altafiber Business: The Cincinnati-Region Fiber Carrier You May Be Overlooking

If your office sits in Cincinnati, Dayton, or the towns around them, you have a fiber carrier most brokers forget to quote. altafiber. The old Cincinnati Bell. They rebranded in 2022 and kept building fiber.

Here is why they matter, and how to use them as a lever against AT&T and Spectrum.

Who altafiber is

altafiber is the incumbent telephone company for the Cincinnati metro. They started laying fiber to homes and businesses years before AT&T did in the same market. That head start matters. In parts of Hamilton County, altafiber has fiber lit to buildings where AT&T still runs copper.

They also own Hawaiian Telcom, but that is a separate story. For the Ohio and Northern Kentucky market, think of altafiber as a regional fiber carrier with a real network, not a reseller.

What they sell to businesses

Three products worth knowing about:

Fioptics for Business. This is their shared fiber product. Speeds run from 300 Mbps up to a symmetrical gig. It is the closest thing they have to a cable replacement. Priced to compete with Spectrum Business in Cincinnati.

Dedicated Internet Access (DIA). Symmetrical fiber with an SLA. This is what you want if your team runs video calls all day or moves large files. altafiber DIA in Cincinnati tends to come in below AT&T for the same speed at the same address. Not always. Often enough that you should ask.

Fiber Ethernet and MPLS. For companies with offices in several cities across the region, altafiber can hand off private circuits between them. Useful if you have a warehouse in Blue Ash and a headquarters downtown.

Pricing, roughly

We track altafiber quotes across the metro. A few reference points from the last six months:

500 Mbps Fioptics for Business, downtown Cincinnati: $189 a month
Symmetrical gig DIA, Blue Ash office park: $685 a month
100 Mbps DIA, Dayton suburb: $475 a month
10 Gig DIA, downtown data center adjacent: $2,240 a month

Compare that to AT&T Business Fiber at similar addresses. AT&T is usually within $50 either way on Fioptics-competing speeds. On DIA, altafiber often lands 10 to 20 percent under AT&T. On 10 Gig, altafiber has been the cheaper quote in every deal we have run in the region this year.

Spectrum Business Internet Gig is cheaper on the sticker. Around $300 a month. But Spectrum is coax with slow uploads. If uploads matter to you, that number is not really comparable.

Where altafiber falls short

Two things.

First, their footprint is real but not universal. Cross the river into some parts of Northern Kentucky and coverage gets patchy. Head east past Milford and you may find nothing. Always check the address before you fall in love with the price.

Second, their sales cycle is slower than the cable guys. Expect a survey. Expect two or three weeks before you get a firm quote on DIA. If your contract with your current carrier ends in 30 days, you are already late.

How to use them as a lever

Here is the play if you are in the metro.

Get an altafiber quote for the speed you actually need.
Get a quote from AT&T for the same address.
Get a quote from Spectrum for the same address.
Take the lowest of the three back to your current carrier 90 days before your contract ends.

Most Cincinnati businesses skip step one. They call the carrier they know and take the renewal. That is how you end up $200 a month over market.

altafiber is not going to win every deal. But they are going to win enough of them that you owe yourself the quote. And even when they lose, their number makes AT&T sharpen a pencil.

If you want us to run this for you, upload a recent bill and we will pull all three quotes and tell you what the real number should be. See what that looks like on the example report.