US Cable Support → Charter Internet/TV > Should I switch to Charter from AT&T?

Should I switch to Charter from AT&T?

I am currently on AT&T dsl 1.5 meg plan (which I was forced to from the 6 meg). I have a couple of questions.

1. Does internet access from cable companies still have the congestion issue where if a lot of people are online your connection gets slower?

2. Charter says they can give me up to 50 meg down for $40 per month. What speed can I expect on average?

At this point I feel like anything is going to be better than 1.5 meg. All advice is appreciated.

Not knowing where you are located, can't really answer #1 for sure.
Again not enough detail from you for #2. A lot of Charter area's offer 30/4 for $30 IF you bundle another service.
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Stupid people shouldn't be allowed to breathe

1. If you're in a heavily populated area, you COULD see slow downs at peak times. Myself, I NEVER have here in 14 years with them. ALWAYS get above my advertised download speeds.

2. That 50 meg for $40 is going to be a discounted special, so check out what the real cost will be after special runs out as Charter DOES NOT let you stay on promotional packages like they used to.

I can just about guarantee you'll like Charter better than that pultry dial up speed you're getting now!!
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The Firefox alternative.
»www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

1. It depends on your location
2. Your average should be close to 50. If you had congestion issues it should only be for a few hours a night.

Anything is not going to be better than 1.5 meg but I don't think you will be disappointed by Charter. Even if you have congestion issues it will be faster than your current connection.

Not sure about 50 meg meg for $40 since Chater tiers are 30 meg and 100 meg but you can get 30 meg for a year for $30 a month then $45 a month for another 12 months then regular rates after that.

Sorry I had my numbers wrong. It's 30 down and 4 up for $39.99 per month. $29.99 install fee. I only need internet service. I am in TN.

A I said you can get internet only. Just go to the website.

I got 29 a month for a year. At my parents house it was 29 a year and then 39 a month for a year after that.
That's in Wisconsin though.

Should be $29/mo for a year then like $44.95/mo. $29 install.

1. The ISP's including ATT are starting to provision so the actual speed is meeting the advertised speed. This may not be possible for the OP if the distance to the central office is too far. This is what my problem was. I was far enough away the only tier available was the 1.5, which was actually 1.2. And the techs would tell me the thing would only run error free at 768. I would have to plead with them to set it for 1.5, that I would tolerate the errors, since it was not that bad on the error rate.
2. Should you switch to Charter? Yes. You will get at least the advertised rates.

The evil is less at Charter. Which is not saying much, because AT&T broke the evil dial. Go with Charter.

Every location is different, but I left AT&T over 10 years ago and have never regretted it. That's not to say my service has been problem free, it's just so much better than I had with AT&T.

Compared to the service you have now, it seems you have nothing to lose.

I just got Charter installed. Are there any tweaks I need to make to get max speed? My modem is currently connected to my ASUS N66R router.

The only "tweak" I can think of to suggest is to ensure you're using WPA2-AES (rather than TKIP) if you can. I got much better throughput on my WiFi connection with AES. There is information around why that is so I'm not going to bother rehashing it.

Ok, I guess there are no real tweaks. Thanks for the help.

The better question is what speeds are you seeing on your new install? If you're seeing 30mbps or close on that plan then there's nothing to tweak....

I am getting between 30 and 35.

YAY! That's great! Welcome to Charter!

That's exactly where you should be on the 30mbps tier. Charter only offers 30 & 100mbit residential tiers at this time.

What's kinda weird is when I did my first speed tests I was shown to be in my home town. But the next day after I rebooted a couple of times (trying to figure out how to login to the modem), the speed tests have me halfway across the state as my location.

Your Speed Result:
Download Speed: 50432 kbps (6304 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4277 kbps (534.6 KB/sec transfer rate)