Charter Launches 60 Mbps Service 299
ndogg writes "While other companies are throttling their services, and capping bandwidth, Charter Communications, the cable company, is launching a 60/5 Internet service, starting in St. Louis, MO. It's certainly not cheap, starting at 129.99 per month (add another 10 if it's not being bundled with television or phone.) Currently, it's the fastest down stream speed available, and being a cable company, they potentially have greater reach than FiOS." However, there may be a risk to putting too much money down on this service; Charter Communications as a company faces some serious financial problems right now. As reader Afforess writes, "rumors abound that Paul Allen may just cut his losses and run," by selling the company. (Allen is the majority stockholder.)
Why the lame upload? (Score:2, Interesting)
Meanwhile.. (Score:1, Interesting)
In Southeast Michigan... (Score:5, Interesting)
What a brilliant deal for Comcast. They get densely populated areas where their return on infrastructure investments are the best, and where more affluent people live, and Charter gets to handle all the heavy lifting of running a cable network in the hard to reach places.
I always wondered how that cherry-pick arrangement came to pass, if any of you know, please respond because that would perhaps enlighten us as to Charter's financial woes.
On the flip side of that, I visited a datacenter for Charter and it was really nice, obvious they spent alot on it.
Oh, and BTW, Charter filed Chapter 11 yesterday.
Re:I want the Upstream (Score:2, Interesting)
Also it really does not matter much. If they dont have 1TB pipe running to the headends for the 60Mbps services it's gonna be saturated within minutes.
Also, If most servers you connect to are no where near that it's a waste. Sites like slashdot and others throttle individual users to keep you from sucking it all up for everyone else.
And then with Charter hating P2P people, you wont get any faster Torrents.
My 1.2mbps DSL at home is as fast as Comcast's 5mpbs when it comes to downloads and video streaming. So if they gave me 900mbps down It wont make a difference.
Re:I want the Upstream (Score:1, Interesting)
...Why should the most powerful country on the Earth, home to Microsoft, Apple, AND Google, be behind ANYBODY on broadband internet services?
Re:I want the Upstream (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to brag - I actually fear what might happen if some worm or hacker gets access to such high-speed network...
Well that explains it... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd never realized that Paul Allen had anything to do with Charter, let alone ran it. I admit that I did very little homework on them before signing up... just enough to find out they were the only viable broadband option available to me where I live (DSL is too far from a switch and therefore very slow, there are no other cable companies in the municipality because of an exclusivity contract, and there's simply no way I can afford a T# or satellite connection). I also soon found out that they're ridiculously overpriced, have terrible customer support, routinely underserve their customers and can't even manage a channel numbering system that remotely reflects the actual FCC granted channels the networks broadcast over.
It figures that only a company run by a Microsoft exec could actually make my blood boil worse than Comcast.
Re:I want the Upstream (Score:2, Interesting)
As for pop. density, try Oz. Ours sucks even in the populated areas.
Re:Well that explains it... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have Charter and routinely have charges that don't add up. Only those $2 agent fees of course... agents that I never talk to because they don't know anything (although that's every ISP)? And once my Internet went down and after a few phone calls to Charter, they sent over a technician under the understanding that if it was due to a problem on my side of the network (I.e. cables, my LAN, etc.) then I would have a charge, however, if the problem lay on their end, they would not charge me. Turns out they accidentally disabled my connection... and then charged me a $35 dollar technician fee anyway. I was irate to say the least (we didn't have Internet for 3 days and they charged me for it!). I have constant outages, and my bills are routinely in the $75-$85 region, just for Internet. Why can't I go somewhere else? Because they are the only option.
Cable can compete against FIOS (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember all the naysayers about how cable was doomed and that docsis 3.0 was vaporware, FIOS was supposed to be the next big thing. Well it came to my area as one of the first places in the nation and "mehhhh" is all I have to say, but luckily our city council has their heads screwed on straight and demanded more speeds/options for their citizens. FIOS could blow them out of the water, but they hold back or you have to cough up big bucks to get real fiber speeds.
As far as I can see, FIOS has laid down the fiber and they are still withholding speeds in a lot of areas where service is available.
Alone head to head FIOS has faster speeds, but might be a little more expensive and you have to sign a damn contract with them for a couple years.
I found my ping to actually be better on cable than the same FIOS line coming into the home, roommate has FIOS and I have cable internet because triple package is cheaper.
TWC is doing the same thing nationwide with the implementation of docsis 3.0, since they skipped 2.0.
Although to be honest, 99% of the websites/server out there do not even supply the speeds close to max out the connection of fiber. Everyone on FIOS trying to download at max speed will never work, streaming already works pretty good and this will be a glory to P2p/Warez scene.