On Saturday, I took the kids for a walk down to the park, since Stef was off at band practice.  Our path took us by the sales office for our subdivision, and I stopped in to ask a question.

When we bought our home, the documentation stated that our home was wired with fiber-to-the-premises, which happily is true.  Unfortunately, when we moved in, I called up the company (Paxio) that was servicing the neighborhood across the street (also a Pulte development) and found out that they weren't going to be servicing our neighborhood.  Which was a bummer, since they were offering a symmetric 10mbit Internet connection for $50/month, including static IP's and other such geeky treats.  So here I was, stuck with a big fat data pipe, and no one to service it.

And this is why I dropped in on the sales office.  I asked them if anyone was servicing our fiber now, and they dug around and found out that indeed we do get service on it!  Apparently, our connection is exclusively served by AT&T U-verse.  This is bad for a couple of reasons:

1.  I've not particularly enjoyed AT&T's service in the past (their technology is somewhat lacking and their customer service condescending in some cases.  I know how to ping the upstream router, and trust me, it doesn't matter that I'm doing it from my Linux box, thanks).
2. U-verse offers digital TV and Internet access, but oddly enough, not phone service.  I'll have to spring for a Vonage line or add a standard AT&T analog phone line if I go this route.
3. Being a giant media services company and not a smaller information transfer company like Paxio, they're not really likely to give me lots of upstream, static IP's or permission to host websites or services on the back of my connection.

Long story short, my worst fears ended up realized.  U-verse is offered in my area (good), but TV packages comparable to our current Comcast setup cost more, and for the same price that we'd get 10mbit symmetric on Paxio, I'll get their extreme speed 6mbit down, 1mbit up connection.  Whoopee, I get more than that on Comcast already, what's the point of my awesome fiber if the upstream service is useless?