elliot noss – C-VILLE Weekly

Get in line: Ting’s network expansion slower than expected

When the folks at a “lightning-fast” fiber gigabit internet company decided to roll out their service in Charlottesville, they knew it would be popular—but now it’s in such high demand that there are hundreds of city residents waiting for access to its network.

Ting has been in town for more than three years, and is currently accessible to more than half of Charlottesville, says Elliot Noss, the company’s Toronto-based CEO. And while it has a footprint in about 80 percent of the local area, Noss says a waitlist is “certainly north of 1,000” people.

And here’s why: When Ting acquired a majority stake in Blue Ridge InternetWorks in 2014, Noss says it bought a preexisting network that wasn’t built to service the whole city.

“There’s no criticism in that,” he says. “We all knew what we were signing up for.”

While BRI’s existing backbone has plenty of fiber capacity, he says it lacks electronic capacity. In other words, says Noss, “Some portions of the network need and needed to be improved. We probably thought we had a little more coverage than we did.”

Though they may have had a slower start than they anticipated, the folks at Ting are still stringing internet cables up on poles and running fiber-optic cables to subscriber’s homes in town. They expect to be able to service 70 percent of the city by the end of the year, with an additional 15 percent by the end of 2019.

“More people have access every week,” promises Noss, who adds that he reads Charlottesville’s subreddit on discussion website Reddit, and he’ll often see someone say they’re moving to town and looking for recommendations for the best internet service provider. He says city residents are quick to suggest Ting, but add that it likely won’t be available.

“That breaks our heart,” says Noss. “We are certainly doing the work as fast as we can.”

For folks eager to try the gigabit service that starts at $89 per month, Noss suggests paying the refundable $9 to join the waitlist. “It’s like a vote for where we build next,” he says.

Redfields resident Michael Smith says he waited 13 months for Ting.

“Initial expectation from conversations with Ting personnel was the August/September of 2017 timeframe, but obviously that didn’t happen,” he says, adding that he was finally provided a “temporary connection” to the service in mid-February, before his permanent connection was completed two months later.

For Smith, a self-employed computer consultant who primarily works from home (and who was also a former BRI employee from 2002 to 2007), switching to Ting from Comcast was about speed and reliability.

“Ting is a lot faster for less money,” he says. And though he still has CenturyLink as a backup, “given the reliability of Ting so far,” he plans to cancel the second service this fall.

Smith says Ting is worth the wait: “I’m happy with the switch to Ting. I wish it hadn’t taken so long.”

Lightning fast: Ting’s grand plans to expand

Just five months after Ting launched its high-speed Internet network in Charlottesville, the company has given almost half the city access to the gigabit.

Ting describes the gigabit as “lightning fast” (gigabit refers to a speed of one gigabit per second, and one gigabit equals 1,000 megabits), and its network requires not just stringing cables up on poles, but also running a fiber-optic cable to a subscriber’s house.

“We’re very pleased with the subscribers that we’ve received so far based on our coverage,” says Baylor Fooks, a general manager at Ting and cofounder of Blue Ridge InternetWorks—the company that took the initiative to expand a fiber optic cable network in Charlottesville. (He declined to release the total number of subscribers.) Thus far, Ting has targeted downtown and several neighborhoods including Belmont, Martha Jefferson, Jefferson Park Avenue and Rugby Road, according to Fooks. And the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, he says.

Grit Cafe, a food and coffee shop with several locations including one on the Downtown Mall, has used Ting for about two months and advertises it on the sandwich board outside its door.

“Internet access is obviously a huge part of our offering,” says owner Brad Uhl, adding that some customers use the cafe as a secondary office location. Grit employee Anthony Fitzgerald says that while he’s on the job, customers often praise the service and say it’s faster than theirs at home.

With plans to expand the Internet service to more homes in the city by the beginning of 2016 and into Albemarle County shortly thereafter, Ting is also touting a new service.

Ting CEO Elliot Noss recently announced the company will offer cable streaming next year.

“Your Internet access is something you don’t want to think about,” Fooks says, “but your TV experience is quite the opposite.” According to Fooks, Ting’s cable streaming service will be an app format that allows users to select the content they want for their device, similar to Roku, Chromecast and Apple TV.

Though prices for cable streaming aren’t available yet, the gigabit Internet service is $89 per month (along with a $399 installation fee). And though that may seem expensive, Fooks says that just two years ago, the average price for gigabit service would have been between $5,000 and $10,000 per month. Ting supports straightforward pricing without bundling, and doesn’t apply early termination fees, he says.

For people who only use the Internet for basic tasks such as checking e-mail and social media accounts, Ting offers a five-megabit plan for less than $20 a month. Competitor CenturyLink, which has the largest local coverage area, has a three-megabit plan for the same price, but without the fiber optic cable. CenturyLink also offers a 25-megabit plan for $34.95, which the company says is quick enough to support downloading high-definition movies, streaming videos and playing games at high speeds.

CenturyLink user Mark Moss says because there are few Internet and cable options in Charlottesville, with the major players being his provider and Comcast, he was interested in Ting when it launched. His current Internet provider, he says, “does a pretty good job of basic streaming, but the upload is very slow.”

“‘Fast enough’ may work most of the time,” Fooks says, “but we are providing a service that will work with multiple video streams, voice, gaming and anything else you want to throw at it.” He calls it a “vastly superior” experience, and says Ting aims to keep its business model simple by only offering two plans.

Moss, who lives on an extension of Marshall Street where utilities are buried underground, is concerned about whether Ting would be an option at this location. According to Fooks, in this case, the company would also install its fiber optic cables underground. Where Internet is already available, Fooks says it can be installed almost immediately after sign-up in a process that takes about three hours. “When you start drilling holes in someone’s house, you have to take a lot of care,” he says.