New internet service

[Kevin]

Just an fyi if you don't know about it. But we just dropped AT&T internet service here at our house.

We switched to Verizon. It's $60 a month which is cheaper than At&T and it's twice as fast.

It's literally just a small white box they send you in the mail. Plug it into a wall outlet and the password is on the bottom of the box. It's that easy.

I also believe they have a huge discount for seniors.

This isn't a plug for a large telecom company, they are all pretty terrible.

But I just got off the phone with AT&T and let me tell you after speaking with them on the phone, they make you want to go out and kick a dog or something. Just terrible.

 

[Jimbo357mag]

I have AT&T home internet and DirecTV combined and AT&T cell phone service and I can't tell you how messed up that is, I keep getting calls for somebody else and the billing especially. I am thinking about going dark for a couple of months.

 

[The Norseman]

So if I hear you correctly, if a person does not
have WIFI, and you want to have WI-FI in
town/city or out in the country, there is a box
you plug into an outlet, place with clear line of sight
to the sky, to get WI-FI?

No dish, no antenna, no holes for cables drilled
into your house walls, and just a place to set this
Box and you will receive WI-FI?

 

[6GUNSONLY]

We tried the Verizon internet box, but it wasn't very good at our place (we're in a very rural area, as to cell/internet service). I could get a connection on my phone, but it wasn't stable and wasn't a strong enough signal for our Blink security cameras to work. Too bad, as it would have been about 1/3 the price we pay for satellite internet. I saw some guys installing some sort of utilities a few weeks ago not too far from my house, and asked what they were installing. They told me it was fiber optic cable, so maybe someday soon we might have an alternative to satellite based internet and tv.

 

[The Norseman]

Well that's what I am afraid of. We are out
in the country and even Verizon Cell Phone
can be problematic.

Now we do have Optic Fiber phone line
to the house. When I last checked a few
years ago the cost to have Internet was
very high priced. To lower the price some
what you would have to bundle with a
land line phone.

 

[Kevin]

So if I hear you correctly, if a person does not
have WIFI, and you want to have WI-FI in
town/city or out in the country, there is a box
you plug into an outlet, place with clear line of sight
to the sky, to get WI-FI?

No dish, no antenna, no holes for cables drilled
into your house walls, and just a place to set this
Box and you will receive WI-FI?

I believe it's basically a receiver for cell phone service. Then you use it as a hotspot more or less. So if you have cell phone coverage at your house it will work.

 

[Jimbo357mag]

AT&T installed that 'high speed fiber-optic internet' service line at my house and within 3 months it went bad. Got a new service installed, because you can't repair the cable, and I asked the guy what happened and he said it was probably nicked when it was installed. It's no wonder, the installer guy used a shovel to make a crack in the ground and then a stick to push the cable in. ...Then AT&T calls and wants to know if I want to pay for more speed, really?

 

[Johnny-Baseball]

We booted AT&T-U-verse in September 2023, and switched to Spectrum for all of our technology needs (internet, cable, VoIP land line, cellphone). We're very pleased with the quality of each of those offerings, and the cost is dramatically less than AT&T.

 

[contender]

Many years ago,, we had AT&T. The service it provided,, combined with the very poor customer service from them, the slow speed etc made us switch long ago to a satellite provider for our home internet. We are rural,, and as such,, it was the only option. We switched to Hughes Net for an upgrade & better speed, but it was still very slow. AT&T in our area was still much worse.
Miss Penny said she'd not have it if AT&T were the only service available to us.

BUT,,, at the end of 2023 in our area we started seeing Spectrum running cable. Then in early November,, they headed down our little road. Not long before Christmas,, it became available to us here. We were one of the first ones to try & get Spectrum here,, and due to the new line, the testing, and other stuff,, they cancelled (4) appointments before we finally got someone out here. Apparently the sales people and the installers didn't communicate with each other.
But we finally got Spectrum, dropped Hughes Net, and so far it's not been too bad. A service outage has happened once in the month we've had them. But the speed is better,, (not as fast as we'd hoped for, and we did buy a level up from the standard package,) and there are a few differences in some things with our TV services because we dropped Direct TV at the same time. But overall, we are pretty happy with the fiber optic cable system that Spectrum has provided.

