RECENT NEWS:

On 3/10/2009, the Selectmen renewed the COMCAST franchise.  This insures that the Town's interests, and funding for public access programming, are secured through the end of 2020.  The new license and associated documents can be found on the Cable Advisor home page. 

In September 2008, the Selectmen disbanded the Sudbury Cable Committee.  Cable company compliance issues, questions from residents, and subscriber complaints, are handled by a volunteer "Cable Advisor" appointed by the Town.  To contact the Cable Advisor (Jeff Winston), please use the link at the bottom of this page.  Sudbury's public access channel (COMCAST Channel 8 / FiOS 31) is now managed by a new non-profit corporation led by Sudbury residents.  Find out more about them at sudburytv.org.

On 2/13/07, the Selectmen awarded a CATV (cable television) franchise to Verizon. Verizon's CATV offering is part of their fiber-to-the-home offering (they call it FiOS), which provides each home with a single very high speed communication pipe for CATV, phone, and Internet. Call the Verizon business office to see if it's available to you. All residents with aerial utilities, and many with underground utilities, can get FiOS. If you have underground utilities but cannot get FiOS, all we can tell you is that Verizon is continuing construction at a noticable pace.  They have until February 2012 to complete their build. They will not share construction schedules with the Town, so no specifics are available.

Sudbury's Public/Governmental Access Channel (COMCAST Channel 8) is available on FiOS 31. The LSRHS Education Channel (COMCAST channel 9) is available on FiOS 32.

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High-speed Internet, Cable Modems, DSL, Dial-up:  Sudbury has three providers for high-speed Internet.  Verizon FiOS is available to many residents (call the Verizon business office at 1-800-VERIZON to see if it's available to you), and virtually all Sudbury residents can obtain service from COMCAST (1-800-COMCAST), or Earthlink (1-800-Earthlink).  Earthlink uses COMCAST's infrastructure (see below).  Please contact the Sudbury Cable Advisor (contact info at the end of this document) if you have trouble getting service.

Both COMCAST's HFC (Hybrid-Fiber-Coax), and Verizon's FTTP (Fiber-to-the-Premises) "FiOS" networks offer very-high speed (5-15Mb/s downstream) bandwidth, hundreds of times faster than dial-up.  FiOS shares a fiber across several homes, whereas COMCAST has divided Sudbury into 20 neighborhoods or “nodes” of approximately 250 homes, each served by a fiber.  In both cases, there should be plenty of bandwidth available, and most residents are quite happy with their service, even at peak times.  If you experience problems, don't hesitate to contact your provider.

Although their prices and packages vary, COMCAST's current pricing structure provides an Internet package that includes the lowest tier of cable service for essentially the same price as Internet access alone.  As discussed below, Internet customers should consider this package as it gives them access to Sudbury's Access channel.

EarthLink uses COMCAST's cable and billing infrastructures, but provides an Internet-only package for about the same discounted price that COMCAST charges its cable subscribers. You can check out EarthLink's offerings at their web site http://www.earthlink.net. Or call them at 1-800-EARTHLINK.

Verizon also offers DSL service in much of Sudbury. Though less expensive, DSL can be a bit less reliable, and typically has lower throughput rates (though they’re quite adequate for the average user). Most Sudbury residents are served from the central office near the intersection of Route 20 and Concord Road. The quality of your service may vary with your distance from this location.

Nevertheless, all cable non-subscribers should consider subscribing to COMCAST’s, or Verizon's, lowest tier of cable service for over-the-air channels. It's essentially free for COMCAST Internet customers, and ~$14/month for non-Internet customers. This tier provides more over-the-air channels than one can receive either from an antenna or from a satellite service. Most important, (and this is why we recommend it) this service provides access to both the LSRHS channel (COMCAST Channel 9, FiOS 32), and the Sudbury Community Access channel COMCAST Channel 8, FiOS 31). The latter televises civic meetings (including Selectmen’s and other town committee meetings, Town Meeting, LWV, Chamber of Commerce, etc.), the annual HopeSudbury Telethon, and L/S sports. In recent years, COMCAST has invested well-over $100,000 in new equipment for Sudbury Community Access, and the quality of town programming now far exceeds what was broadcast even a few years ago.  Although, much of our programming is now available on-line  (check the ("Watch us" link at http://sudburytv.org ).

