Charter Spectrum Speed Increases

[Hall]

No, I'm not. Please read closer.

 

[radio]

We've never been under the time-warner name here. Always Charter, since 2004 at least when I came here.However, what you found is why I won't change. It's not fair, or logical to gain only 40 meg down, NO increase in upload speed (I was quoted 5 up with the 100) and pay almost three times the current rate! Can you see why I'm so angry at this company I could spit nails? $75 to $199 for a modest increase and no guaranteed UPLOAD increase is a total rip-off to existing customers.

Thanks for the research...it is appreciated.

 

[rad]

No, I'm not. Please read closer.

Sorry, thought you were responding to me and not Radio.

 

[EarDemon]

Charter is working hard on standardizing their entire offerings, you will get faster upload at some point. If you're a Business customer, you're best bet is contact your account rep to see what is available, if anything. I'm not sure how Charter worked, but with TWC, Business Class modem plans did not see the same increases as their consumer level counter parts, unless you contact your account rep and re-up'd the contract. I'm not sure your budget or needs, but a dedicated fiber circuit at 25 Mb symmetrical is $400/month and static IPs can be negotiated for no cost.

 

[Claude Greiner]

They are rolling out 1 gig. $105 bundled

Spectrum Internet Gig is free of data caps and contracts and includes Wi-Fi at no extra charge. Austin, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Kansas City, New York City, Raleigh-Durham and San Antonio are the newest markets to receive our gigabit speeds

 

[radio]

Charter is working hard on standardizing their entire offerings, you will get faster upload at some point. If you're a Business customer, you're best bet is contact your account rep to see what is available, if anything. I'm not sure how Charter worked, but with TWC, Business Class modem plans did not see the same increases as their consumer level counter parts, unless you contact your account rep and re-up'd the contract. I'm not sure your budget or needs, but a dedicated fiber circuit at 25 Mb symmetrical is $400/month and static IPs can be negotiated for no cost.

You can, then, in quoting costs understand that going from 60/3 at $75 with static IP to anything in their "scale" above that is not scaled accordingly in price. Even on the coax, going to $200 and only really gaining download is absolutely outrageous, especially when "new" customers are offered better. Nothing makes me angrier than no loyalty to the customers who have paid the bills long-term for a company when "new" people do better, just so a company's stockholders can be told, "we have X amount of NEW clients"..making their virtual pocketbooks look better. And, I can guarantee you in our location, fiber is not coming our way for a very LONG time. DSL in this area is copper-only and our backup JUST went to 6 meg down with less than 1-'up" a year or so ago.

 

[EarDemon]

Did you contact your business rep and ask about better speeds at more reasonable prices? As long as it’s not a promotional rate, I don’t see why you couldn’t get the same speeds at around the same prices that others pay in your area.

And there’s nothing saying that you couldn’t get dedicated fiber or you couldn't get a fiber build out in exchange for a 3 year contract from Charter. This is not a Verizon Fios type consumer fiber I’m talking about, it’s an enterprise grade dedicated circuit. I work in a small rural village and Time Warner has had fiber there for the better part of 10 years. The story I got from my predecessor is after years of looking for an alternative to the T1 line, Time Warner was able to extend the fiber to my building after they already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from a build out for the Verizon Wireless tower around the corner.

 

[radio]

I most certainly did contact them and was told that we are NOT considered for any specials, and specifically, that long term customers do not get any deals from Charter. End of their statement. I tried multiple times to ask why, and the operator reeled off that we're an (insert kind of customer..their terminology) not a new (insert their terminology again for new) customer. NO breaks, period. Was told I'd have to terminate service for 30 days to get any "specials"..PERIOD.

So, if residential can get "new" specials and better speeds, so be it. My apartment in the building just became "Apartment 1"...which it IS...and I'll order residential brought in on a separate line, separate bill. I don't feel badly at all about telling Corporate America to kiss my behind when it comes to them having ZERO loyalty to long term customers. My bet is that if they don't believe it's a residence, all they have to do is show up to see that it IS...in half the building, despite the fact the address pops up with a commercial service already existing.

