 Review by TuPaK 
Posted: 184 days ago
member for 6.2 years, 388 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 San Gabriel,Los Angeles,CA
 $35 per month
 about 5 days
 "Fast and reliable connection - Promotion plans are a good value"
 "Non-promotion plans are very pricey - Customer service is mediocre at best - Newsgroup servers are horrendous"
 "If you want decent speeds and a relatively stable connection, Charter HSI is a good option"
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(ratings above consensus)
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First time I had Charter HSI was in 1999. At that time the speeds were much lower and I payed at least 50 dollars a month.
Since that time I have gone from DSL and back to Cable. DSL is definitely a much better value for me (17 dollars a month) but my speeds are limited by my distance. I can only attain 1.2Mbps/512Kbps compared to Charter which offers me up to 10Mbps/1Mbps.
I am currently on a promotion plan of 6 months for the 10/1 package and pay 35 dollars a month. That's a great bargain for the speeds I get. I recommend anyone paying too much for Charter HSI to call them and kindly ask for some type of promotion plan. After the promotion period, my 10/1 package will increase to 55 dollars a month plus a 10 dollar fee for a non-TV or digital phone subscriber. I will definitely do my best to find another promotion plan. If not, I hear AT&T is rolling out U-Verse in my area very soon and will give them a shot.
I also use VOIP with AT&T CallVantage on my Charter HSI line. It is half the price of the digital telephone they offer but I do have so sacrifice a little upload bandwidth. This will not effect the performance of your connection if you have a strong router such as a WRT54GL with Tomato firmware. The QoS (Quality of Service) settings on that router will keep your VOIP conversations sounding perfect even under heavy internet usage (downloading, uploading, games, etc.)
I use a Motorola Surfboard 5120 modem and I recommend this model to anyone. It is a very good modem and keeps my connection stable. It is very important that when you get your HSI installed you check modem signals with the technician still present so that they may fix it or promise to fix it then and there. A good modem signal is crucial in a stable connection! You don't want to deal with the headaches of your modem getting out of sync every so often due to a compromised signal.
I wish Charter would improve their newsgroup services. I had Cox HSI for a time and their services in that respect were leaps and bounds above Charter. Although Cox limited their connections to four, they had a 30+ day retention.
Overall, Charter is a good ISP from my experiences. I wish to see even more competitive pricing and maybe even a decrease in price for their digital telephone. I may bundle that with my HSI if the price is right. Hope this review helped somebody out there.
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