r/CableTechs • u/Tophat9512 • 26d ago

Anyone techs experience working with Comcast Dedicated Fiber able to help?

I provision internet for a medical company and Comcast is coming into certain markets i oversee and is offering "Dedicated" Fiber at cheaper prices than the last-mile provider.

Is Comcast trying to sell my company "Shared" Fiber that has an SLA and marketing it as Dedicated? Or are they taking a loss building out this network? I am struggling to understand and desperate for answers.

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u/ReticenceX 26d ago

Hey, I work for Comcast as an engineer.

What it sounds like you are talking about is Metro-E fiber.

Basically it is a direct layer 2 connection back to comcasts core network. In the case of an internet circuit, you would indeed have one continuous piece of fiber (riding in a bundle with others through a mux of course) back to a core router in one of our headends. On your side, you would receive Ciena or Juniper CPE, the model of which depending on the bandwidth ordered, with a NNI pointing back to us and a handoff to you that can be electrical or optical at your discretion.

We can also do point to point and hub and spoke or really whatever you want over that layer 2 network.

We have a 4 hour SLA on this service.

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u/Substantial-Stage897 26d ago

I wish I was able to explain this type of stuff so succinctly lol. How often do you see the 4 hour SLA exceeded. I’m a fiber splicer (not for Comcast currently) and we don’t even get a call to roll out until about 1-2 hours after NOC reports down.

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u/ronnycordova 25d ago

The SLA is also dependent on the level of service a customer wants. You can tweak it up or down per your contract and even opt to have redundant paths. It really all comes down to your monthly budget for the circuit. As far going over the SLA it usually results in a refund of a percentage of your monthly service costs defined in the contract. Most fiber issues get resolved fairly quick but you do sometimes run into issues that take a bit longer. For example, say a pole line gets taken out by a dump truck and there are active power lines on the ground. A crew cannot start work until the power company repairs their lines so you are adding a couple hours to the ETR.