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Review by dcshobby See Profile

  • Location: Kasson, Dodge, MN, USA
  • Cost: $35 per month
  • Install: about 3 days
Reliable, 15mbps speeds, great pings
Nothing!!!
Great techs in our area. Great internet speeds
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)

I ordered the 3Meg/256Kb plan for $39.99. I got the modem for free from BB after rebates and self-installed it. I had the modem for 3 days and I got no call from Charter to activate it. I then called them to see if I could activate and they said they just needed the MAC address. I gave it to them and I was connected in 20 seconds. I was on 44k dial-up before and the extra speed amazed me for awhile. Well, the price went up to $41.99 now and we got nothing out of that. The speed was good for awhile but now it seems like Charter is in last place for speed. Everybody else is at 5 or 6Mbps downloads with 384kbps or 512kbps uploads and we're sitting behind paying more for less. Charter needs to get their butt in gear and give us some free speed even though we pay $2 more a month. For the most part, the speeds have been reliable and pings are low in our small town of Kasson, MN with a population of 5,105 people. If there was a different cable provider with faster speeds for the same price, I wouldn't be hesitant to switch.

UPDATE 8-11-05

My connection is starting to seem like a satellite connection. When I click on a link or type in a website, it takes about 3-4 seconds until the computer even starts loading the page. It has never done this before and it just started maybe 2 weeks ago. I use Level3's DNS servers 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.1 and it use to just fly when I clicked on a link but now its slow.

UPDATE 10-28-05

The connection is still pretty reliable and seems to be working well. The download speeds have dropped a little bit (120kbps) over the last 2 months but thats probably just from new customers getting on the node. The upload has been pretty consistent too. There have been 3 outages in the last 2 months. One was when the internet was actually out and the other 2 were when they internet speed dropped down to 89kbps download and about 16kbps upload which is horrible. The outages were only for a few hours so it was no biggie. Otherwise, service has been good and I really wish they would upgrade all of us to a higher speed for free. I really want more upload and download would be nice too.

UPDATE 12-29-05

The connection has gotten much better lately. I found a new ip address that has very good ping times. I ping 41ms to 4.2.2.3 and there is almost no packet loss. There have been 3 if you want to call them outages where my connection speed has dropped down really low and ping times were in the 1000's. That wasn't Charter's fault though, it was AT&T's because it was their router or backbone connection that was causing the very bad pings. Otherwise I have been testing about 2.8mbps down and 247kbps up and has been reliable except for those slowdowns.

UPDATE 01-20-06

Since the end of December, there have been no outages and my speeds have gotten a little better. I am testing 2870kbps down and 249 kbps up. My ping to 4.2.2.3 has also gotten better and I am now pinging 39ms to 4.2.2.3. My area seems to be one of the better area that Charter serves. Our node is not anywhere near overpopulated. I get these speeds all day everyday no matter what time of the day.

I am sad to say though that even though the speeds are right where they are advertised, I would still like Charter to upgrade their standard speeds to AT LEAST 5 Meg. They should upgrade all 3 Meg customers to something like 6meg down and 1meg up. They have the network capacity at least in our area to do that. We are on QAM256 and DOCSIS 1.1. They may need to upgrade us to DOCSIS 2.0 for us to handle new speeds but I don't know. They are doing an excellent job so far. Xbox is awesome and Call of Duty 2 with 40 other players, we have the 3rd or 4th lowest pings behind FIOS players who are pinging 4-8ms. Lucky they have fiber. I'm really jealous.

Also, I have had the same ip address for 3-4 months now and it hasn't changed. Also, for me, I experimented with different ip addresses and each time I changed to the 24.xxx.xxx.xxx prefix my traffic took a different route through WilTel. Then I changed it to 68.xxx.xxx.xxx address and I now go through AT&T's backbone which seems to perform very well now after 3 months of backbone trouble. It seems that 3 hops were removed from my connection and ping times the east coast dropped 5ms over the last month. My pings to the west coast have dropped 4ms over the last month also.

I hope that Charter can keep reducing my ping times and that AT&T's backbone stays stable, especially now that they have more power with SBC.

»/quali ··· /1962245

UPDATE 9-7-06

Well, internet has been perfect since January. No outages, no slow speeds or anything else like that. There was only a ping spike a few times but that doesn't bother me at all. Speeds have been stable and have not slowed down during peak times.

I was having a problem with the moxi tiling and the audio cutting out. A charter tech came out and measured the signal levels at all possible points up to the amp. He said that the digital signals were low. He went and measured the signal at the amp and he came back and said that the amp cover had been left off and had filled full of water. The signal levels were jumping all over the place as he was touching the cables and the box.

He setup an engineer to come out first thing in the morning to replace the whole amp setup in the box. He also gave me his cell number in case the moxi continued to tile which he would then come out and replace the moxi. I am VERY happy with the Charter techs in our area.

I am also in a GREAT package deals which includes: Biggest Value Package - HBO, Starz, Cinemax, Encore..., 3mb HSI, HDTV, and Moxi for $96 a month including taxes. You can't get any cheaper than that. It was $143 a month before I got this deal.

UPDATE 6-14-2011

So we've been with Charter for about 6 years now and they have only gotten better and better as time goes on. We started out with 3mbps back in 2005 and speeds have increased steadily to the point where we're at 12mbps now for $34.99 a month standalone with no other services. With speedboost, we get well over 30mbps and for steady downloads, we test around 13mbps which is more than we pay for. We are VERY happy with our service and it has been very stable as usual.

UPDATE 8-15-2012

Service was upgraded to 15/3 and we are getting at least that amount at all times. Working great. We have an SB6120 owned modem which works great. We have a year left on our package for $34.99 standalone and then it sounds like our price may go up to $49.99 for 30/4 but hopefully they'll have a retentions deal available.

member for 19.3 years, 6245 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 11.6 years ago


cork1958
Cork
Premium Member
join:2000-02-26

cork1958

Premium Member

free world!!

Don't you just love living in the free world where there is no such thing as competition?

Charter DOES have a 5/512 plan now. Call and ask. Just became available in my area a couple weeks ago.
stridr69
join:2003-05-19
San Luis Obispo, CA

1 edit

stridr69

Member

Internet Backbone

It's what I've run into sometimes, as far as slow speeds go. Where I live, Level3 is my internet backbone, and 90% of the time there's no problem. So, I live with it.
Otherwise, I'm happy with Charter HSI.
P.S. no 5/512 plan offered here...yet.
zetecis2low
join:2002-07-27
Clarksville, TN

zetecis2low

Member

Re;

I work for Charter, the speeds are going to 5MBPS this year as well as CDT (Charter Digital Telephone) in areas that do not have it yet.