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Spectrum finally decided to compete in my neighborhood, offering 400/20 for $50/month instead of the usual 200/10. While still not as good a deal as AT&T's promo rate of $35 for symmetrical gig, Spectrum does have the advantage of not having to deal with AT&T's stupid RGs, IP Passthrough/DMZ+, wi-fi calling issues, and so on to use your own router. Since my AT&T promo is expiring in March, I decided to take Spectrum up on their 30-day money back guarantee. They sent me the self-install kit, which was easy to setup. At least it was once I called Spectrum tech support because my cable line wasn't connected at the street. I initially blamed Spectrum for this, but as things progressed, I am pretty sure it was the previous owner of my house who was responsible. The cable line I was trying to use wasn't bonded, wasn't buried well, and, according to the Spectrum tech, wasn't the brand/spec of cable they have ever used. Based on what I know of the other DIY work I inherited with my house, I am inclined to believe the Spectrum tech. He said the line to the house should have been left connected as they typically don't disconnect lines any more, but rather just turn off devices. Anyway, given that Spectrum had someone out to my house within 12 hours of me reporting the issue and experiencing no hold time when I called in, I'd say that is pretty good customer service. The tech re-terminated and checked the line to the original line on the outside of my house and then ran a new line from there to where I wanted the modem. His work was neat and quickly done. Once he did this, everything worked fine. Ping times are about 7ms slower to my work VPN endpoint. For general usage, it feels just as fast as AT&T Fiber. Obviously, if I had to upload a lot of data, it would take a much longer time, but that is not something I do very often. 20Mbps upload should be sufficient for my wife and I. Very pleased so far. member for 13.4 years, 3414 visits, last login: a few hours ago updated 3.1 years ago
Spectrum Internet 100/10 package, at $59.99/mo first year promotion, $74.99 after that. The order and install was very easy I was able to schedule it online about a week before I moved in, and they were ready within a couple days. I had to have them wait until I was able to meet them at my house. I only got a modem with my install a Hitron e31n2v1. I am not happy with this modem, it seems to have ping spike issues. I am also annoyed that the rate card on Spectrum.net says my location should be able to get the 200/10 service for the same price as my current plan, but that is not correct and I am outside of that service area. If I could get 200/10 for the price I am paying now, I would be very happy. As it is, I am content but not happy. member for 3.4 years, 43 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago lodged 3.2 years ago
Ordering service was quick and pleasant. Installation was good. Installer did what I asked without hassle. Arrived when scheduled. I HAD to get Charter phone service - Verizon service was a big problem. It's been fine. I have my own modem and router so I don't have any Charter hardware. I haven't had to use tech support yet. update April 2008 Phone support is useless. 1) When I had a problem and called support the person wasn't interested in hearing my problem. The operator just wanted my name and address to send a tech. 2) One day my connection dropped. After waiting 2 hours I called support asking if there was a problem. They weren't aware of any problems and told me there must be a large area without service and I happened to be the first to report it. Not the case. Techs visiting my home have found and fixed problems quickly. These fixes have been simple. I hop not-so-simple problems are resolved quickly. update: July 2008 Phone support is still useless. Techs sent out to fix hardware problems have been knowledgable and make quick work of diagnosing and replacing broken hardware. The time to get a tech to my home has been very fast. Scheduled a visit on a Saturday morning and tech arrived in 4 hours. Update January 2009 Things are slacking off. There have been many times where the net connection will drop a few times in a short period. No real pattern to when the connection drops. It doesn't take long to come back but it's more than just annoying when there's 3 or 4 dropped connections in a hour. I've given up on calling tech support and the standard "There's an outage in your area. We don't know when it'll be fixed." response. Cable service has vanished a few times in the past couple months. Update April 2009 Outages of all 3 services is becoming more common; at least once a month. Typically service is out for more than 4 hours. Calls to support require I give them my name, phone number, account