AT&T can go suck rotten eggs as far as we're concerned.

 

[Rich/KY]

Here in Eastern KY choices were limited as to what you could get, and none were particularly good and all were pricey. About two years ago Spectrum bought out the local internet operation and began offering internet, cell service and television. Switched everything over to Spectrum and the cost with was considerably cheaper and service was much better and faster. The difference before and after is about $1200 a year and their service and support have been excellent.

 

[GypsmJim]

We had Verizon internet right from the beginning. It was called "high speed" but it wasn't all that fast. It was "OK" for our needs, when it worked, but there were way too many outages. Reportedly, the wires in our neighborhood were giving us all the speed they had.

I had them check the line. No problem. I agree the phone always worked. Then they sent me a new modem. It worked good for a few weeks then the outages came back.

Finally we switched to Spectrum cable. The speed is about 15 times faster and the price is exactly the same. Except the special deal is giving us a $25/month discount for a year. Simply better service.

 

[Jeepnik]

My provider went through several "owners" over the years ending with Spectrum. I always paid for the fastest speed available because I used it for work.

I recently switched to A T & T because they have fiber optic available in my area.

Of interesting note, even with fast speeds some pages take a long time to load or won't load completely if at all. The problem is on my end or my internet speed. The problem is that many organizations are pushing for folks to connect with them via the net. But they don't have a robust enough network to handle the traffic.

Honestly sometimes it's like the 90's all over again. And organizations won't spend the money to improve things.

 

[paljoee]

Just an fyi if you don't know about it. But we just dropped AT&T internet service here at our house.

We switched to Verizon. It's $60 a month which is cheaper than At&T and it's twice as fast.

It's literally just a small white box they send you in the mail. Plug it into a wall outlet and the password is on the bottom of the box. It's that easy.

I also believe they have a huge discount for seniors.

This isn't a plug for a large telecom company, they are all pretty terrible.

But I just got off the phone with AT&T and let me tell you after speaking with them on the phone, they make you want to go out and kick a dog or something. Just terrible.

We dropped Verizon several years ago and switched to T-Mobile for $60 for 2 lines (my wife and I). They had a senior promotion back then and they have not gone up on their prices. We also cut our services with our local cable company, Dish and Direct TV over a span of about 5 years. Each of these providers kept raising their fees after contracts expired. We were paying over $125 monthly when all we said and done. We decided to "cut the cable" and went streaming services using a Roku stick. We now have YouTube TV and are getting most of the channels we like for about $73 a month (we did start out at $65 a month but after about 18 months they too raised their fees, I guess they all raise prices. Thanks for inflation, uncle Joe B.). We also installed an outdoor atenna on our roof so if we want we can switch to the local channels in our area. There are about 95 channels that we can pick up. So if push comes to shove, we can cut all these services off.

 

[GypsmJim]

even with fast speeds some pages take a long time to load or won't load completely if at all. The problem is on my end or my internet speed. The problem is that many organizations are pushing for folks to connect with them via the net. But they don't have a robust enough network to handle the traffic.

I am paying for 300 speed with my new Spectrum internet cable. I am only getting about 150 on both my wife's and my desktops. Now, I'm not actually complaining since it gives us more than what we actually need.

Nevertheless, I called the service tech to come to the house and he verified that THEY are delivering what they promised. He said it was my equipment that wasn't capable.

My "equipment" consists of a 2 year old and a 4 year old Dell desktop that were the best available at the time.

Then I brought out my old business labtop that I haven't used since I retired. It is also the best of its time and has Windows XP. I walked around the house with it and 305 came up at every location.

I dunno whats what....

