Charter Spectrum → [HSI] Charter and Capacity

What's up with Charter's policies on support and congestion. From about two years ago, until last year, I would experience severe bandwidth drops [from 75mbps down to 10mbps] and 100+ ms ping increases consistently at the same time every night. After sending multiple techs, they finally realized that there was no signal or modem issue on my end. It doesn't really take a rocket scientist to realize that there might, possibly, theoretically be a capacity issue.

At the time I was on the 100mbps plan, and was told that they had the capacity for 100megs, and that it must be some last-mile issue with the line on my end. After months in support limbo, someone in the top-tier support finally admitted that they didn't have enough bandwidth to support 100 meg.

At that point, I switched down to the 30 meg service [and still dealt with the same latency spikes and bandwidth drops for another year].

Anyway, as someone with a background in computer science, what I'm confused about is this: Clearly Charter knows what their bandwidth capacity is at every point, and they know what the utilization is like on the routers at every hop. [I mean, they spend millions and millions in infrastructure and engineers! They're not gonna operate like it's the dark ages]. What's the deal with support playing pass-the-buck with these issues and not fessing up?

I don't think telephone support folks have access to utilization data, which is often the issue at the local node or head end.

Local line technicians and engineers have access to this data but I'm sure upgraded bandwidth orders have to be placed and approved as budget allows like any other business. It's likely not a fast process.

It doesn't help when they keep upping bandwidth tiers prior to additional channel bonding etc.

How are you actually calculating your speeds, by downloading files or by running speedtest from java/flash based web sites.

view my post on this page »[HSI] Slow after around 7 PM, north Greater Houston Area