Portland’s Pipes for Voice, Data, and Video

The sound of chattering jackhammers and other heavy machinery in my neighborhood recently signalled the arrival of the next wave of telecommunications and Internet buildouts since the DSL and cable system upgrades over 8-10 years ago.

My neighborhood in Tigard is receiving Verizon’s fiberoptic service to the home (FiOS), a service capable of up to 30 megabit per second speed–about 5 times faster than the area’s fastest cable modem Internet access.

Of course, these ‘pipes’ aren’t intended just to make our web browsing faster, but rather to carry video content and allow Verizon to compete with the cable and satellite providers. In our neighborhood, the disruption wasn’t too bad. Verizon’s subcontractors were friendly and tidy, although I lost a 6-foot square section of my yard to a junction box. (I better get a discount!)

What does this have to do with real estate, you ask?
For some homebuyers (particularly the growing trend of remote workers or telecommuters), the availability of broadband services is a critical housing criterion, and for the most part, the Portland area is well-covered. For many years, there were ‘DSL deadzones’ where the telcos could not (or would not) provide DSL service over their wires. In most cases, the telcos cleared up their networks, or just let the cable company take the business with their coax-based service.

Most big cities have a single residential phone company that installed all the copper wire under the streets that lead to our homes, but Portland has two providers that cover the metro area, Qwest and Verizon. These companies are artifacts of the telecommunications acquisition binge (Qwest bought US West, and GTE became Verizon) of the 90’s. Now, they are battling it out with Comcast to rule the content delivery pipes to Portland-area living rooms. I should note that Qwest has not announced any fiber-to-the-home plans to date. (Funny, their tagline used to be “Ride the Light”.)

Although cell phones and Internet phone services have eroded the residential phone business over the last several years, many still subscribe to communications services from the local ‘monopoly’. For a basic residential landline (with E911 service) and DSL, you’ll need to call Qwest or Verizon. Below are the areas of town they operate in:

Telephone and DSL Service

Note, broadband users are increasingly moving to digital voice services (VoIP) that use the Internet to carry their calls, instead of local telephone companies. Vendors like Vonage, AT&T CallVantage, SunRocket, and Packet8 are such companies. You might save some money if you make lots of long distance calls. These voice services sometimes suffer from poor call quality, so test it out before canceling your landline.

Cable TV and Internet Service
Comcast is the million-pound gorilla in this category, covering nearly all Portland and suburban areas. Comcast offer 3 to 6 megabyte per second service in most areas, plenty fast for YouTube and iTunes downloads. You can also buy Comcast digital calling over your cable TV and Internet service and avoid using the telephone company altogether. It does not come cheap, though.

In some of the rural suburbs, a handful of telcos provide cable TV in addition to their local phone service. And, Canby is a national leader in TV over DSL service.

Satellite TV
You can get Dish Network and Direct TV just about anywhere in the Portland area.

I’ll write a future post on Portland’s wireless Internet coverage. For reviews of various providers of Internet services and VoIP, check out BroadbandReports.com.

Technorati Tags: Portland, Internet, service, telecommunications, telecom, DSL, cable, modem, broadband, fiber, Qwest, Verizon, Comcast

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2 comments September 18th, 2006