Fiber Internet Increases Home Values
Move over kitchens and bathrooms–fiber has moved up on the must-have list for homebuyers. Now more than ever before, people want to work, learn, and access telehealth applications from home. Modern lifestyles require modern internet powered by a fiber network.
In fact, a 2023 study showed that fiber-delivered internet access could increase a home’s value by almost 5%. On average, U.S. consumers would require a 4.9% decrease in price for a non-fiber home, a 3.2% decrease for a non-fiber condo, and a 12.8% decrease for a non-fiber apartment.
What’s the Data Saying?
The Fiber Broadband Association’s (FBA) 2023 consumer research study highlights that fiber is no longer just a bonus–it’s a necessity. U.S. consumers rated high-quality broadband as the second most important amenity in a home, just after a laundry room.
Nearly two-thirds of all consumers consider fiber to be the best internet service delivery method in terms of speed and reliability.
Beyond that, there is an increasing body of research linking investment in broadband networks with accelerated economic performance. Communities with fast and reliable fiber networks often exhibit higher rates of per capita GDP.
Fast and Reliable Internet for Remote Workers
Not only is the Internet a prime source of communication and entertainment, but it’s also essential for the American white-collar workforce. With over 40% of Americans working remotely full-time or part-time as of June 2023, fast, secure, and reliable internet has become an invaluable asset.
Remote workers favor fiber internet because cable internet can be significantly slower and far less reliable than fiber.
Cable internet speeds typically range from 10-250 Mbps for downloads and 5-50 Mbps for uploads. Fiber internet, however, can provide 250-1,000 Mbps for both downloads and uploads—a critical benefit for those looking to use video conferencing tools at home.
The Future of Fiber
Even those who don’t work from home are more likely to want high-speed internet for telehealth applications than they were a few years ago. Five times more patients utilize telehealth services now than before the COVID-19 pandemic, and that number is expected to increase.
Thankfully, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program is working to catch up to consumers’ needs. According to the FBA, the amount of fiber deployed over the next five years will nearly match the total amount of fiber that has been deployed throughout history.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, better broadband equals increased property values, more opportunities for remote work, and enhanced access to digital services like telehealth and streaming. And, of course, better opportunities yield innovation.
Increased access to fiber promotes job creation, upward mobility, entrepreneurship, expanding local businesses, and attracting new ones.
Fiber brings massive benefits to communities, so it’s no wonder fiber increases individual home values too! To learn more about fiber availability at your home, contact FPUAnet Communications today. We’d love to get you connected.
Five Reasons to Break Up with Your Current Internet Provider
Sluggish speeds, data caps, hidden fees, and poor customer service? It’s not you, it’s them.
Today, we’re highlighting five signs you should break up with your current internet provider—and hook up with FPUAnet Communications’ high-speed fiber internet service instead!
Reason #1 Your Internet Just Doesn’t Have the Speed to Keep Up with You
If you’re like most people, you just can’t wait to binge your favorite series or keep up with live sports or current events. But if you’ve noticed your internet is just too sluggish to keep up with the content you love, then it’s time to show your current internet provider the door!
Older forms of internet like DSL and coaxial cable just don’t have the download speeds that fiber does because they’re literally using materials built for other uses. Cable was made to transmit television signals, while DSL was designed for voice service. Fiber optic cable, on the other hand, can transmit internet signal at nearly the speed of light!
Thus, fiber internet, like the kind delivered by FPUAnet Communications, is capable of extreme download speeds of greater than 1 gigabyte per second. Our internet can keep up with you and stream all the movies, TV shows, and live entertainment you could possibly want.
Reason #2 Your Internet’s Bandwidth Isn’t Giving You the Space You Need to Thrive
You might also find that your current internet provider isn’t giving you the “space” you need to live your best life—and in this case, we’re talking about bandwidth. Bandwidth refers to the quantity of data an internet connection can send to your devices per second.
While internet speed is fairly self-explanatory and easy to understand, greater bandwidth is just as essential to a home’s internet service as speed. High bandwidth capacity is particularly vital in households with people who stream simultaneously on multiple smart TV’s, enjoy online gaming, or download (or upload) online videos.
Fiber’s cutting-edge materials and state-of-the-art networking make its bandwidth capacity considerably greater than cable and other forms of internet. Fiber’s generous bandwidth means that everyone in your household will have the space they need to do just about anything they want online without fighting over who’s using the internet at a given time.
Reason #3 You’re Done with Monthly Data Caps
If you’re tired of your internet company slowing down your internet with data caps each month, it’s time to dump them and switch to fiber.