number, address, and more before they tell me the standard "There's an outage in your area. We don't know when it'll be fixed." response. When service is restored it's back for less than an hour before it goes out again for half an hour. The "new" SA box I got had to be replaced after 3 months. Update Oct 2009 Service has started dropping out sporatically in rainy weather. When it was happening last(?) year they replaced their box on the utility pole that had become full of water. Literally full of water. Techs were at the neighbor's house this week. Shortly after they arrived my service went out. It's been flickering ever since. Talked to the techs before they left. The techs said the neighbor was having problems with their 'net connection but they could find no problem. Powerboost was introduced a couple days ago. Update Nov 2010 Network service has been stable. Update Jun 2011 Phone support is still completely clueless to the real world. A couple extended outages over the past couple months Update November 2011 Home service: N/C I work in downtown Worcester. We have Charter business service. When things are working they work well. When there are problems it can be a nightmare. But that seems to be the case with any service that is provided using wires in downtown Worcester. Update July 2012 When service works, it's great. When there's a problem phone support is USELESS. For example: I call and report a problem. Tech support says there's no outage in the area. I ask Could it be I'm the first person to be reporting a problem? Support person response is NO YOU COULDN'T ' BE. Then a minute later tells me there is a problem in your area. Upgrading from service I currently have to the new minimal service will cost me $15/month. Lord I wish there was some other provider available here. ARRRRG! 30 minutes later When service is out, phone support is LESS THAN USELESS 10/14/2012 Again I say Charter phone support sucks farts out of dead dogs butts both home and business service. 5/18/2013 Yet again I say Charter phone support sucks farts out of dead dogs butts, both home and business service. 4 out of 5 CSR are completely ignorant and useles. I've been forced to 30/4 service. I don't need or want 30/4 15/3 would be great. But Charter has declared that to be NFG. The only good thing to say about the required 30/4 service is getting a DOCSIS 3 modem from them. 9/2013 The new 2 option internet service sucks. Charter's offering of 100Mbps or 30Mbps combined with their attitude of 'You don't like it? Then go f*ck yourself' is ridiculous. What's next a 2 package tv offering? You can gave All channels and offerings for $500/month or basic plus a bunch of channels you'll never watch for $150/month. Cable TV - updates to the software/firmware in the cable box have been happening while I'm watching TV. The show video&audio disappear when a blue screen pops up announcing an update. After the update finishes the show returns. These interruptions have been happening between 8 & 10 PM. --- When my package deal ended and internet became 2 choices with no package deals ever again I called Charter to see what I could get. I had to speak with 3 ignorant persons before I got to 1 who knew what he was talking about. One of the persons I spoke with told me the price for internet service would never change. What? What do you mean it'll never change? Are you telling me the cost will never go up? The price will never change sir but there will be adjustments made to cover costs to provide the service. So I'll be paying more for the service. No sir the cost will never change. 10/2013 Charter's phone support system is USELESS!!!!! 04/2014 I dropped tv service. All I have is 30/4 internet service (dl faster than I currently need/want). It's fine but when there is any kind of issue phone support is almost never of any help. For example: ME: My cable service is out. My neighbors too. Is there a problem in the area? CSR: No one has reported problems in your area. ME: Could it be that I'm the first person to report the problem? CSR: No sir. That's not possible. ME: ??? sigh... Update July 2014 Many Charter techs don't know their *ss from their elbow. Some are extremely competent. Most should be flipping burgers at McDonald's. I've had the privilege to interact with both. Those that are competent are always amused at what the others say and do. Update March 2015 My DL speed has recently gone from 30Mbps to 60Mbps. "Free speed upgrade" as Charter calls it. Far more than I need but still the lowest level offered. Cost just went from $50/month to $55/month. Coincidence? I may, not at my choice, become a Comcast customer this year if the FCC OK's the Comcast / Time Warner merger. Update October 2019 10/100 upload/download pretty much all the time. Cost just updated to $70 / month. Acceptable