During the quarantine period, now in its final phase, Italians have had the opportunity to test the power and reliability of online purchases and activations, which until a few months ago, made most people turn up their noses.
The activations via the web have increased significantly and have touched the most diverse sectors: from food & beverage to insurance, up to the search for cheaper and faster Internet plans.
There are many users who have moved in order to find the best fiber optic offer online: in this guide we will explain what are the basic steps to select the most advantageous promotion and how to activate a fiber optic offer directly from home.
Online comparison between offers
Choosing an offer from home means having more time at one's disposal: no queue to request information, no waiting to pay, no fear of risking selecting the one that is not the most convenient rate because in the rush of the moment.
Before activating a fiber optic home Internet promotion, it is advisable to make a comparison between the many available on the market. Comparing offers is less misleading than advertising, which only highlights the strengths of a particular provider.
Comparators are in fact tools that put side by side, in a comparison page, all the offers that you can subscribe to - in this case fiber optic ones - with all the features that distinguish them. For example, with the online comparator of SOStariffe.it it is sufficient to enter the name of the municipality in which you live to find out what offers are available.
In this regard, the second element that will help guide you in choosing the best fiber optic promotion comes into play: the connection speed and latency.
The verification of the connection speed
The first time that you activate a fiber optic connection, it is not enough to simply activate the online subscription: it will be necessary the intervention of a technician, that usually is sent automatically to your home, necessary to make the changes to the home system, thanks to which you will then be able to travel at the speed of FTTH fiber.
To be able to do it is necessary to verify the coverage of this network technology in the place where you live. Verifying the coverage is really easy: just use a special tool, free, available online, called speed test. SOStariffe.it proposes one that allows you to know in advance if you will be able to surf with FTTH fiber, or at lower speeds: it will be sufficient to insert the name of your municipality of residence in the appropriate form.
You will not have to release personal data or sign draft contracts to verify the coverage of fiber optics: what you must keep in mind is that the extension of fiber throughout the country is one of the objectives that you would like to try to achieve in the near future. For this reason, if you were not covered by fiber until some time ago and you were forced to activate an ADSL type of tariff, now the coverage could cover a wider area: for this reason the verification test represents a not negligible step.
If not, the risk is to activate a FTTH fiber promotion and then be able to surf only at the speed of FTTC fiber or ADSL network. In addition, the service of verification of coverage is offered, free of charge, by all operators, which on their official sites have a dedicated section.
Analyze the characteristics of fiber optic offers
After having made sure that you are in a position to bring the FTTH fiber to your home, you can move on to the actual comparison between the offers. Beyond the price proposed by the various operators, most of which propose rates at less than 30 euros per month, there are other elements that must be taken into account to make a well thought out and appropriate choice.
First of all, if you already have an ADSL type home Internet connection, it is advisable to contact your operator in order to verify the presence of fiber optic promotions for existing customers.
It is not so rare, in fact, that when you are going to upgrade from an ADSL connection to a fiber optic one, it is the same operator to contact its customers, especially if it realizes that it could lose them because of an increasingly fierce and cheap competition.
When you change from ADSL to fiber optic tariff, it is always advisable to be careful about the choice of the modem: operators always propose one of the latest generation and it is not by chance. If you are in possession of old modems, which are sufficiently performing with the ADSL network, you may encounter problems with a fiber connection: that's why we suggest to replace your modem with a newer model.
Fiber optic offers seem similar, but they are not all the same: although they all allow you to travel at the highest connection speeds currently possible, they vary in relation to the so-called hidden costs.
Fiber optic home Internet promotions are all inclusive, i.e. they contain both unlimited Internet, unlimited calls and no connection charge, throughout the country. What generally differentiates them is that some offers are at a fixed price, while others have a cost that changes, lowering, if you choose not to switch to another operator over the years.
Variable price promotions and hidden costs
Some operators propose fiber optic home Internet rates whose cost is greatly reduced from the fifth year. This happens because in the price of the first 4 years of subscription are generally included both the cost of activation and the cost of the modem.
When you choose to change operator before the 4 years, you will have to pay extra costs, which are those relating to the remaining installments of modem and activation. If, on the contrary, you remain faithful to the operator, starting from the fifth year the average cost in the bill could be reduced up to 6-7 euros per month.
On the other hand, there are also operators that propose fixed price rates: the best advice is always to check from time to time what has been the evolution of the market. The one of the home Internet rates is constantly updated and the prices of the promotions often tend to go down, as it has happened for example during the last 6 months.
Cost and speed of the fiber optic
To think that a fiber optic connection is more expensive than the ADSL connection is a mistake: they have exactly the same monthly cost, but at the same price, the fiber optic has no equal. That's why it is always a choice to be evaluated, if you have the physical possibilities, related to the coverage.
The FTTH fiber provides that the fiber optic cables reach the house: for this reason it has an extremely low latency time and a maximum speed of 1 Giga download and 200 Mega upload.
The FTTC fiber, instead, foresees that there is a connection between the home environment and the street telephone cabinet: therefore it reaches a greater number of users, at the moment, but it has a higher latency and speeds equal to 200 Mega download and 20 Mega upload.
The ADSL can only reach the speed of 20 Mega in download and 1 Giga in upload: for this reason, in the areas that are not reached by the optical fiber, you could exploit the wireless connection, which uses the power of the fiber mixed radio connections and allows you to surf at speeds similar to those of FTTC fiber.