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The Internet Technology

Charter Raises Base Internet To $80 a Month; Price Hikes To Hit 9.5M Users (arstechnica.com) 84

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
Charter is raising prices on Spectrum home Internet service by $5 a month starting today, a company spokesperson confirmed to Ars. Standalone broadband prices are rising to $79.99 a month for 300Mbps download speeds, $99.99 a month for 500Mbps, and $119.99 a month for 1Gbps. 300Mbps is the advertised download speed for Charter's entry-level tier. From a report: The price increase takes effect today in most of Charter's 41-state territory, the company said. It affects broadband-only customers and broadband users who also subscribe to a Spectrum streaming TV package, but not cable TV customers. "The price for Spectrum Internet reflects the cost of delivering the best value in broadband for your family: 300Mbps starting speeds with no modem fees, data caps or contracts," the company said. Charter also said this is its first price increase on standalone broadband since December 2020. Customers currently on a promotional rate will keep paying that rate until the promotion expires. They'll pay the new, higher regular rate after that.
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Charter Raises Base Internet To $80 a Month; Price Hikes To Hit 9.5M Users More

Charter Raises Base Internet To $80 a Month; Price Hikes To Hit 9.5M Users

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  • Monopolies be like (Score:4, Insightful)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @04:49PM (#63016559)
    "I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further"

    • Re:Monopolies be like (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @05:20PM (#63016687)
      This is what happens when there is no competition. I have exactly 2 choices: Charter/Spectrum and DSL from the local phone monopoly who advertises 100Mbps but can only actually deliver 30Mbps in the area where I live.

      • Re:Monopolies be like (Score:4, Informative)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @05:32PM (#63016763)

        It is a 7% price increase, which is less than inflation.

        In real terms, we're getting a price cut.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by kenh ( 9056 )

            We've had numerous federal programs that threw money at the poor people's internet bills, some contributing as much as $50/month to a subscriber's bills... Free Money like these programs offer have the effect of enabling carriers to raise rates, since a great number of subscribers are paying less out-of-pocket.

          • How much have they expanded that infrastructure someone else paid for?

            Itâ(TM)s easy to say somewhere is cheaper because your taxes effectively paid for it already. Comcast charges us the $60 for gigabit. There is fiber providers out there but they refuse to service us because there arenâ(TM)t enough customers on our street.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Customer: Why is my Internet bill more than it was last month?
          Charter: We cut prices

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
            Well if support took the time to explain, and the costumer took the time to listen theabove conversation extract would look a lot less ridicules, but I'm aren't I?

      • Up until a few months ago, I had the choice of Charter/Spectrum. My internet crapped out at least daily (literally - it reset every hour or so most days), sometimes multiple times per hour.

        Then AT&T started running fiber in my area. Switched immediately. Have not regretted switching for a minute.

        Just yesterday, got a message from Charter offering a new, faster cheaper service. Slower than my AT&T service, mind you. And more expensive, to boot.

        Their advert went into the garbage bin on the way

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        At least your DSL's speeds are better than 1 Mbs/384 Kbs over here when I last checked a few years ago. Now, it's no service. Not even copper landline phone! Cable wins in this rural area. :(

      • This is what happens when there is no competition. I have exactly 2 choices: Charter/Spectrum and DSL from the local phone monopoly who advertises 100Mbps but can only actually deliver 30Mbps in the area where I live.

        You're correct. I live in my state's largest metropolitan area and we have competition here. I've bounced back and forth between AT&T and Comcast for years. Comcast really has the better offering right now and they value my business, although years ago they did not so I left them, and I've been with them for the last 3 years. Charter has a bit of a monopoly on the smaller towns in my state and the only real alternatives in my hometown are mobile offerings like T-Mobile and apparently Verizon alo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )
        I have exactly two choices as well. Xfinity, and local DSL. Local DSL can only provide 3Mbps down. Xfinity just raised our download from ~200Mbps to ~900Mbps. Our upload speed is still 5Mbps, and we still have the datacap(unless we pay to uncap), but lack of competition doesn't always mean they stop trying completely. I'm sure it's not altruistic. I imagine it's at least partially being done to encourage paying to uncap, or renting their equipment without a cap. It's also good publicity for their network im

      • This is what happens when there is no competition. I have exactly 2 choices: Charter/Spectrum and DSL from the local phone monopoly who advertises 100Mbps but can only actually deliver 30Mbps in the area where I live.

