Charter Unleashes 60 Mbps Broadband

[average joe]

Schweet.

I have charter now.
I pay about 200 a month for TV/Internet.
I have actually been feeling gross about it and was going to cancel it. $200 dollars is a freakin car payment.

I used to spend about $150 a month on cigarettes. I managed to give that up so I was using my "cigarette money" for cable as a reward.

In my opinion, it's just a waste of money. There's nothing on any of the movie channels. On Demand is only reruns. The military channel and the hd stuff is cool. There's only 14 HD channels and 2 of them cost extra. It's a total rip off except for the internet.

A season of Battlestar Galactica is like 5 episodes long. I can rent the DVD for 3.99. Didn't a "season" used to mean like 7 months of episodes?

If they can throw in a static IP maybe I will drop the movie channels and cut some kind of deal. But I don't really need the extra speed.

 

[dbzpic1]

Wow, with ATT U-Verse, for that price I get 6down/1up and like 200 digital channels with a ton of them in HD over IPTV with VOIP. And a 160GB dvr that interfaces with other receivers in the house for watching recordings on all sets. Actually, 140 is a little more . I love bringing all this up

 

[Guest]

I have their claimed 10 meg service already, to bad it only works at 3meg. By the way Charter is by far the worst of all cable companies I have ever dealt with. I only wish I could swap to something better.

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]goten822[/nom]I have their claimed 10 meg service already, to bad it only works at 3meg. By the way Charter is by far the worst of all cable companies I have ever dealt with. I only wish I could swap to something better.[/citation]
I have the 10 meg service as well, but I often get 1.3 MBps (which is 10.4 Mbps) so I don't know why you are hitting those speeds.

But I do agree their service sucks as far as consistency.

 

[hurbt]

I hate charter. A friend in the IT field has done some contract work with them and says they're, by far, the worst run company he's ever worked with. Case and point, it took me 5 months to get a $100 refund from them when I switched to AT&T's DSL... 6Mbs is fine by me, and I'm actually getting about 900KB/s, which is about 7.2Mbs... AT&T is actually doing something right!! And it's only costing me $40/month. Halo plays great!

 

[talzara]

The South Africans are in the same situation as Australia. Your constraint is the backbone, not the last mile. As far as Internet is concerned, South Africa might as well be an island. There is no fiber crossing the African continent, and laying undersea cables is expensive.

Frontier Communications is so-named because it serves primarily rural areas. Some of their service area in Vermont doesn't even get digital cell phone coverage. Now, if you live in a city that is in Frontier's coverage area, then that's tough luck because you get lumped in with the farms -- none of the other major carriers are going to fight over you.

 

[nightsc]

Sorry Sir, but we care about the UP, not the DL

 

[waffle911]

We have Charter where I live in Texas. We used to have Comcast in New Jersey, which contrary to many people's opinions was pretty good. We wouldn't have even thought about satellite because of the equipment, weather, trees, etc. Cable was the best deal, and the fastest internet. Well, peak hours weren't, but it was still pretty good. We tried Charter cable when we moved to Texas, it was 7 days of hell trying to get TV to work. Out of two TV connections, they could only get one to work at a time (capability of two TVs to one connection). Bureaucratic mess that was. CS was horrible, when being redirected to the "supervisor" the call really got redirected to another same-level employee. The guy who actually installed our cable the first day apologized profusely and gave us his personal number to get a hold of him two days later, so he could try switching out the boxes at the end of his work day (he thought that might be the problem, but it wasn't). He called in the problem to his base of operations and even he was appalled at how the company was handling our problem. After 1 week of spending on average 8 hrs per day on the phone with CS (6 out of 8 hrs were on hold), we eventually got someone with an IQ greater than 75 who was not reading from a script. They said they were looking at our account on their monitor and said it was as easy as a checkbox in the browser. WTF. After one month of mediocre TV content, we switched to satellite. Couldn't be happier, except that we had to stick with Charter's cable internet because the only other option was AT&T's slow-as-molasses DSL - which we couldn't get to work anyway.
But Charter's rates are also very sneaky. You actually have to go hunting to find out that the advertised rate is only promotional for 6 months, after which it gets hiked WAY up, but you have to go digging even further to find out just how much. Verizon has flat-rate pricing with the first month free. Charter: $80/mo for 16MbpsDL + installation & equipment fees, maximum upload rate not specified. Verizon FiOS: $60/mo for 20MbpsDL/5MbpsUP, or $70 for 20MbpsDL/20MbpsUP; both + installation fees. Nether have bandwidth caps, but cable by its very nature is limited in speed due to local cable bottlenecks during peak hours. FiOS, AFAICT, is limited by its central routers' and servers' ability to process customers' data as it travels at the speed of light. Verizon also offers 50MbpsDL/20MbpsUP for $145/mo (less with bundles), which is what Charter seems to be countering here. Expect Verizon to respond accordingly. I just wish Verizon served our area, AT&T is pretty lackluster.