It's unforgivable to not offer upgrades to a business customer of this many years, let alone if we WANT an upgrade ...finding it worse on the upload service than what the equivalent home customer is offered. Sad that internet services are not regulated by our state's Public Service Commission. THEY probably steer clear of it due to all the BS they'd have to deal-with in complaints, I'll bet.

 

[Hall]

Are you talking to your account manager or just a general, business-class CSR type ?

 

[radio]

Doesnt seem to matter. I've been bumped around from our "dedicated" person to others, no change. The fact is, Charter puts the screws to current customers in favor of new ones. They made that (politely but) significantly clear. They don't care about loyalty, they KNOW they're the only franchise in our town. What kind of company recommends you disconnect for 30 days if you want the "better" deal? That's unbelievable.

 

[EarDemon]

Doesnt seem to matter. I've been bumped around from our "dedicated" person to others, no change. The fact is, Charter puts the screws to current customers in favor of new ones. They made that (politely but) significantly clear. They don't care about loyalty, they KNOW they're the only franchise in our town. What kind of company recommends you disconnect for 30 days if you want the "better" deal? That's unbelievable.

I could not disagree more. Can’t say I have had the same experience. A couple weeks ago when I contacted our account manager, I hung up the phone with a huge smile on my face. I could not be happier, he took care of us better then I thought he’d be able. We are upgrading all of our data plans, including a nice upgrade to our main fiber connection that runs the company and we’ll be saving around $150/month for the privilege. My bosses are fully on board, just have to wait for legal to approve the contract.

From Charter currently we pay:

Fiber Services
$680 – 10Mb Symmetrical Fiber w/5 Static IPs
$375 – PRI
$140 – 10,000 Long Distance & International Minutes
$50 – 350 DIDs w/6 Toll Free Numbers
$225 – Taxes & Fees for Voice

$1470 – Total

DOCSIS Services
$100 – 50 Mb x 5 Mb w/1 Static IP
$100 – 50 Mb x 5 Mb w/1 Static IP
$80 – 10 Mb X 1 Mb
$25 – Local Only Voice Line w/Private Listing
$25 – Local Only Voice Line w/Private Listing
$30 – Taxes & Fees for Voice
$7 – Taxes on 1 50x5 connection

$367 – Total

$1837 – Company Total

New Pricing

Fiber Services
$600 – 50Mb Symmetrical Fiber w/5 Static IPs
$345 – PRI
$100 – 10,000 Long Distance & International Minutes
$36 – 350 DIDs w/6 Toll Free Numbers
$??? – Taxes & Fees for Voice, TBD, but slightly less then what we pay now.

DOCSIS Services
$100 – 100 Mb x 10 Mb w/1 Static IP
$100 – 100 Mb x 10 Mb w/1 Static IP
$100 – 100 Mb X 10 Mb
$40 – Voice Line w/Private Listing
$40 – Voice Line w/Private Listing
$00 – Taxes & Fees for Voice
$7 – Taxes on 1 100x10 connection

$387 – Total

~$1680 – Preliminary Company Total

 

[radio]

Lucky you. Not in this area, and definitely NOT happy. Glad for you, however. Enjoy.

You used the "F" word, FIBER...not in this area. But, if you're up for discussion, defend Charter's offerings to consumers being better than businesses with a long history, including Chater's offering better tiers and options to consumers than us. I call it raking the small business over the coals, and Fiber's LONG away from this area with them. It's in LIMITED downtown locations for business, but not two miles out. They KNOW they have us, and for that, I find no defense in not rewarding loyalty with at LEAST what consumers are offered without being "taken advantage of". (not the words I wanted to use.)

 

[king3pj]

Lucky you. Not in this area, and definitely NOT happy. Glad for you, however. Enjoy.