        I live in a close-to-rural but still technically suburban area where, a rarity, we have two cable companies, and they have to compete against each other; Charter and a smaller carrier. I've stuck with the smaller carrier for years, even with Charter sending me letters trying to lure me away with a cheaper 12 month rate. I know what will happen, though... if enough people jump to Charter, the other company is run out of town, and then everyone's rates suddenly go up because we have no choice anymore. I don't

      • You forgot the satellite services, millions of us have no wired options. My HughesNet is $89 a month and capped at 50 GB. Starlink will be available next year and I have made my $99 deposit. Service will be $110 a month but I will have enough bandwidth to stream a few shows a month.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Seriously, is this really that big an issue?

      People currently paying $75/month are being asked to pay $80/month - wow. We're living in a period where inflation is running 8% year-over-year, this increase is about 7%.

      When was the last time Charter raised it's prices?

  • Meanwhile in Romania (Score:3, Informative)

    by andrei.paduraru ( 1009099 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @04:56PM (#63016593)
    1 Gbps from Digi is 8$ ... Honestly, the internet prices in US (both mobile and fiber) seem exagerated.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by nightflameauto ( 6607976 )

        It's not just internet access. It's everything. We literally have some weird moral authority trick where we've decided, as a society, that companies, corporations, and other big-money movers have a moral and ethical obligation to squeeze as much money as possible out of the people using their services or buying their products. It's the only thing that we seem to value on a societal level. Freedom? The moves after 9-11 prove we don't give a shit about freedom. Privacy? Apparently we never did care about that

        • I wish I lived in a country where value as a person counted

          Have you considered moving?

          If you do, you may be disappointed. It sounds like what you really want is "cheap stuff" rather than being "valued as a person," You are delusional if you think that Romanians have a better life than Americans just because their Internet is cheap.

          Disclaimer: I have lived in several countries and currently live and work in the Philippines.

          • If you do, you may be disappointed.

            Doubt it. There's a reason the USA ranks lowly on the happiness index.

            It sounds like what you really want is "cheap stuff" rather than being "valued as a person,"

            Why does it sound like that to you? Are you projecting your own thoughts into the conversation? He at no point said he values wanting cheap stuff, that's entirely your imagination.

            You are delusional if you think that Romanians have a better life than Americans just because their Internet is cheap.

            He never mentioned Romania and wasn't talking about the quality of life there.

            Disclaimer: I have lived in several countries and currently live and work in the Philippines.

            You should consider moving to a country with a better medical system. They may be able to help you with those voices in your head you keep projecting into other people's conversations.

          • I don't want cheap stuff. I want life to mean something more than accumulation of wealth. As for moving? HA. Who wants a decentish PHP rapid/rabid developer in another country that's spent his whole life trying to rat-race his way into something stable before the next change-order comes along? Since I'm not independently wealthy, there's no chance I'll get to move out of country anytime soon. Hell, there's barely a chance I could move in-country anytime soon.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Only seeing this from the outside, but it seems capitalism US style is just as much about exploiting the people as much as possible as is communism USSR style. One is a more distributed approach, the other a more monolithic, but in the end it is all about the same thing. Of course neither perversion would be possible if people were a bit more perceptive and not so easy to manipulate. Bud sadly, they are not.

          That said, there are countries where things are a bit better and money is seen more as a necessary ev

        • Saw two pithy comments recently:

          Main St. built America,
          Wall St. robbed it.

          The best thing about America is Capitalism.
          The worst thing about America is Capitalism.

