Cable Internet Service Providers...Which One?

[doctorgonzo]

I'm going to be moving next month, and I am thinking of going the cable internet/IP telephony route to save money (and get away from the dialup service I have now). My local cable company will be Time Warner, and they have several services available: Road Runner, Earthlink, and max.inter.net (plus a couple others that I have no interest in using). Given the choices, which service provider would be best from a customer service/lack of hassle standpoint?

[ktkendall]

Does TimeWarner itself offer service?? I would go with them if possible since it's their cable that runs to your home. Thats why I choose verizon for my DSL cause ultimately I figured it's their phone line that the signal needs to come in on, and they have been a good choice thus far. Plus U should be able to get a bundled package for digital cable TV and high speed internet at a decent price....

[james8547]

I know people who subscribe to Road runner or earthlink. they seem to be happy with their connection. I can't personally comment since I use Optimum Online.

As for customer service, I wouldn't expect much from Time Warner. They were our cable provider back in NYC. We scheduled for a tech to setup our apartment for cable. they gave us a ridiculous time frame (something like from 8am to 6pm Monday). And guess what, the tech guy didn't show up. When we called them, they said that we're not home (which is a lie) and they rescheduled us next month.

[doctorgonzo]

I think that Road Runner is the service that usually comes with Time Warner cable; at least, that's how it used to be before TWC opened up their lines to competitors. There isn't any service offered by "Time Warner" in any case. In addition to the three I listed, there is AOL (not gonna happen) and Big Net ($5 more a month for nothing that I can see).

[mairving]

TW does offer service in their name but AFAIK only for business. I have used Roadrunner, which is TW home offering, for a few years and have mostly been happy with them. I would stay away from Earthlink. You can also get a discount on Cable/Internet if you use TW for both.

[RayH]

Check the terms of the actual service. There may be speed governors that are not apparent and in small print. But with all things given equal, I might go with with the service that has the smaller customer base. You get a better node.

[Rebel_526]

I have TW and use RR for internet, a nice package deal. I've had RR for my ISP for nearly 5 years, and let me tell you, I couldn't be happier!! I made the switch to cable after having DSL, what a difference! I have a faster connection, cheaper. My usual down speeds are upwards of 2Mb/s. Up, of course, is slower, somewhere around 850kb/s.

Many people complain that DSL is better than cable, but in my case, cable rocks! I see no significant drop in bandwidth at any time, day or night. It all depends upon how you cable company approaches the need to 'split' the local nodes. TW in my area will usually prepare to split a node when it reaches 50-60% capacity, then make the actual split around 80-85%. In this way, a node is always below capacity and therefore does not have bandwidth issues. However, as I understand it, that policy is a local decision, not nessassarily company policy......

[sdkfz]

I am just down the raod from you in temp digs (they say the town name stands for Every Day I Need Attention). I went with TW (Roadrunner) and have had one outage which was due to a MS AOL IM change that affected E mail only for a day or two and one 'other' outage that a reboot of the modem fixed.

The tech that installed was good and when we were having the AOL issues another one was very helpful and I just flagged him down!

Their software does NOT play well with AOL, but then that should not be a problem, a reg clean was required to fix that.

I work from home and transfer some pretty big files across (as high as 50 MB a day but usually more than 10 to 15).

[bigandy]

If you would like some more insight on which ISP would be the best for you, check out www.broadbandreports.com. It has forums on all the different ISP's as well as a multitude of reviews.

[sdkfz]

bigandy,

boy was that site snippity, did not like my firewalls and cookie refusal

[bigandy]

Sorry to hear that sdkfz. Maybe it's the link, did you try typing in the URL? Well, if you did and that still didn't work, I apologize. It's also unfortunate because the site does have a lot of good information.