It is strongly, strongly, strongly recommended that you connect to the Internet through a router that is running firewall software, and run firewall software on your PC. Windows XP (SP2) has a built-in firewall, as does VISTA.  Routers can be purchased from many places for well under $100, including Radio Shack in Sudbury.

Internet Telephone, VoIP:  COMCAST, Verizon, and Earthlink all offer telephone service which utilizes Voice-over-IP (VoIP).  This is a method of sending voice of data lines. Cable company phone service may be better than you can get from a third-party provider like Vonage because calls made via COMCAST or Verizon travel on their own network for most of the distance, rather than over the public internet.  VoIP is a new technology, and so there is the occasional problem, but people generally seem happy with the service.  Note that this is a totally unregulated service over which the town has no control.

Cable TV:

The well-publicized "digital changeover" of June 2009 affected only people who receive their TV over the air (via antennas and rabbit ears), and did NOT affect cable or satellite subscribers. However, (and this is what makes it confusing), the cable companies have also conducted their own "changeover", virtually eliminating the option of connecting their cable directly to your set.  In order to use the space on their cables more efficiently, the cable companies  "compressed" more of their channels, removing "analog" channels and converting everything to "digital".  This improved the quality of lower-tier channels, but requires everyone receiving more than the lowest tier of service to use a set-top box.  If you have a recent-model TV with a digital tuner, you might still be able view the lowest (~$14/mo.) tier without a box.  Otherwise, your cable provider will tell you what you need. 

COMCAST and Verizon also offer cable boxes with built in Digital Video Recorders (DVRs). These TiVo-like devices can be rented for about $10 more than a digital cable box, and can record HDTV on two channels at once, even while you're watching a previously-recorded program.  You can also buy a TiVo DVR that accepts cablecards, and use it to replace your cable box.  The montlhy cost is comparable when you include TiVo's subscription fee. 

For people on a budget, COMCAST and Verizon both offer a tier of cable service consisting of only over-the-air channels. It's essentially free for COMCAST Internet customers, and ~$14/month by itself.  COMCAST and Verizon don't promote this low-cost service, but they must provide it if you ask for it. 

COMCAST is required to provide cable service to all homes on all public roads, as well as to all private roads where they previously installed cable, or have access to do so. Homes on roads that are currently private and do not have access to cable should contact the general contractor for their development and request that he contact COMCAST and Verizon to have cable installed, or wait until they are accepted as a public road (COMCAST is required to provide cable service to a newly-accepted public road in the year that the road is accepted as public). In addition, service may not yet be available to some businesses on Route 20 (Boston Post Road).

Verizon is required to provide service to all homes by February 2012.  All homes with aerial utilities, and many with underground utilities, should have access to FiOS.  Please contact the Cable Advisor if you have aerial utilities and cannot get FiOS.  If you have underground utilities, all you can do is wait (or order COMCAST).   Verizon will not share their construction schedules with the Town, so the Town cannot access their specific plans. 
 

Other notes:  COMCAST's method for detecting widespread cable modem service outages requires affected residents to request service calls. When your cable modem goes down, and COMCAST cannot immediately remedy the problem, they will ask you to schedule a service call, even if it's obvious that the problem is not local to your home. Their systems track the number and locality of service call requests, and uses the data to track widespread outages. When the outage is fixed, COMCAST reps are supposed to call you to check whether your service has been restored. If you don't receive a call, you should call to cancel.

As part of their franchise agreement, COMCAST provides a fiber-optic institutional data and video network connecting sixteen of our Town and School buildings. This network is reducing communication costs for the schools and the town while increasing bandwidth and connectivity. COMCAST also provides supplementary free Internet access to our schools and Library.