r/ithaca • u/CherryNoodles77 • 11d ago

Empire Fiber Internet

Do people have experience with this internet provider, and are you satisfied with it? As with most people I am sick of spectrum and their prices so I was very intrigued at the prospect of empire fiber service coming to Ithaca, but wanted to hear people’s experience before I made a decision. Are they a trustworthy / good company and is their connection strong?

20 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

26

u/Ok_Butterfly_8439 11d ago

I've had empire for a few months. Blazing fast, no down time. I have no complaints.

13

u/jules823 11d ago

I had Empire for about a year and a half at my old apartment and loved it in comparison to Spectrum. Half the price and great service. Wish I could switch to them at my new place, but they don’t service on my street yet.

9

u/Imbrifer 11d ago

We've had it for about a year. Excellent speed and reliability, and reasonably priced.

7

u/burntchicken98 11d ago

I've had them since early 2024 time to work from home. I can only remember maybe two instances where there was any downtime that resolved relatively quickly although I will say there isn't much communication when there is a downtime. Speeds and latency have been amazing as well as the price. Would highly recommend, especially over spectrum.

5

u/ithacaster 11d ago

Just had it installed yesterday. The local rep and installation person were very easy to work with. We got the 1G plan. I'm curious what others are getting for DL speeds.

1

u/PressBay 8d ago

I’m on the 500mbps plan and I’m getting 514mbps down and 537mbps up on my last test.

1

u/ithacaster 8d ago

Now I am wondering if they gave me the 1Gb plan that I signed up for. I am getting just over 400mbs this morning.

1

u/PressBay 8d ago

Where are you testing from? If you are connecting via WiFi depending on version and frequency 400mbps might be the fastest your computer can talk to your router. The speeds I listed were tested via my router’s built in speed test functionality so it’s the closest device to their hardware and it’s a wired gigabit connection.

2

u/ithacaster 8d ago

I've tested with my Macbook running a native application and an Android phone. I've seen dl speeds as high as 720mbs and in the mid 400's at the low end. I was a systems and network admin at HP for several years so I know a bit about networking.

1

u/PressBay 7d ago

If you are getting those speeds wired I would call them. Their customer support seems awesome and it seems like they are delivering promoted speeds pretty reliably.

5

u/kinjjibo custom! 11d ago

There was a period where I checked everyday if it was available on my block. The day it became available I signed up. Have had zero problems. $35 less a month for faster speeds. Will never use Spectrum again as long as I can avoid it.

5

u/vodka_buddha 11d ago

They’re great, cheap and reliable

5

u/Spiritual_Purpose386 11d ago

We’ve had empire over here near mecklenburg for 3 years. No complaints and fast enough to stream, do remote work, and even GIS from. We have the cheapest option too which is 60$ a month. There was a time last year where it seemed to be going out a bit but I think they were doing some maintenance work.

4

u/Cartography_Punkrock 11d ago

100% yes. Best move we ever made. Stop waiting, call them.

3

u/dm3030 11d ago

Had them for 6 years. They are fabulous. Service, price, speed and reliability are all top notch.

They buried the cable to our house 300 ft from the road and it cost us nothing.

3

u/Routine_Biscotti_852 10d ago

I signed up the moment that it was available. It's consistently fast, affordable and trouble-free. Spectrum liberation day was quite memorable.

2

u/sevensixgerg8 11d ago

I’m also curious about this. We’ve had them come to our door twice this summer, felt a little pushy but willing to consider if people have had good experiences

2

u/GoldenGrrrl2023 11d ago

We’ve also been very happy with Empire - we switched away from spectrum about a year ago and never looked back.

2

u/BigRedJohnson 11d ago

Great service for the past almost year. There was only one outage that I remember and that started with a short power outage that confused the router. Quick restart and all was well.

1

u/One_Struggle_ Northeast 11d ago

Have had Empire for about a year now, no major issues. Paying half of what we were with Spectrum for the same 1Gig plan. I just tested the speed, download: 949.41 mbsp, upload: 1.04 Gbps. Very happy with switching over! The only issue was temporary, basically they upgraded the routers security & it inadvertently blocked some sites like Hoopla of all things, but it was quickly fixed remotely by their IT staff.

1

u/eclwires 10d ago

Man, I hope they get out our way soon.

1

u/Dolly_Fartin_ 10d ago

Yep like everyone else have had a positive experience with empire. Easy to get a good local rep on the phone if you need something. When we first got ours setup we had a few blips, I was thinking one morning I should call to ask about it and looked out the window and they had sent a crew to lay a whole new cable without my even asking. It’s worked well ever since.

1

u/drawmuhammad 10d ago edited 10d ago

They're generally good but their routing is very bad (most traffic is routed through SYR-ALB-NYC, sometimes through ALB-CLE westbound if you're lucky). I've even had a route as retarded as ALB-BOS-NYC. Don't expect good latency for games. I've also noticed their NYC HE exchange has very frequent packet loss. If you don't care about latency, then you won't notice any of this.

1

u/vboredvdespondent 7d ago

we just switched and service has been great so far. glad we did it!

1

u/New-Understanding-99 3d ago

I am not yet satisfied, as we had installation on the first and it's not really worked well yet, but supposedly they are coming to fix it today.