. But with the Flint Hills flush with companies flocking to the latest advancements, it can be hard to keep up.
The county has 14 internet providers, according to the Office of Broadband Development. Many have upped their advertising recently as they look to capitalize on historically poor coverage.
Advertising is increasingly focused on fiber optic internet, which uses cables made of glass or plastic fibers, rather than more traditional copper-based cable, such as DSLs or “coax” cables.
By employing light rather than electricity, fiber optic internet transmits data at up to 70% the speed of light.
This means speeds are quicker over fiber than anything else.
Vyve’s fiber internet advertises an upload speed of 1,000 megabits per second (Mbps), far exceeding the 5 Mbps offered by the AT&T DSL internet used by some Marion homes and businesses.
Download speeds are also generally better over fiber, though the difference is less dramatic.
The technology surrounding fiber is older than you might expect.
TC Telco buried fiber in the northern half of the county 15 years ago, according to Lloyd Davies, who runs Great Plains Computers and Networking.
“They were way ahead of the curve there,” Davies said.
But residents of certain areas, such as the city of Marion, were unable to access fiber until very recently.
This November, IdeaTek struck a deal to begin laying fiber in the city. The company brought fiber to Burns in July as part of a $900,000 government grant.
“A dirt road is no longer an excuse for poor broadband service,” IdeaTek founder Daniel Friesen said at the time.
The company has mailed out flyers to Marion residents informing them of the construction and is advertising on social media to promote the new service.
When IdeaTek’s network is completed, Marion homes will be able to purchase fiber internet for the first time. (Vyve already offers fiber for businesses.)
Hillsboro has had both business and residential fiber since 2020 through TC Telco, a deal that Marion was offered but turned down.
“TC Telco talked with Marion, but for whatever reason, it didn’t emerge,” Hillsboro administrator Matt Stiles said. “It was all private investment; they had nothing from us. It seemed like a pretty good deal.”
Despite Hillsboro already having fiber through both Vyve and TC Telco, another provider named Brightspeed is now sending sales representatives door-to-door to promote its own fiber, installed last fall.
“They were offering three free months to try it,” Stiles said. “I don’t know how successful they were.”
Which company one should choose for internet service comes down to factors like price, ease of access, and outage frequency. If your internet is going down frequently because of wind or snow, for example, you may want to switch to an underground service.
Another question is whether fiber is a must-have.
Fiber is great for businesses, in Davies’ view.
“It’s fantastic,” he said. “If you can, as a business, go to fiber. We use Vyve here. It’s been solid.”
The Record currently uses fiber from Vyve with a backup DSL connection from AT&T.
Davies is a big advocate for fiber in general, calling it a “cleaner signal” than coax or DSL.
“I’m surprised that somebody hadn’t brought it in [to Marion] in the last three years,” he said.
But for residents who aren’t heavy internet users, fiber isn’t really necessary, according to Travis Kohlrus, Vyve’s regional vice president.
Kohlrus said the company’s coax speeds were usually indistinguishable from its fiber.
In face, coax speeds often beat fiber speeds at the Record for receiving files. For sending files, however, fiber is five to 10 times faster.
“We’ve offered gigabit speeds for close to five years,” Kohlrus said. “It’s not really a speed game. Fiber is more of a new medium.”
Vyve’s current setup brings signals to Marion with fiber before routing it to homes with coax cable. The company does provide residential fiber to other cities, such as Hillsboro.
Kohlrus called fiber “a sign of the times,” but said it was not usually worth it for an average Joe.
“Internet speeds are faster than the internet can work,” he said. “You could have gigabit speeds, but 90% of the devices you’re exchanging information with can’t even keep up with that. If you download a new Call of Duty game, the server isn’t going to serve it out to you at a gig speed.”
So if you don’t have a large and particularly video-game addicted household, an older coax plan might be fine for internet service. Maybe don’t use AT&T’s DSL plan, though, which Davies said is “at the end of the line.”
Some interesting alternatives exist as well. Davies noted Elon Musk’s Starlink, the satellite-based internet provider available practically everywhere in the world.
Starlink is not affected by the weather on earth, though it can be impacted by solar flares.
“It messes up the ionosphere, and you can have interference on satellite stuff,” Davies said.
Verizon 4G LTE and 5G hotspots also are becoming popular with residents.
Instead of connecting to a broadband provider, hotspots connect to cell towers through a mobile telephone network.
Hotspots are much improved from a few years ago, Davies said, when signals would sometimes bounce off buildings with metal roofs.
“I’ve seen a lot of people do it,” he said. “It’s cheap. I think we get 300 Mbps for $55 a month, something like that.”
Whatever internet service you choose to get, one thing is certain: As more and more companies arrive to connect the county, a lot of utility lines are about to be damaged.
IdeaTek hit an unmarked gas line in its digging two weeks ago, causing two families to evacuate their homes.
Stiles recalled TC Telco having trouble with its digging in 2020.
“Day one, they hit a power line,” he said. “Keep in mind, they’re working underground. I don’t know how they did that.”
Davies warned of more broken utility lines in the near future.
“It’s the nature of the game,” he said. “Stuff is marked, but it was marked 50 years ago, and you can’t remember where it is.”