 

[Christopher1]

[citation][nom]wingmaster[/nom]Wonder whats wrong with are economy $140.00 bucks over in other country's there not getting charged anywhere near that. Company's and sevice providers are very greedy over here for sure. Then you pay all the taxes for those services LOL. Come on when we going to get a break here.[/citation]

That's what I would like to know as well. Japan is up to 100MBps and FASTER service now.... why can't the United States get to even 20Mbps? Don't give me that "The United States is bigger than Japan!" argument either.
Yes, we are bigger... however, we have proportionately more money, even in this recession/depression to improve things by quite a bit... if the companies would stop being so damned greedy.

 

[nightsc]

Just say NA has more limits on "Pirating", this answer all questions.

 

[jhansonxi]

In northern Michigan Charter is good in regards to reliability and speed. But I have to agree with other posters that their customer service, especially the billing department, redefines "bad".

 

[muffie]

I also live in the U.P. (northern michigan) I pay roughly $82 a month for phone, cable and 10mb internet, I always get under the rated speed wether it's high time or low time. TBH it pisses me off. I was paying about 35 a month for 10mb before i got the cable and phone line. I can't wait for the promotion to expire so i can cancel =D

 

[muffie]

I also hope they boost the 10mb when they boost the 16mb

 

[jaragon13]

[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]In northern Michigan Charter is good in regards to reliability and speed. But I have to agree with other posters that their customer service, especially the billing department, redefines "bad".[/citation]
I live in Tenn. I have great ping times,constant download/upload,but their customer support and billing departments DO SUCK SOMETHING AWFUL.
Their TV is a joke TBH,but then again all the company's TV sucks.About the only good thing was Comedy Central,G4,Discovery and "sometimes" the Military channel.

 

[Guest]

I've been living in Japan for 6 month. In the house I live in, 100Mb/s Fiber Optics connection costs about $45. And it is indeed fast, the providers do not seem to cheat you on those numbers. The US broadband internet service industry is very much behind (there I was getting 7Mb/s for the same price). In many countries (even the so called third world countries) the broadband internet service is way faster and cheaper. As others have stated, that can partially be attributed to the low average population density in the US. However, I think this is also because of the low competition on the market. I find it weird that the country, which has been a leader in the IT industry for decades, cannot provide its citizens with an affordable quality broadband internet service.

 

[Guest]

woow look at u guys not even happy with 20mbps net ur getting, ask the indians damn we are living with 512 unlimited and 2mbps plan is their but 4 gb limit, come on comcast and charter come to india we will pay u 40$ for just 1 mbps unlimited just come to india damid

 

[ThePatriot]

What kept you so long?
Boy, talking about being backward.......

In the Netherlands you can get 60Mbps for 50 euro,s, 120 Mbit for 80 euro's; unlimited downloads. That is on docsys 3.0.

 

[fuser]

[citation][nom]Christopher1[/nom]That's what I would like to know as well. Japan is up to 100MBps and FASTER service now.... why can't the United States get to even 20Mbps? Don't give me that "The United States is bigger than Japan!" argument either.Yes, we are bigger... however, we have proportionately more money, even in this recession/depression to improve things by quite a bit... if the companies would stop being so damned greedy.[/citation]

Um, news flash: The United States doesn't have ANY money. Every penny that the government is spending right now is being borrowed from future generations.

You can't compare the U.S. with places like Japan & Hong Kong. Places like that have ridiculous population densities, which make it very easy for the companies to recoup the cost of the infrastructure.

 

[Guest]

Um....so what is the upload speed? I could care less about increasing the download speed if it takes me an hour to send data to an FTP, etc...

 

[murdoc]

This is bullshit! $160 USD for 60mbps? You gotta be shitting me! HK has 1 Tbps already for around that price gimme a break!