You might be asking why your internet company caps your data in the first place. Well, they do so to keep from overloading their systems, which lack sufficient bandwidth to serve all their customers properly (because their technology just can’t cover it the way fiber can). Thus, these inferior internet technologies require providers to “cap” the amount of data each household uses each month.
Those data caps trigger dreaded slowdowns in internet quality, which can really annoy you when you’re trying to binge a series or watch a live sports event. And some companies will even charge extra fees for exceeding your data cap.
Because of fiber’s bandwidth capabilities, you’ll never need to worry about data caps! FPUAnet Communications’ advanced fiber network gives you and your family enough room to spread your wings online without the limitations of data caps or slowdowns cable and other older internet technologies usually require.
Reason #4 Trust Issues—Like Hiding Fees and Costs on Your Bill
Another reason to break up with your current internet provider relates to a crucial element of any relationship: trust and candor. Way too many big internet companies seem to slide hidden fees and costs into their bills to unsuspecting customers.
Initially, these may be surreptitious additions to your bill, often in small amounts. But those do mount up over time, taking a larger chunk out of your annual budget than you originally bargained for.
At FPUAnet Communications, we value being upfront and straightforward with you about our billing and services. We lay out all the costs and fees of our high-speed fiber internet, including any applicable taxes. Keeping trust and open lines of communication with you are top priorities for us, which we will keep throughout our relationship with you.
Reason #5 Communications Problems—or You Just Can’t Ever Get Through to Them!
Our last reason to split with your current ISP concerns how hard it can be to get through to them! Calling technical assistance or account support to larger internet companies can try the patience of even the best of us. Indeed, with some ISPs, it can take dozens of minutes—or sometimes even hours—to connect to a real human being to help you address your problem.
One of the best ways to “test” your relationship with your current ISP is to call them and start a stopwatch (or use a stopwatch app on your smartphone) and time how long it takes to get in touch with a customer service representative. FPUAnet Communications prides itself on its efficient response time and the resourcefulness of our friendly, local staff. You can feel confident that you will reach us when you need us.
These are just five of the best reasons to cut ties with your current internet company and make the switch to fiber with FPUAnet Communications. To learn more about our fiber network and why it’s simply the best internet you can get, follow our social pages!
How to Prepare for (and Ace!) Your Next Virtual Job Interview
Virtual interviewing is becoming more and more common in today’s job market. While remote interviewing may be more convenient, the distance and technical difficulties can be awkward, or even jarring, to would-be applicants.
Fortunately, there are tips from interviewing experts that prospective job seekers can use to get through—and even nail—a virtual job interview. We share some of their key insights and recommendations below.
The Interview Environment: Organize and Professionalize Your Space
You already know you should “dress for success” and make sure that you look your polished best for an interview. But when you’re interviewing from your home, the interview space and background could be distracting, even off-putting, to potential employers. Take the time to make your space look its best, too.
Clean and Declutter: This seems obvious, but make sure you take the time to de-clutter your surroundings, whether it is your bedroom or home office desk. Show your would-be bosses that you quite literally have it together at home, which will make a better impression of being grounded and composed.
Lighting: Proper lighting is a detail too often overlooked. Be sure to “light yourself” from the front, and not from the back! The latter can create a rather eerie, even sinister visage. Where possible, aim for “cool light,” which is whiter in color, rather than “warm light,” which is yellower. These seemingly small details help put your best foot forward.
Interviewing Skills and Tips
There are countless tips on interviewing available online, but we share a few below that are particularly relevant to remote interviewing.
Keep Any Notes Short and (Mostly) Out of the Way
Like in any interview, try to not over-rely on notes. It is easy to get flustered and lose your place in notes, so keep them sparse and well-organized. Index cards placed outside the viewing area may be especially helpful, with key information and points printed largely and visible to you, but out of sight from the interviewers.
Keep Eye Contact—And Look Into the Camera, Not at Your “Mirrored Image”
Another common mistake is the awkward “stare” that people make when they forget to look into the camera, and instead watch their own reflected image while using the app. You will look less engaged, and even odd, at least compared to applicants that remembered to look “correctly” at the camera.
Watch Your Speaking Pace
Avoid speaking too quickly, a common giveaway of nervousness. Practice and rehearse answers to likely questions, and time how quickly you are speaking.
An Interview is a Conversation
Ultimately, an interview is just another conversation. A back-and-forth discussion makes for a much better interview, so be sure to have researched the job thoroughly and come prepared with questions. Look engaged when the interviewer is speaking by maintaining eye contact (see above about looking into the webcam!) and nodding your head occasionally. Don’t miss an opportunity to add something of value to what the interviewer says.