      • Iâ(TM)m in a rural village on an island off the west coast of Sweden with 300Mb symmetric fiber for about 40 USD/month. American Internet is a sick joke.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cb88 ( 1410145 )
      It's because the US has several problems, regulations lobbied for by ISPs have prevented competition, and also prevent infrastructure sharing.
      Also the US is on average much more spread out than any european country... its BIG. And density of the population in 50% of the US is quite low.

    • I agree 100% that internet is generally overpriced in the US, but it is also helpful to keep in mind the differences between earnings within the countries. I imagine average salaries in Romania are lower than those in the US, so it would make sense for companies to price their services at a level the average person can afford.

  • Meanwhile (Score:5, Informative)

    by damicatz ( 711271 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @05:00PM (#63016607)

    Charter spent $5.3 billion last year in stock buybacks to pad their executive wallets and still managed to make $8.6 billion in free cash flow.

    Spare me the bullshit about inflationary pressures.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      The inflationary pressure is obvious. Everything else is getting more expensive due to inflation, regardless of whether anyone's costs rise or not, so a lot of companies are making money hand over fist by 'inflating' their prices.

      Of course Charter can't stay behind on that free money!

    • Inflation eats into expected earnings. They have to raise rates to keep the cash cows milking to the right amount. The one advantage for your Internet is that like your water it's something necessary anymore, and they have a particularly good spot where that 40% that are affected by this price rise are the ones that don't have a choice for an alternate provider, and if they do those companies are in a backroom deal to raise rates in tandem so as not to affect their duopoly.

      This is America, we are turnips, t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        This is America, we are turnips, they want our blood.

        Your grasp of turnip biology is alarmingly poor.

  • Given current inflation, raising a price from 75 to 80 is not much -- 6.6% is not that big a deal.

    But bragging how it is the first increase since Dec 2020 is kind of scummy. Two years is a SHORT time for a price increase, not something to brag about.

    Worst of all the constant attempt to pressure people into buying cable tv is also pretty unethical.

    • Re:$5/$75 is not much. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @05:11PM (#63016647) Homepage

      Considering Comcast lowered their price to $20 a month for their entry level (from which I'm getting 86 Mbps down, 12 Mbps up), I'd say Charter raising theirs to $80 is bad.

      • I pay $45/month for bonded ADSL from Ziply Fiber; 20 Mbps down, 1.5 Mbps up. I only WISH Comcast would run a cable to my house! Ziply bought Frontier which bought GTE; I believe I still have a copper phone wire box that says GTE on it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        Considering Comcast lowered their price to $20 a month for their entry level (from which I'm getting 86 Mbps down, 12 Mbps up), I'd say Charter raising theirs to $80 is bad.

        You did notice that the Spectrum services we're discussing are a bit faster than your Comcast offering:

        Standalone broadband prices are rising to $79.99 a month for 300Mbps download speeds, $99.99 a month for 500Mbps, and $119.99 a month for 1Gbps. 300Mbps is the advertised download speed for Charter's entry-level tier.

        The only way I see Comcast offering $20/month ISP service is as a six month introductory rate, not a regular rate.

    • I have only had one price increase in the 7 or 8 years I have been with my provider. That was when I decided to increase my speed. At least we have some competition up here in the Great white north.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      You don't raise prices because of inflation. Inflation occurs when prices are being raised. Exactly the opposite.

      If their costs aren't rising, then they have no reason to increase their prices other than "We can get away with raising our prices because everyone does."

      Although in Charter's case, they might have a raise in energy costs.

      • Inflation occurs when prices are being raised.

        Inflation happens when the supply of money goes up without the supply of "things to buy with money" going up. Like when you decide to print a couple trillion dollars for no other reason than you want to be able to spend a couple trillion dollars more (or you want to convince people to vote for you).

        Price increases are NOT necessarily caused by inflation, though it's the way to bet till you've checked the details.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Given current inflation, raising a price from 75 to 80 is not much -- 6.6% is not that big a deal.

      But bragging how it is the first increase since Dec 2020 is kind of scummy. Two years is a SHORT time for a price increase, not something to brag about.

      Worst of all the constant attempt to pressure people into buying cable tv is also pretty unethical.