I guess. Phone TS still sucks farts out of dead dogs' butts. "Free" modem works. Update October 2020 100/10 package Essentially stable service. When they've happened outages have been brief. Very happy with weekday business hours service during coronavirus lockdown. I don't play games but do use this for TV and movies along with surfing/email/work. FTP uploads and downloads haven't been a problem. Phone tech support has gotten better but is still disappointing. Like everybody else with internet service I'd love to see a lower cost. I've been using the "free" modem provided by Charter. Business account at work gets more interruptions. It always has. member for 19.1 years, 9066 visits, last login: a few hours ago updated 3.3 years ago
We've had glitches where our modem has "dropped provisioning" (partially due to an old account that was somehow still set as active, the modem kept attaching to it) however a quick call to Spectrum Support and I was back up and running within 5 minutes of speaking to a rep. Every single representative i've spoken to has been outstanding in finding any issues I have. I recently had to report a broken hardline cable, which turned out to be abandoned plant, but they still sent a tech out, who went beyond the work order and replaced all RG6 fittings on our home as a safety measure (the original fittings were from Dish Network in 2013 or so) in case we wanted to use the other three lines (which we did end up moving the modem from it's original install point, my bedroom, to the livingroom) and saves me a headache of putting a fitting on as well. I've only ever had to put an FCC complaint on them one time due to a previous area issue at an old home where we would drop channels from our TV boxes and modem randomly. Unfortunately after two techs nothing was solved so I filed the FCC complaint, three maintenance techs in buckets (one when they were at my home, two later in the afternoon), two regular technicians and a supervisor traced my home and the area, found a few bad amplifiers, and some bad hardline connections on the poles (partially due to pole replacement in the area, probably knocked the taps and hardline around.) My neighbors probably had no idea what was going on but one person was able to benefit from more stable internet at their home after this event. Spectrum is a good company to work with, it sucks it does take either an FCC complaint or talking to the right person(s) to get things done, but at the end of the day as long as things are done correctly the first time, and any issues are squashed immediately, usually things will be pain free. member for 4.8 years, 2275 visits, last login: a few hours ago updated 3.3 years ago
My advertised bandwidth is 100 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up. I meet or exceed this about 80% of the time except during the evening when I get more like 85 / 10. It's acceptable. Reliability is fair. If we lose power, we normally lose internet, which was NOT the case for ADSL. I have to reset the modem occasionally. I've had this service for about 10 years. Both the price and the speed have been gradually increasing. I don't think I'm getting good value compared to what I had with ADSL or what I hear other countries have. I've missed the reliability and stability of ADSL, but ADSL did not offer enough bandwidth in 2010. In 2021, I'm considering moving to AT&T fiber since the price is the same, but upload bandwidth is 10 times faster which is more important to me now than it used to be since I'm relying upon cloud backup. member for 24.2 years, 29 visits, last login: 211 days ago lodged 3.3 years ago
5/20/2020 - Sometime in August 2019 we ordered the Spectrum Triple Play Silver package with 100/10 internet. We used to have AT&T 50/10 Internet but it just wasn't cutting it, game downloads would take forever. The install took around 2 hours (I think) and since then, things have been very stable, though the upload speed can fluctuate between 8-9 Mbps and 11 Mbps sometimes. For internet and phone we were supplied the Hitron E31N2V1 which seems to work good and has had no issues. For TV we were supplied the Spectrum 210-A and the Spectrum 110-A. Later down the road we were lucky to receive the download speed increase to 200 Mbps which we took advantage of right away. Sometime later, I don't remember the date exactly, but our service was cutoff at the tap for ingress, I don't know exactly what the culprit was but it was probably a loose coax connector and a loose connection to the modem. We were without TV, internet, and phone for a weekend, but thankfully we were able to use our mobile hotspot. I hope DOCSIS 4.0 comes soon for even a slight upload increase on base tier, 20 Mbps possibly? If there was fiber around, we would get it right away but for now this is what we