Does anyone use Time Warner Cable internet and have you run a speed test? I just got off the phone with U verse to cancel service and the guy said the "up to" speeds TW claims are usually not even close. I have U verse and it consistently runs at the advertised speed.
I have TW internet and usually get about 16 MB on the uplink It is for the
15 MB service. A friend across town gets about the same. Get 1 MB for the uplink. The uplink does not make that much difference to me as I seldom send any large files.
I do have my own modem as they started charging for them a year or so ago. Paid about $ 20 for something they want aboutg $ 5 per month.
I had the TV with them up to about 2 weeks ago. Canceled when they wanted to put some kind of digital box on every TV and will start charging for those boxes. Went to Direct TV, so will see how that plays out for the next two years.
I switched from cable to DTV a few years back too. Out crappy cble company had plenty of outages and slim HD offerings. DirecTv has been good but I don't think I'm saving any money.
TWC is over subscribed in my neighborhood. Speed is good during the day. Once the kids get home from school and people start streaming movies in the evening the speed was worse than DSL.
Years ago, I read that TW does far better than AT&T in delivering advertised speeds. Elsewhere, I've read that TW normally provides a little more than advertised.
I live 400 yards from the telephone office. By looking at my modem's user interface, I concluded that AT&T was deliberately setting me lower than their advertised speed.
The only motive I could see was to push me into paying for a higher tier. I know customers who fell for it. Instead, I switched to TW.
A pitfall to cable is that one node can serve an arbitrarily large "neighborhood." If there are too many others on your node, congestion can slow traffic at busy hours. I had a little trouble for my first month with TW. It has been fine ever since. I guess they added a node.
My big problem with TW was their policy of jacking up prices. Before long, my bill had more than doubled. About that time, I discovered that TW had quietly introduced the Everyday Low Price tier: 2mbs down and
1mbs up for $15.
That was adequate, but by now they were charging $8 a month for their modem. I bought a better one for $65. They sent me a box and a FEDEX label for their obsolete modem. I put it in their box, taped it shut, and left it on my porch.
I consistently get 9.5% above the advertised 2mbs down speed. My up speed also exceeds the nominal figure.
So is it true that Internet speeds from the phone companies depend on how close you are to those central offices? And the price is the same if you get 25 or 8?
Yes, if you are over certain distances, they bump your speed down one notch. In my case, I'm connected to a remote site just down the mountain. I think I'm being bumped down to 3MB (from 6MB) because they think I'm over 15K feet, which I don't believe, as you can see where the cable runs by following their pedestals. BTW, they still charge the same. Also, prior to Frontier buying the copper base phone system from Verizon, the speeds where ok during the day or wee hours in the morning, however, late afternoon and early evening were a disaster. The speeds were slower than dialup. I complained and the guy in India (Bob) said that I can't power the modem from an outlet strip; it must be plugged directly in the wall. When Frontier bought the system, they had to add lots and lots of bandwidth to make DSL work at close to advertised speeds. Now I routinely get about 2.8MB down. I've got to give Frontier credit, they've really fixed what Verizon couldn't or actually what they didn't want to fix, because they knew they were selling off that part of the business. Same goes for the batteries in the remote site. If there was a power failure, the batteries might last for a minute and then there was not dial tone. Frontier has fixed all that. Sounds like Frontier it great? Not. I could, but won't go into all their problems.
Even decades ago they had what amount to concentrators, if you will, where your copper phone line terminated, was multiplexed with signals from other folks lines, and then went on T1 or similar back to the CO. Typical place they were used would be a new subdivision that was away from the CO. Easier/cheaper to get them all on one line instead of physically connecting each new house direct to the CO.
Have Comcast here, typically see 122 megabit download and 24 megabit upload for $70 month, which includes two dozen TV channels.
Maximum available from AT&T U-Verse is only 6 megabit down and less than 1 megabit up and AT&T wants $52/month, TV service not even available.
IMHO, Comcast is awesome! The US government did a great disservice to the American people for not letting Comcast expand into more areas. Thank God I'm not stuck with AT&T!!!
According to the ATT U-verse guys, U-verse isn't a "shared" network. That's basically why I stayed with ATT. I got the U-verse rate down to the TW rate by threatening to cancel U-verse.
I've had U-verse for a few years and it's always speed tested at the advertised rate or better.
You are not in Florida I guess. They suck here. When I had them and I had a 24/7 weather station connected to the web, I had to turn off logging because they were filling up the logs with "down" time.
I was sending a packet once a minute and it was failing an average of about 80-90 times a day. When I switched to DSL, it virtually never failed.
My wife has several commercial accounts with Comcast and they suck there too. Support is almost nonexistent.
These cable companies need the same the phone companies had a couple decades ago, breaking up the monopolies. Get some competition in there and they will be cheaper and better or they will be gone,.
DirectTV is the best out there but be prepared for the usual rate climb. Started out at $79/month 3 years ago, up to $105 now with no additions or changes.
I would go for Comcast's triple play but I hate those bast^&%$ enough to pay the extra.
Comcast is absolute crap here in SW PA. They simply don't care, no competition. I have DirectTV for TV and Verizon DSL. DirectTV is more expensive but nearly every channel is hidef, many of them are carried on both hi and lo def (different channel numbers of course). I can't say the same for Comcast. If you get almost all the channels in hidef on Comcast then you are lucky.
That new 50"+ TV is gonna look like shi%^% in lodef.
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