      Two years of "Putin's Price Hikes" since 2020 takes us well beyond the current year's 8% interest rate (dec. 2020 - dec 2021, then dec 2021 - dec 2022), and their increase over that 2 year period is only 6.66%

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eth1 ( 94901 )

      And yet where I live, Frontier fiber *lowers* their prices every 6 months or so...

      I literally have to call them about once a year to poke them into switching to the new plan with the same speed/lower price, except for the once or twice where they'd deprecated the speed I was on, and "had" to move up to faster for the same price.

  • And this month I got my bill and it was $75. No warning. It was not a trial period or anything like that. They could at least send out a fucking e-mail. That still seems pretty expensive. They're about to get overbuilt by a FTTH provider here, so they should be thinking twice about treating their customers like shit.

    • We had the same thing happen, but T-Mobile Home Internet was available. When I called Spectrum to disconnect, they offered me the $49.95 teaser rate for another year.

  • In Slovakia (somewhere in Europe), I've 600/30 Mbps + wifi modem rental for 18$ month, no caps. This put your price hike in perspective - they are ripping you off.

    • And the average income there is less than a quarter of the US. You can't really compare costs without also factoring in earning power.

  • So what do you think they are gonna buy with the extra 47.5 million a month? My guess is hookers and blow for the board members.
    • They are in the process of embarking on a nationwide upgrade project. They are planning to bring the downstream to 1 GHz across their whole footprint, and also migrate to a high split architecture rather than sub-split, which will increase the upstream from 5-42 MHz to 5-205 MHz. This, combined with DOCSIS 4.0 should let them offer 1 Gbps downstream and something pretty close to that upstream - if not symmetric.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Do you think the workers are being paid the same wages as they were in Dec. 2020, their last rate increase?

      Are their servers, routers, switches etc still priced the same as Dec 2020?

      Isn't the federal government promising to raise their tax rate to make sure they "pay their fair share" in income taxes?

      I think the $45M/month has been spoken for well before the "hookers and blow"...

  • I have an ancient Charter plan for $32/month that they have failed to raise the price on for... maybe 10 years? It is something like 30Mb/s down and 3Mb/s up, and is plenty for my needs. It will be interesting to see if they leave me alone or not...

  • My first contract with Charter years ago was for 450 Mbps for $45/month for 2 years. I quit when they raised the price to $60/month. Then AT&T fiber arrived in my neighborhood, and I have 1 Gbps for $73/month.

    I switched my mother from Charter to Verizon 5G Home, which delivers faster speeds than Charter for $50/month.

    It is likely that they are increasing prices in parts of the country where they have no competition. Given that the cost of delivering broadband is decreasing as astronomically more capacit

    • I"m strongly considering dropping Spectrum (Charter) for Verizon 5G for my home internet needs, especially considering I already have Verizon cell service, they keep hitting me over the head with a special and with Spectrum raising prices (again) I think now's the time. I've always been wary of cell service as an ISP but I'm guessing times have changed since last time I considered, about ten years ago.

  • We get unlimited 300mbps fiber for USD $46.72 per month.
    • You also have the cutest Prime Minister in the world. Honestly, I can't think of anything bad to say about New Zealand; I've love to live there myself, but I would need to work there for 2 years to establish eligibility for health care. Mind if I crash on your couch for a while?
  • So there is no longer any valid reason to not go ahead and get Starlink instead! Thanks, Charter!
    • Except that latency and bandwidth are both worse than cable, monthly price will be higher (though not by much) and equipment will cost more. Starlink is good if there are no other alternatives, but they aren't really competing with cable (yet).
      • On its website, Starlink says users should expect download speeds of 50 to 200Mbps, upload speeds of 10 to 20Mbps, and latency of 20 to 40 ms. Comcast is about 30-35 ms. Starlink is $110/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $599, so cheaper than the highest tier of Charter. You're correct about the upfront costs being much higher for Starlink; I'd rather own my own equipment than rent it anyway, that isn't an option with my current provider.
        • I still think anything wireless will have latency issues that cable won't, and that $110 per month, at least on Cox, can get you gigabit speeds if you are willing to sign a contract. Where you probably do come out ahead is on the data cap. Starlink has no cap, whereas Cox (in most areas) has one. I'm in an area where the cap is waved, but if they ever implement a data cap on my service, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
          • Light travels about 31% slower in fiber optic networks than in free space and 30% slower in copper cable, but probably the real source of latency in a cable network is all the switches the signal has to go through. In other words, your mileage may vary; your cable network may have better or worse latency than Starlink, but I don't think they are that far apart in latency. Higher orbit satellite systems like Hughesnet do have much higher latency, and are really only useful for streaming.
  • I already pay Spectrum $79.99/mo for 200Mbps. And that's AFTER they "upgraded my service for free". If they'd like to roll that 300Mbps out to me, I'd be glad to take it.