You used the "F" word, FIBER...not in this area. But, if you're up for discussion, defend Charter's offerings to consumers being better than businesses with a long history, including Chater's offering better tiers and options to consumers than us. I call it raking the small business over the coals, and Fiber's LONG away from this area with them. It's in LIMITED downtown locations for business, but not two miles out. They KNOW they have us, and for that, I find no defense in not rewarding loyalty with at LEAST what consumers are offered without being "taken advantage of". (not the words I wanted to use.)

I wonder how much of this is a CSR just not understanding what is going on. I am also in Michigan and over the last couple weeks I got both my home and my family's small business internet upgraded from 60 down 5 up to 100 down 10 up with no additional charge. All they had to do was change the tag on our accounts from NPP to SPP and the speed increase was instant. I do think it sucks that they don't do this automatically but it wasn't all that much of a hassle to get done. If you talk to another CSR I would just ask them to switch you to SPP and hopefully they will know what that means.

We don't have fiber at the office and our speeds obviously aren't symmetrical. I don't know whether we have a static IP address or not since nothing we use the internet for requires it. I'm not sure whether 10Mbps upload is enough for your needs or not but it's worked out nicely for us. The upgrade made our monthly full reset of our Carbonite server backup go from something that took 4.5 days to complete down to a little over 2 days. We have much smaller incremental backups upload every night but the monthly reset was a real killer on 5Mbps upload.

Edit: I'm not sure how much we pay for the internet portion of our bill but we also have 4 voice lines through Charter and I think we pay about $220 total. We have had Charter at our office for years since switching from AT&T 6Mbps DSL and traditional phone service so I'm pretty sure we aren't on any promotional pricing.

 

[radio]

10 meg would be a perfect upload.
I'll try again! If it works, I'll be very grateful.
Just wonder what the charge will be. It's a different "tier" than they described to me for nearly $200.

 

[old corps]

So glad I happened to wander into this thread. Just made the call & went from 60/5 to 100/10 in a few minutes of my time for no more $$$! First speed test is 94.46/11.46, excellent! I'm in Michigan, north of Flint.

 

[old corps]

Second test was 110.1 down & 11.48!

 

[Hall]

On a really good, your upload won't go any higher but your download should hit 116-117. 94, 110, etc are nothing to complain about either though !

 

[Jhon69]

I read somewhere that you may have to upgrade your modem to get 100 mbps. My area is supposed to have 100-yet with my old modem I'm still testing at 63-65. Time to pay them a visit tomorrow.

Had some techs come out the other day and that is true they changed out my modem but the CSR I called told me they could increase my speed over the phone now that I have the upgraded modem but I would lose my $15. WiFi discount.

So I will wait till August 2018 to go up to 100MB/5MB service,unless they keep giving me discounts.

 

[primestar31]

So glad I happened to wander into this thread. Just made the call & went from 60/5 to 100/10 in a few minutes of my time for no more $$$! First speed test is 94.46/11.46, excellent! I'm in Michigan, north of Flint.

I just contacted Spectrum, and they also said our area (a little more North of you) also now has 100Mbps speeds. He is going to mail me a new modem, and I will be upgraded to the new speeds at NO monthly price increase ($64.99 internet-only (including free Epix) right now). That works fine for me!

 

[EarDemon]

Charter announced a slew of gig (well 940 Mb) markets last week Thursday, including mine. My buddy that is a manager gave me a heads up a few days prior to the launch was going to schedule an installation, but I've been pretty much living at work the past few weeks and my Spring road trip planned for next week. My wife who will be home, won't be able to tell the difference between 140 Mb and 940 Mb, so I figured why bother doing it now, since I won't be around to take advantage of it. I have it unofficially scheduled for May 12.

940Mb Down x 40 Mb up for $115/month with bundling discount and $200 install fee. The one thing I'm not a fan of is the only D3.1 modems in stock in my area is the Technicolor TC4400. These are not MTAs, so phone customers need a two modem solution again like their early days of D3. There is one D3.1 MTA mentioned on their website, but it probably will be hard to come by for a while. Besides not wanting more clutter on my desk and running out of outlets on my second UPS I'd really rather not have my incoming cable split more times then absolutely necessary.