 

[Johnny-Baseball]

GypsumJim, at the same time as I switched to Spectrum, I also installed an Eero wifi router sytem with 4 signal extenders located at various spots around my house (3,000 sf of living space on one floor). [I did this at the recommendation of my Spectrum technician/installer, who called me in advance and talked through all of the Spectrum system capabilities, and potential limitations. I especially appreciated this "before I install it" support.] Eero's wifi router system is a mesh system, so each extender can either piggyback off of nearby extender or the base router. Eero sells bundles and also sells individual extenders - to resolve weak signal strength in "remote" locations. With Eero installed, I have Spectrum's promised 300+ mbps signal strength in every room. WiFi for my Dell Inspiron is great. And signal strength for my mobile phones is also very robust. I don't know how well the Spectrum WiFi router would work on its own but having spent the additional money for the Eero router system, I'm a very happy Spectrum customer.

 

[NC FNS]

BUT,,, at the end of 2023 in our area we started seeing Spectrum running cable. Then in early November,, they headed down our little road. Not long before Christmas,, it became available to us here. We were one of the first ones to try & get Spectrum here,, and due to the new line, the testing, and other stuff,, they cancelled (4) appointments before we finally got someone out here. Apparently the sales people and the installers didn't communicate with each other.

They had a county by county breakdown of who was installing for each county (in western NC) on the web, and lucky us, we got Frontier. Not expecting anything soon by us, but I do see a lot of orange tubing getting buried recently closer to town.

We get no ATT cell service, a little Verizon (calls would drop every once in a while), but Tmobile is strong. Have them for phone, and had them for internet, but as others figured out about Tmobile, it got slower. Due to work-from-home, we switched to Starlink. It's great, except I don't have a clear shot to it, so it cuts out for a few seconds every 4 minutes or so. Hardly even notice because it's so much faster than anything we've had before. And it should get better once I move it to the peak of the roof. One of these days….. And it's kinda spendy, as some of my Minnesota friends might say.

 

[weaselmeatgravy]

We have no cable providers that serve our house. Xfinity is 1.7 miles away but they won't go that distance because the houses are too far apart (the first thing they would have to pass on the way to my place is a 3000 acre dairy farm with only one house, then after that there are only maybe 5-6 houses on my side of the road, possibly 8-10 on the other side). So we have had DirecTV for a long time (I tried to get Dish but their satellite was too low on the horizon to see over the mountain across the road). For internet, we use a local "phone" company that only serves a small area of the state, they are very good but kind of expensive. They have a switching station less than a mile from the house, further down the road, so 25 MBPS DSL service is sufficient for our needs since we only compete with the few houses between us and that station, then the signal is switched to their multigigabit lines. And when the state widened our road about 10 years ago, they had to pull up the ISP's copper, so the ISP brought fiber all the way to the house.

But just for TV and internet, we pay over $275. That doesn't include the cell phones. The DTV bill does include HBO and the Showtime/Starz package so we can stream HBO Max and (recently) Paramount+, and two rooms with DVR. We're looking to move south and we're hopeful that the next house will have cable so we can get basic cable and cheaper internet together for under $100, then we'll get select streaming packages to make up the difference. It will be very satisfying to give DTV the boot since it clips out in heavy rain and I always have to brush snow off the dish in winter (if watching live, it will let you switch to streaming when the dish loses the signal, but that doesn't help recorded shows on the DVR and we mostly never watch live TV since we like to FF through the ads - they have a newer DVR than our Genie that might solve that, but every time you change something with DTV, you end up in another 2 year contract).

 

[gnappi]

Ah AT&T! The evil empire of communications.

I dropped AT&T way back when DSL was the game in town and decided that since my cell provider's (T-Mobile) generous hot spot allocation of 50 gigs it was practical to use it exclusively for my tablet and PC internet connections. The rest of my house TV, refrigerator, and whatever else could be connected is not!

 

[Randyzzz]

I've got Spectrum here in Southern Oregon and have no complaints. My wife works from home so we got the 1Gig service- but by the time it goes through the router, and bandwidth is taken up by the numerous security cameras, internet phone and such, I see a 300 speed running speed test. Still- fast enough and very reliable.

A couple of months ago I noticed utility workers checking the lines. I went out and "investigated". Turns out that being rural is going to pay off- we are in a designated "underserved" community and the govt gave a grant to upgrade the local service to fiber optic. Should happen this summer. We will see if that changes the speeds for the better.