Blazing download speeds of 30 Mbps and upload 10 – 28 Mbps
BellAliant FiberOp speed test
Updated 8:36 PM – reconnect your set top box with HDMI if you want HD television. The Aliant techs leave it hooked at the lowest level, 480p, for testing purposes.
After months of watching those TV ads for 30 Mbps internet speeds, I made the jump back to BellAliant for the new FiberOP internet.
Actual performance what you’d expect from the tests – very fast.
The results are stunning and handily beat 30 Mbps service from Eastlink.
BellAliant offered a conversion savings for the first three months. Otherwise, the costs are within $10 a month, BellAliant being slightly less costly.
The biggest improvement is upload times which improved from 800Kbps average with Eastlink to somewhere between 28 Mbps and10 Mbps on FiberOP.
The Aliant sponsored test site scored the highest upload speed, while the Bangor Maine server used by Speedtest.net seemed to have some limitation for uploads.
FiberOp speed test by Speedtest.net
Download is important when pages are loading or streaming music and videos.
For someone playing connected games or uploading content, upload time is just as important.
Using the Cloud more and more puts pressure on upload times as well. With the Cloud much of the data and processing is moved off your computer to the Cloud.
For me, the time it took to post a story on NJN Network or upload a movie to YouTube was becoming a major annoyance. Some days I wondered if I had lost the connection when posting articles or pictures.
Other benefits
FiberOP comes with HD television and the option of a PVR that serves all TVs in the house.
There is only one PVR which can record up to 4 programs at once, an increase from 2 simultaneous tuners on Eastlink’s HD.
FiberOP uses bidirectional signals along either coaxial or CAT5 network cables to talk between the individual receivers and the PVR. The connection to the house is fiber optics which gives BellAliant much larger pipes for date. Apparently they are offering up to 180 Mbps for business.
Check the map to see if it is available in your location.
This is new technology that vastly supersedes the Eastlink solution.
We only have a 720p HD television but the picture detail is subjectively better. The sound is also higher quality. I can hear dialogue clearly with 25% less volume.
We’ll miss some of the local programming on Eastlink but speed talks.
It almost feels like old times going back to Aliant where we started with Bell ExpressVu and DSL 11 years ago.
Mike
Hi: Can I ask you guys a question about Aliant Fibre? My install was done a month ago and I used HDMI to connect all of the devices (set top box, blu-ray player, AV Receiver and HDTV). The problem was that I wasn’t able to get Dolby 5.1 on television broadcasts. The technicians were back in today to check on this issue. They removed the HDMI cable from the STB to the TV and replaced it with component cables and moved the audio cable to connect the TV (a 1080p Panasonic) to the AV Receiver. Now, I have Dolby surround sound. My question is …. will I still receive the same quality HDTV while using component cables vs HDMI or will there be a degredation in quality? I thought that HDMI was the way to go but apparently, Aliant does not support HDMI. This work was just done today so I’ll test it tonight. Many thanks!
Stephen Pate
That’s interesting. HDMI will give you 1080 according to my information. I noticed I was getting only stereo as well. I don’t have an HDMI received so I was using optical audio out. I’ll have to research that some more. There are several good posts about FiberOp if you Google it that go into lots of detail.
Mike
Thanks for the reply. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out this Fibre connection and read some great posts on digitalhome.ca. My understanding also was that the only way to get 1080 was to use HDMI. However, I read somewhere that Aliant is not broadcasting in 1080 (as is done in the US) so it really doesn’t matter if you use HDMI or Component. This is the reason that blu-ray looks so much better than fibre…because it is a true 1080 signal. THEN, I saw the following post on digitalhome.ca which adds to the confusion:
“I’m using HDMI out on my VIP1216 (PVR in living room) with no issues. However, I’m using the component out with my VIP1200 (Non-PVR in bedroom) because I get bad audio breakup with HDMI on this particular receiver. It’s not really an issue using component as the component cables are perfectly capable of delivering up to a 1080i signal and the receiver doesn’t put out a 1080p signal anyway. I’m only using HDMI with the PVR because I wanted to cut down on the amount of cables behind my console. I have a lot of stuff plugged into my AV receiver.
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Cheers!
Stephen Pate
Thanks for the info. Later on this week when things quiet down I’ll do some more research.