Best Fiber Internet Providers 2022

Today households need more internet bandwidth than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the transition to remote work, and were streaming more too, with studies showing a shift towards streaming video over television. Gaming (and soon the metaverse) requires high bandwidth and low latency.

To serve ultra-high internet speeds, traditional methods, like cable, are either at or approaching their limits. This is why many internet service providers (ISPs) turn to fiber to push speeds even higher. While for years, fiber was only available to a select few, thats changing. Weve created this guide to help you choose which fiber internet provider is best for you.

To develop our ratings for the Best Fiber Internet of 2022, we looked at the offerings from dozens of ISPs across the country to find carriers that offer fiber optic-based services. Among the factors we considered are monthly cost, technologies used by the provider, and reported speeds. We also incorporated information from professional reviews to verify each companys claims.

You can see how the companies stack up in the chart below, or visit each companys full review to learn more about each provider.

Spectrum Internet promotion price is $49.99/mo for 12 months. Wireless speeds may vary.

Most of us will only have access to one or two fiber or high-speed internet options. The majority of fiber is located in major urban areas, so fiber internet might not be available if you live in the outer suburbs or rural areas.

However, ISPs like Spectrum are building fiber networks in underserved areas, and others are expanding existing networks. It is likely years yet before fiber internet becomes an option available to a majority of Americans. Until then, youll have to settle for slower options, like cable, (which are still quite fast).

The first place to check is your local landline telephone provider. Fiber networks are the natural evolution of old copper-based telephone lines, so internet services will become available as fiber replaces these older lines. This is not to say your local cable company might not offer a fiber-based connection: some, like Comcast Xfinity, are building fiber optic networks of their own.

*Speed usage data from FCC website.

Over the last decade, the entry-level speed for fiber optic connectivity has gone from under 20 Mbps to 300 Mbps a testimony to this technologys ability to scale up to meet demand. Most providers of full-fiber service offer symmetric download and upload speeds, so your service should run as fast if youre receiving or sending files. Mid-tier speeds range from 400 to 800 Mbps, and most fiber providers offer a gigabit or near-gigabit tier, meaning downloads and uploads at or near 1,000 Mbps or 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). Xfinity offers 3 Gbps for its top plan, and AT&T offers 5 Gbps.

In a hybrid-fiber system such as those many cable operators now deploy, theres a much broader range of speeds possible. Uploads can get a little faster than pure-cable uploads but they wont be symmetric, while the minimum download speeds can increase to 100 Mbps.

True fiber optic internet is delivered from your carriers servers to your home all over fiber optic cable. But these networks are expensive to build, so many providers opt for hybrid networks where the delivery to your home happens over traditional coaxial cable or telephone lines.

By and large the pure fiber plans from any of the providers that made our list for the Best Fiber Internet of 2022 are the most expensive, with most hybrid or cable plans falling somewhere in between. However, even in areas where internet service is delivered primarily over coaxial cable, speeds of a gigabit or more are often available.

The availability of these plans will vary based on your location. The best thing to do when shopping for a fiber internet plan is to shop around for what providers are in your area. Our ISP reviews include a section on availability. You can also visit our guide to Local ISPs to find providers near you.

Pure Fiber Plans: Nearly all providers in our ratings offer pure fiber internet service, typically with at least 940 Mbps download speed and near-matching upload speeds. Prices for these plans generally start around $50 per month. However, faster plans, like Xfinitys fiber offering, can cost as much as $300 per month.

Pure fiber options that scored highly in our rankings include AT&Ts fiber network and Verizon Fios.

Hybrid Plans: A majority of shoppers will find themselves in a location where hybrid plans are available. These can come in either one or two forms. In the case of telephone providers, the final connection to the home is through the traditional phone line, and with cable, the internet connection is delivered over coaxial cable. While not as fast as fiber internet, multi-gigabit plans are available, although they can be more expensive than pure fiber internet in some cases.

If you opt for a hybrid plan, we recommend opting for cable over digital subscriber line (DSL). The cheapest plans for both types of broadband are roughly the same, generally $25 to $35 per month. However, the cheapest cable internet plans are far faster, typically starting around 200 to 300 Mbps. DSL is often limited to less than 5 Mbps. Far too slow for most modern internet applications.

Hybrid options that scored highly in our rankings include Xfinity, Cox, and Spectrum.

While it may be tempting to choose the cheapest plan, you may want to opt for a mid-range plan instead. These are typically still quite affordable generally $50 to $100 a month and are more than enough for streaming, gaming, and the smart home.

Heavy streamers and gamers should opt for the best internet plan they can afford, as both applications require fast speeds to operate properly. Cheap fiber or hybrid fiber plans may not be enough.

What Do I Need for Fiber Internet Service?

Should I Buy or Rent Equipment for Fiber Internet Service?

As with other broadband services, it makes financial sense to buy a gateway or router for fiber internet service instead of renting whatever your provider will issue you. With providers typically charging $10 or $15 a month for that rental, you should be able to recover even the cost of a high-end model in a year or two at most. Youll also be able to choose a Wi-Fi router that works for you and then take it with you if you switch providers.

Some fiber services (for instance, Frontier and Verizon) require either a specialized router or an adapter for a standard Wi-Fi router because they usually run a MoCA coaxial cable from the ONT that can carry both internet and TV signals. If you only get internet, you should be able to run a standard Ethernet cable from the ONT to the Wi-Fi router of your choice.

Cable operators with hybrid-fiber networks dont use an ONT and do need a standard cable modem, so youll have to buy one that your provider has approved. In either case, your use of your own modem may lead to a little pushback from tech support they do have to help with the broadband connection but probably wont offer router help.

Renting a modem should eliminate that potential hiccup and simplify your initial setup, but the finances always argue against that unless youll also be moving within a year or so. Note that if you use AT&T, you have no choice: the company requires the use of its own hardware at $10 a month. In most cases with equipment rental, youll likely pay a fee if you fail to return the equipment.

Fiber and cable internet can both offer high download speeds, but fiber optic connections (not the hybrid-fiber services of some cable providers) can offer uploads that are as fast as those downloads. That makes fiber a much better choice for anybody who needs to send as well as receive large files for instance, anybody who began working from home since the start of the pandemic.

Fiber also offers much higher capacity and should never suffer a slowdown even if all of your neighbors jump online, which can be an issue with cable networks. And fiber generally has slightly lower latency, although youre unlikely to see that anywhere but in online gaming.

Cable internet, however, is vastly more available, especially outside of built-up areas in which fiber is more economically viable to build out. And for streaming-only or mostly-streaming households, cables slower upload speeds wont matter as much. Customers who dont need a particularly fast connection may also find some deals at the low end of a cable providers rate list.

In most markets, fiber versus phone-based digital-subscriber-line service isnt a choice once a telecom company has upgraded a telephone network to add fiber capability, it stops selling DSL. Should both DSL and fiber somehow be available, there is no good reason to opt for DSL over fiber unless you want to pay more for an exponentially slower connection. Even if fiber seems like more speed than you can use, you will probably find that you get accustomed to life in the fast lane of the internet.

DSL does, however, remain a possibility and is sometimes the only option in rural areas that havent seen upgrades to phone networks that would support fiber access. In those cases, it can provide a minimal connection that works for email and web browsing, plus maybe Voice over Internet Protocol phone calls. For some users, that may be enough. But for anybody looking to stream high-definition video or have multiple computers online, DSL will disappoint.

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