  • Shit Is Going To Hit The Fan (Score:3)

    by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @07:43PM (#63017181) Homepage

    It's clear this is traditional cable trying to protect it's utterly dying original market of cable television. I mean retransmission disputes and networks disappearing from subscription TV is only going to increase. Content providers want more money...service providers fight to keep the fees low so they keep more of the price increases. Used to be the cable companies had *some* footing here. The threat of subscribers leaving your service for a competitor was enough to make a deal come through; the content providers needed those cable subscriptions to get their content out.

    But this is the world of streaming. These same content providers don't need the cable companies to deliver their content; they can extract the money directly from the subscriber with a much higher return. So there's less incentive to actually come to an agreement. Places like Disney can say "take it or leave it"; and Disney will gladly tell all those affected "Disney+ has all of that and more".

    This..in turn...causes major issues for the cable company. As they refuse to carry channels and make their linear service less attractive...people are going over to streaming...which...ooops; they also provide through the internet. Well...you can't expect a company to cut off it's own foot can you? Well...yes; I do. But they refuse. So you get fights over neutrality as they throttle/block competitors; increased fees for not having TV service; and quotas that somewhat attempt to force you to not stream.

    At what point do the same content providers...who refuse to come to carriage agreements with a cable company, turn around and start fighting against them for blocking access to their service...or "interfering with our ability to do business".

    Could we start seeing media companies that don't sell internet start to fight for neutrality? Probably not. We're all screwed. In five years we'll only be remembering how good our internet is as the new quota for the month gets lowered to an email.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eth1 ( 94901 )

      We need legislation that forbids any one company from doing more than one of content creation, content distribution, connectivity, or last-mile physical infrastructure, and forbids exclusive deals between those layers.

      Disney would have to ditch its streaming service, and would have to deal evenly with all the other services.
      Netflix and Amazon would have pick between content creation and delivery. (most likely spin off their content creation to separate companies)
      The telecoms would have to pick between conne

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DewDude ( 537374 )

        I mean...I'm pretty sure they all fought for legislation against this idea. There were major concerns back in the 90's over retransmission fees for local channels. The idea was to cater to the local broadcasters by providing a legal mechanism to prevent providers from carrying out-of-market channels and make sure small channels had equal chance to get carried. People brought up the idea that "what if they don't come to an agreement". But the idea of a disagreements even occurring was brushed off as "somethi

  • I admit that this is a single data point with very specific circumstances, but I'd love to only pay $100/month.

    For work, I require fast internet. My family moved to a new home that is great for everything except internet. Charter refused to even consider it, and the DSL provider is crap, so now I have a 5 year contract for ~$400/month for the fiber that Lumen/CenturyLink installed (incidentally, they're also the DSL provider).

    My employer subsidizes it, and it's definitely the result of choices I've made,

  • I never asked them for more speed. 300 mbps(I actually get up to about 500mbps when they aren't under load) is just too much and I have no choice in paying for bandwidth I don't need. Charter needs lower speed tiers so the average consumer isn't paying too much for internet access.
  • That's just fine. AT&T should be done installing fiber in my neighborhood by the time my promotional rate runs out. Then their slow, unreliable internet will be a fading memory of the past.

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