got. I will update if anything else happens. (EDIT) I am in L-TWC area if that means that the area was Time Warner before Spectrum. (Update) 6/10/20 - Have been noticing slight upload packet loss while uploading, I am seeing between 0.3% and 2.0% on speedtest and noticed my online multiplayer game stutters sightly when i try to upload anything. (Update) 7/8/20 - Picked up the Ubee E31U2V1, fixed the packet loss and I can see my signal levels now  (Update) 10/9/20 - Had to factory reset the modem a couple of weeks ago which stopped allowing me from seeing the signal levels, made me a little mad but whatever. Service is still very solid, maybe a couple of late night reboots, but that's about it. (Update) 12/7/20 - I have been noticing my upload decreasing to about 1-2 mbps with packet loss of around 5% during peak hours. I will update if anything else goes on. (Update) 12/11/20 - We had a technician come out, he replaced some connectors and told us it was a lot of people using the network and that they were doing work around my area. Speed seems to have stabled out though. member for 4.8 years, 944 visits, last login: 7 days ago updated 3.3 years ago
I had been on DSL for a long time, but it became apparent that the phone company would never upgrade me from 3 mbps to modern speed. So, I had to make the switch to cable. The first speed test at the modem showed 61 mbps. Wow! They only advertise "up to 30". Wireless speeds within the home are 25-33 mbps. Upload speeds are around 4.3 mbps via wireless. I am happy, to say the least. *** UPDATE Feb 13, 2015 *** They revised my advertised speed from 30/4 to 60/4. Speed test results are usually even better than that (approximately 68 / 5). I had to switch to a third party DNS provider, because Charter's DNS flakes out from time to time. Soon, my first promotional rate will expire, and I will have to pay more. *** UPDATE Aug 20, 2015 *** I'm now on the normal rate of $60 per month. I'm not complaining, to me that is a much better bargain than $46 per month for 3-mbit DSL. Also, my connection has been more stable for the past several months. I'm still a happy Charter customer. *** UPDATE Sep 6, 2016 *** Speeds are still consistently higher than advertised - usually about 64.5 / 4.3. One problem I had was that occasionally (and too often to live with) their DNS flakes out, so I changed to Google or OpenDNS for reliability. *** UPDATE May 9, 2017 *** Both download and upload speeds have gone up, upload speed significantly. Advertised upload is up from 4 to 5, but actual tests are usually almost 6. I recently got 4-channel bonding on the uplink. This is the best internet service I have ever had. *** UPDATE Oct, 6, 2020 *** I did an online upgrade to Spectrum Ultra Internet 400/20. The upgrade occurred, immediately. My first speed test showed 411 / 22. member for 23.5 years, 9836 visits, last login: a few hours ago updated 3.4 years ago
I have tv/phone/internet with one dvr box the tv is their select package we used to have time warner cable and we had more for our money and the service was more reliable and the customer service was better. with spectrum we had to decrease our channels to try and keep under $200 so the internet speed has been the same since time warner 200/10, owning your own modem no longer gets your a discount, the service drops more often, the phone and onsite tech support has been worse. tv is very compressed, dvr software updates have made the box worse, i need to replace the box because after the last software update because it broke functionality, on demand no longer works neither does the search function. the internet is fairly reliable, the tv is about the same as long as you don't mind the droning sound in the compression of the audio (weeooweeooweeoo) that sometimes is more obvious then other times and the awful compression of the video. voip phone calls are frequently dropped. on a plus side i finally encountered a few times that the internet/voip finally works with the power out if you have something to power the required equipment in your house or get the battery from them. ondemand sometimes will be missing epsiodes of shows. last time a tech came out to my house tv worked but internet couldn't lock upstream he told me the signal was fine after waiting a few second on his tester then after i told him no he waited and read his tester again oh its not good, i have to replace the line, so he called for help which never came and he replaced the line to my house and then just cut off and replaced ends on the wires inside my house, replaced the splitter and replaced the wire to the modem and added an extra ground wire. he terminated the wire outside and left about 4 feet of old wire from the outside to the inside. it worked for a while and then went down again so i decided to replace the wire he didn't from outside the house to the inside and now it worked again for quite a while. spectrum removed its modem status pages so you have no ammunition as to why the signal is bad, they claim it was to get rid of idiot customers who call and complain about the signal when it is "fine" member for 20.8 years, 194 visits, last login: 1 day ago updated 3.4 years ago