Get Internet You Can Rely On
One last tip: Make sure you have high-speed internet with fast download and upload speeds that you can rely on for a steady connection throughout your interview. (Adequate upload speeds ensure your video is clear for the interviewer on the other side of the virtual table.)
With the internet from FPUAnet Communications, you can video call without fear of a dropped connection or glitchy experience, so you can tackle your interview with confidence.
Parental Settings for Smart TVs
If you’re like most parents, you may feel frustrated when something as innocent and simple as turning on your smart TV can display gory images from ads for horror movies or suggestions for suggestive—or even outright raunchy—content on the home screen before you even navigate to your preferred apps and platforms.
While parental controls within streaming platforms don’t kick in until you open their apps, there is good news: Many smart TVs have parental control options and settings built right into their operating systems.
Below we discuss some of the settings parents can make on many of the most popular brands of smart TVs. Combining these parental controls on smart TVs with in-app settings enhances protection—and gives peace of mind to parents as they and their families enjoy FPUAnet Communications’ high-speed fiber internet and pristine streaming quality!
Smart TVs With Parental Control Settings
We begin with popular smart TVs that have parental control settings: LG and Samsung, as well as Google TV, which is preinstalled on many well-known smart TV brands such as Sony. Many other brands, including Fire TV, offer similar parental controls (and similar ways of establishing them), so we present these brands as models for exploring your options.
In general, you can search for safety, security and parental controls in the Settings Menu of any of the models below. Some brands include more features than others, so check each of them out carefully before buying a new model.
LG Smart TV’s
Most LG smart TVs made over the last several years have a few key features to help parents feel more comfortable about letting their children use their television. Specifically, parents can lock channels out entirely, block visual and sound content of certain channels, block programming with certain TV content ratings, and even block access to particular apps. LG also lets parents block inputs to other devices as well, giving an extra layer of protection against “workarounds” a clever child may attempt.
LG uses the most common way smart TVs enable parental controls: the establishment of a PIN and passwords. Parents simply need to set up a PIN to create and manage the protections—and make sure they don’t share that PIN or password with their child! Though it’s probably obvious, be sure to choose a PIN or password that your child isn’t already aware of or cannot easily guess.
Set up is easy: simply navigate to the Settings symbol on the Menu, then click on System Settings, then to Safety Settings, and establish the password or PIN. From there, you can block channels or apps or block out content based on content ratings.
Google TV (Preinstalled on many Sony, TCL, and Hisense Smart TV models)
Next on our list is the increasingly popular Google TV, an operating system that is preferred by many customers for its easy integration within the Google ecosystem of apps and smart home devices, like Google Nest. You can find Google TV on many brands of popular smart TVs, including Hisense, Sony, and TCL, and on some Chromecast models.
Google TV has an option many parents will immediately appreciate: the ability to establish Restricted Profiles. Through Google TV’s Restricted Profiles, you can set content restrictions and limit what younger members of your family can watch when on their profile.
The only “downside” to Google TV’s approach is that parents (or any older viewer) need to remember to set the TV back to “Restricted Profiles” whenever the parent’s “unrestricted” use is complete. That way, when your children turn on the TV, they will immediately be in the Restricted Profile, with all the protections and limitations you previously established for their profile.
Samsung TV
Lastly, we consider Samsung, another popular smart TV. Like the LG smart TV discussed above, Samsung also lets parents set up a PIN or password to block channels or limit content to particular ratings.
Just follow these simple steps: First, head to your Menu and go to Settings. From there select Broadcasting, and then choose Program Rating Lock Settings. Next, create your PIN. Finally, choose your settings and limitations.
Other Parental Protections to Consider
Beyond setting up parental controls, PINs, restricted profiles, and other limitations and protections within a smart TV, parents should also remember that there are other steps they can take as well. Most apps, like Netflix, have built-in parental settings, including user profiles. These profiles can be set to filter content that is less than kid-appropriate, while still allowing other users to stream what they want in their own PIN-protected profile.
Additionally, streaming sticks and boxes also have parental control settings and options, beyond just the individual apps. Recall that streaming sticks and boxes can turn any TV with an HDMI connection into a smart TV. Roku and Apple TV are two ever-popular streaming devices, and both have settings and restrictions parents can implement.
By employing these recommendations, parents can breathe a bit more easily as they stream on FPUAnet Communications’ advanced fiber network. For more tips on staying safe online, follow FPUAnet Communications’ social pages!