Review by waltl 
UPDATED: 139 days ago
member for 8.6 years, 515 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 Fenton,Saint Louis,MO
 $60 per month
 about 10 days
 "When it works, it's reliable."
 "Frequent intermittent outages, some short, some very long."
 "It's a crap-shoot: If your neighborhood plant is sound, you'll be OK."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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In north Fenton, MO, I'm too far from the CO for DSL, currently, so Charter Pipeline is my only option for HSI.
I have 3Mbps/256kbps which used to be about $60, but now my wife's employer picks up the tab, and I don't see the bill on my CATV invoice. Free is nice.
Service was reliable for the first two years. For the last three years, it has been intermittent. This year, both CATV and HSI have been terribly intermittent.
I've rolled several trucks here, and all have arrived while service is fine:
all signals inside the house are fine. Signal at the ped outside is fine.
Every late afternoon & evening this hot summer, all service becomes intermittent, including CATV from two digital set-top converters & the SmartCard HDTV, and HSI.
Service techs say they can't troubleshoot the problem in my neighborhood unless it's happening when they are there. None of them are willing to come out between 5PM and 8PM when the problem occurs.
I keep rolling trucks, hoping they tire of my calls, and replace every amp in the neighborhood.
We're now talking about moving, as we have no alternative, and we rely on HSI to work-from-home. Too bad... we love our current home and neighborhood.
Update 7/18/09: I've subscribed to AT&T DSL, since it's available here, and will happily disconnect Charter Pipeline, soon.
Followup comments:  |  | waltl
join:2001-04-25
Fenton, MO
 ·Charter Pipeline
·Charter Pipeline
| Re: Perhaps T1? "Perhaps T1" from Charter, you mean?
I infer that service would come along the same path with which I'm currently having so many problems. All that would be changed is the SLA, and I would be paying a lot more for service from the same team that cannot provide satisfactory service, now. I am skeptical. | |
| | 
benc
Premium
join:2007-06-17
Glen Carbon, IL
·Charter Pipeline
 ·Future Nine Corpor..
·Callcentric
 ·AT&T Midwest
1 edit | EDIT: I didn't click the correct "reply" link, it should read "reply to waltl."
About my previous comment:
I realize that I posted it quite hastily, and it has some serious errors. For that I apologize.
I meant to say that I mean to ensure that my next apartment has DSL. Since I don't watch cable TV, it means I can do without Charter.
Also, when I said "them," I didn't mean Charter. I meant the T1 provider.
As far as I know, T1 isn't offered through Charter, as T1 isn't coax cable based. It's generally offered by the phone company, in your (and my) case, AT&T.
Unlike DSL however, there are no distance limitations. Theoretically, you can have T1 anywhere, although if you truly live in the middle of nowhere, the cost will undoubtedly be quite high. However, Fenton, MO doesn't count as "truly in the middle of nowhere" due to it's close proximity to St. Louis.
T1 is also available through other providers, like DSL. However, you'll still need to work with the phone company (like DSL).
Since the T1 is a phone company product, you won't have to rely on Charter.
Also, T1 connections are, I believe, required by law to have very high SLAs (the connection dies? It must be fixed within an hour, regardless of the time of day). This is one reason why they are costly.
This is in direct conflict with Charter and other cable companies, since I've never heard of a cable company providing any sort of SLA or guarantee.
Honestly, I wouldn't recommend anyone to use Charter, or any other cable company for Internet. One reason is due to poor experiences, another is the very nature of cable Internet. Cable Internet is a shared medium, so if all your neighbors have it, and everyone is trying to use it at the same time, then bandwidth suffers because they oversell it in an effort to reduce prices and expense. The problem is made worse if cable Internet is the only choice that costs less than $100, which probably means a majority of your neighbors have it.
With T1, you can get the maximum bandwidth at any time, regardless of the time of day, and regardless of what your neighbor is doing.
For T1, this website should help. They won't give you a bunch of sales calls, and for the E-mail field you can put in a secondary E-mail address if spam is a concern. The link is: »www.shopfort1.com/
If moving is an option, there's another website that will tell you if you can get DSL. The link for that is: »www.whitefence.com/
In a way, it's comforting to know that someone else in my area is having issues with Charter. This means that I'm not the only one who's annoyed. This doesn't mean that your negative experience is a good thing; it's not. But it makes me feel better. If my car was as reliable as Charter Cable Internet, I would probably be dead by now. I don't know about you, but I maintain a back-up dial-up account so I can always get on the Internet. Dial-up is almost useless these days, but it's good enough for E-mail and message boards 99% of the time. | |
| | | waltl
join:2001-04-25
Fenton, MO | Re: Perhaps T1? Thanks. Both of those sites returned only options for Charter, so I gather DSL is still not available in my neighborhood, ten years after building my home here.  | |
| 
smokerinmo
@charter.com | DSL limitations There are also distance limitations on DSL and quanity limitations too. I work for AT T and see this all the time. | |
| | waltl
join:2001-04-25
Fenton, MO
·Charter Pipeline
·Charter Pipeline
| Re: DSL limitations It's probably a distance limitation, for me. I'm at the very end of the last cul de sac in my subdividion.
But there's lots of other subdivisions going up around me and farther away from the CO. So maybe, in time, ATT will build up to service all of us unhappy Charter customers.
I saw lots of fiber going in on the main drag (1/2 mile away) over the last six months. I know that's not a substitute for a CO, but at least the bandwidth is getting closer... | |
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