Review by gopnick 
UPDATED: 41 days ago
member for 4.8 years, 964 visits, last login: 31 days ago
 Benton,Saline,AR
 $58 per month
 about 2 days
 "Extremely fast; good local installer"
 "A bit pricey"
 "Charter meets my need for speed, albeit at a hefty price"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I've been an AT&T DSL customer for a while now, and always had good connection reliability and a low price. However, at my distance from the CO I could only get about 2.5 mbps down and 400k up. It was a great value for my money and it made me a fan of AT&T again. Charter finally brought high speed Internet to my town, so I signed up 2 days ago. I was shocked that they gave me a small install window and showed up right on time. I'll evaluate according to DSLR's 6-point ratings system by explaining why I chose the responses I did.
Pre Sales Information: This was the worst part. When I found out that Charter HSI was available in my area, I called and tried to schedule an install. They told me I'd heard incorrect information and that it was not available. Oh well... a few days later someone who lives down the street from me mentioned that they'd had Charter HSI installed 2 months ago. GRRRR. I called them up and scheduled an install. This time they got it right. I didn't bomb them with a "1" rating and instead gave them a "2" because the information was great when I called the second time around.
Install Co-ordination: This part was fabulous. They gave me a two hour window during which they would show up, which is much better than most companies; Dish Network and DirecTV give a 4-hour block and often miss it. The installer was very nice, meticulous, presented himself well, didn't make my wife uncomfortable and even called me at work to make sure he was doing the job the way I wanted it done. He was at the very beginning of the time-window, meaning my wife didn't wait the entire time to see if he would show up. The install was clean and it worked immediately.
Connection Reliability: It's too early to give much info, as it's been installed only a day. So far, so good. I'll update my review as becomes necessary. They are starting with a "5" rating from me and will have to "earn" a lower one. 
Tech Support: I haven't had to use TS so far, so they are at a 5 as well until I have a reason to do something different.
Services: I ordered 16/2 mbps service. I'm getting 11-15, depending on the time of day. This is CLOSE to the advertised speed, but not quite there. I gave 4 stars, but if the connection stabilizes over time I'll gladly up them. I can appreciate the difficulty in keeping up with demand during a new rollout... I'm in IT, and I've been there, done that. If it drops below 10 mbps (the next package lower) I'll drop them a couple of stars. We'll see.
Value for money: It's expensive... really expensive, but for me it's worth it. It's a somewhat fair price, considering the cost of deploying a network with this kind of speed, but a company with less debt wouldn't need to charge $80/month for a standalone 16/2 Internet connection. Overall I gave them a 3, because it is too expensive, but I can appreciate supply and demand. They aren't that far out of line with Comcast, etc., which serve areas nearby.
I will keep this updated frequently.
Update, 1-28-09:
Now that I've had service for a few days, I wanted to post an update about my QoS. I came home the day after it had been installed and my speeds dropped from 14 mbps the night before down to 500 kbps. I chatted with online customer service, and they informed me that there was a problem in my area and they were working to resolve it. True to their word, it was resolved within 30 minutes. I do not know how long it had been going on before I got home.
The same thing happened twice in the next 48 hours, but has not happened since. In general, I'm getting near 14 mbps, which is close to the advertised speed. I'll update more on reliability in a few weeks when I've had a larger period of time over which to watch the connection.
It is yet to go down all the way to this point, which is an important factor.
Update, 2/11/09:
My service slows to about 300-500 kbps at least three or four times a week. I am giving Charter a few weeks or months to fix this before I switch back to AT&T. Dropping Charter down to '3' on services and '2' on value due to service problems combined with high price for speeds that are never achieved. Connection went off for 6 hours the other day; dropping one on reliability as well.
Update, 3/2/09:
Service reliability has improved quite a bit. My lowest speed test lately as 11,000 kbps, and I can't be entirely sure that this wasn't due to some computer in the house downloading an automatic update, since both Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista do that in the background nowadays. They upgraded me for no additional money to the 20 mbps tier, and though I rarely see that, I am consistently seeing 16 mbps, which is what I was sold to begin with, so I'm a happy camper. I am boosting "services" up to 4. I would have gone to 5, had it not been for their bandwidth cap. Though this doesn't affect me, I'm furious that they are joining in with all the other ISPs in LYING to their customers about "unlimited" Internet.
Update, 9/28/09:
I called a few months ago and told them that due to declining revenues, (heh) I would need to cancel my service or move it back to a lower tier. They offered a much lower price ($57.99/mo) in exchange for signing a contract. I did it. So far, I'm still very happy. Though my bandwidth has dropped off to a meg twice during thunderstorms (not sure why, though) I'm pleased that I get between 15 and 21 megs most of the time. My upstream bandwidth is very stable at 2 Mbps. Boosting "value for money" up to 3.
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