My thoughts too. However, I live in a Charter serviced area and when doing my research when switching from ATT, I noticed they only offer 1 speed. There are no tiers. 1 speed, 1 price
Also, I just looked up a price quote for Troy (near city hall) and noticed they indicate their speeds start at 100Mbps for 39.99. Granted you said they live out farther, but they may be able to get more.
My wife's internet at her studio was recently doubled, but only after we called. They said they needed to see if her modem was "too old". It wasn't and they doubled it on the spot. She has a business account for that one.
DSL sucks. I'm sure our local ATT has lost the vast majority of it's DSL users in the past few years because of rollout problems. Their fast connection is around 20mbit/s download and around 2mbit/s up. Our cable company is offering 50mbit/s down 5mbit/s up for the same price. The cable company is also offering 100mbit, 200mbit, 500mbit, and 1gbit connections too. On top of that they offer phone service at half the price.
I'm most depressed by the "fast forward to 2006" part of this article, where they mention 3-6 Mbps service being delivered.
Fast forward to 2013, AT&T will still not offer anything faster than 3Mbps DSL to my home, and they charge a princely sum for it.
I can get 30/4 from Charter for the price of that 3Mbps DSL, but Charter's customer service is so awful that it makes AT&T look like Zappos or Nordstrom.
Chicago suburb. $120 for 50/10. I have one other option, but I stopped doing business with AT&T a decade ago. I agree this is better speed for the price than yours, but only marginally. Areas with affordable, reliable, fast broadband are the exception, not the rule. There are very few areas with competition.
In Atlanta I have the option for ether 100mbps Comcast, or 35mbps ATT, sure other city’s have different offerings however Comcast is my ONLY fast option for myself.
We have two options for high speed internet here. AT&T and Comcast. Comcast is the only option that gets me above 10Mbps.
The only alternative on the horizon? AT&T's new service. At least that'll be a viable alternative to Comcast, but it's still hardly what one could call variety.
Where do I live? Atlanta, in the city limits, less than three miles from the heart of the city.
Yep I'm in the same boat. My apartment complex has its own ISP, whose max available speed is 6mbps with a 150gb cap. Outside of the complex, at least Charter is available, which is 60mbps. The kicker? I pay $46/mo and Charter's offering is $40. Even if it's introductory that's still worth it.
I would actually pay more than I already do to get better internet through my complex, but I literally can't. Bloom Broadband is terrible.
You're lucky that ATT is offering any wired Internet service in your area. I know highly urbanized ATT areas where they offer no wired service. They pulled DSL and put nothing in its place. Fortunately there is another monopolistic wired Internet provider serving the area, but with little competition the pricing is suboptimal from the consumer perspective.
I'm with Charter, 30Mbit down 5Mbit up at a not too outrageous price. I typically see 32-33Mbit down in actual use (sustained). 60Mbit down is available but is still too expensive for my use. They don't cap your bandwidth at this time either. Their customer service really isn't that bad in my experience. They haven't hesitated to send out techs to look into potential line problems. They've swapped out modems (leased) on request. They proactively send out hardware when upgrading (DOCSIS 2.0 to 3.0 for example) so that consumers are ready ahead of time etc. They certainly aren't perfect but my other option is AT&T which is atrocious in this area and has trouble providing their top speed U-Verse. My only complaints with Charter are with their television packages which stink and are overpriced. I'm pretty sure that's only partially their fault.
I live in a small town in Georgia and literally my only internet access options are Comcast and AT&T. AT&T's service here is fairly slow compared to Comcast's offerings, and since I work from home remote for a company based in Florida I have to choose the fastest options available to me, and that's Comcast. I would love to have more options, but I just don't.
I only pay for internet access, I don't use their cable TV or telephone offerings. Internet alone is about $80/month. I just ran a speed test and I get 14.1Mbps down & 8.6Mbps up. I forget which speed tier I'm paying for, but I know I'm paying for much more than that! Ugh...
I mean it sounds like you don’t live in a town? I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect service providers to string an extra mile of cable just for one customer.
There’s always going to be trade offs in living location.
My immediate thoughts exactly. The other competitor in my area currently can't go beyond 12 mbps down while TWC offers 20 mbps down and more.
There was a young upstart I had high hopes for, but I was out of their area. They are http://www.widerangebroadband.net/ and their customer service was great, but unfortunately I'm just outside their area at the moment.
You’d have to ask AT&T. The markup says AT&T is offering slower service for the same price. So if I had to guess they are moving older equipment to neighborhoods with people less likely to have the time or energy to complain.
I live in the triangle area. My broadband options are limited. An excerpt I wrote nominating my municipality for Google Fiber for Communities:
Though there are many technology workers here, the area has limited Internet access providers, primarily BellSouth DSL and Time Warner cable, both of which have higher prices, yet offer less bandwidth compated to providers in other regions.
For example, Comcast advertises (in Santa Clara, CA) 15 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up (w/PowerBoost) for $42.95 per month, after a six-month intro of $19.99.
By comparison, Time Warner Cable offers only 10 Mbps down, 512 Kbps up for $64.90 per month, after a six-month intro of $39.90/month. Two-thirds the bandwidth for 1.5x the cost, nevermind that I can't even get higher speed if I wanted to.
DSL is even worse. I can't get BellSouth's website to tell me what DSL options are available at my address, but att.com advertises 6 Mbps DSL for $42.95 per month after a 12-month intro of $24.95. AT&T U-verse is not yet available to me either.
Now look what Wilson, NC, 60 miles to the east, offers to its residents:
I live in a large US city and have one cable provider as my only viable high speed option. The dsl provider which I would have preferred hasn't upgraded the last 50 meters of lines going to my house, and said they had no plans to. The top speed they could offer me was 3Mbps.
EDIT: In comparison, the same dsl provider on streets that have had their lines upgraded offers 100Mbps plans for about $30 less per month than the cable provider. So some homes actually do enjoy a little healthy competition, but it hasn't been enough to cause any changes in the cable plan pricing yet :(
Not available in my area. I've looked into the options extensively and the only thing in my exact area other than TWC is AT&T DSL and I'm pretty far from their closest central office here so the speeds would be the absolute minimum.
Also, I just looked up a price quote for Troy (near city hall) and noticed they indicate their speeds start at 100Mbps for 39.99. Granted you said they live out farther, but they may be able to get more.
My wife's internet at her studio was recently doubled, but only after we called. They said they needed to see if her modem was "too old". It wasn't and they doubled it on the spot. She has a business account for that one.
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