Recently upgraded from 400/20 to 600/35, install seemed simple, they went from a 1 box solution to a 2 box solution, not a fan of so many boxes for individual services. Reliability has been spotty, line dropped 3 times in last 3 days, before that it was once a week. The modem is a Hitron E31N2V1, and the associated router is a Sagemcom RAC2V1S...They claim this is the best equipment out there...working in the networking field, I can assure you this is not the case...but I digress...Technician visit soon to determine signal qulaity issues/equiment issues, will update after member for 22.7 years, 2746 visits, last login: a few hours ago lodged 3.5 years ago
I was originally with TWC for around 6 years until it become Charter Spectrum. Even though TWC was good, Spectrum has been just better for me. The price for the new triple play plan when I switched went down to $167 something, as compared to $180 or so with TWC packaging. Though since switching, a slight price increase has occurred but it was a reasonable increase and when 200mbps base comes, It will matter less. I also got more speed for less money when I switched to Spectrum (60 at the time) then 100 eventually last December. Service has been very reliable as stated, even before Spectrum, but continues to be so. As of now, our system has been upgraded quite a bit; as we have 32 Docsis channels, along with Docsis 3.1. So Charter has upgraded us extensively compared to when it was TWC. I do believe we are being invested into more, as a customer than before, which I highly appreciate. This pretty much is the same for all areas out there now. So not just me. Just to think we were only 8 channels last January, with no Docsis 3.1. Also, we were not all digital and encrypted like now (a precursor to getting upgrades for any system anyways). I know TWC managed things well, for me at least, but Spectrum is doing far more in terms of upgrades than before (in my opinion). What I really am happy with now, is how Spectrum, does not carry old, outdated equipment in my area, unlike TWC, which handed out 4 channel modems even 4 years ago. They have Worldbox’s, the newest box, and maybe a few of the older, but still new, Technicolors as well (depends on area). I have a Worldbox with Navigator and it’s great. However. I’ve heard some bad things about the new Spectrum Guide, but that is to be expected as it’s a new guide, and so, it needs the time to develop like Navigator. Now, they are even handing out Docsis 3.1 modems exclusively to everyone needing a new modem, which is great. Before. You had to be on gig only. So, like I said. I do appreciate how much they have changed things for the better, compared to before with TWC. Finally, I would like to say, support is not the greatest, but for the techs in my area at least, they are good. But phone support and chat support can be quite frustrating sometimes. So hopefully they improve that. But other than that, it's been great. Now only if they will up the base speed in my area to 200mbps, I’ll be even more happy, but I can wait. Update - Now I have just internet only as I did not need the triple play with phone and TV anymore; standard 100/10 speed. I always still get the rated speed 24/7 and service is up and only goes down when power goes out for more than a 10 hour point (we have backup batteries for our nodes and amps in our area) or maintenance. So overall, service is great. Still waiting on 200/10, but it’s coming eventually. Though 100/10 works perfectly for my needs, with 400/20 only being $20 more a month if I really need it. Update 9/11/19 - Just announced not too long ago is a price increase to $70 for just 100/10 standard speeds. I hope 200/10 is coming soon if they are raising the price further, but I guess I’m still ok with 100/10 but the price is getting higher. However, compared to other big providers like Comcast, Charter Spectrum is a steal. No data caps, or modem fees, and the speed is faster for a similar or lower price. Update 9/1/20 - Service going strong as always. Upgraded to 400/20 a few days ago which is more like 500/23. Only $20 for 4 times the speed and twice the upload so I thought it was well worth it. Everything was quick and easy upgrading through my account online. Only $10 for self activation which is great. No $50 fee anymore like before. member for 8.1 years, 1616 visits, last login: 7 days ago updated 3.6 years ago
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