Your verdict on Charter ?

[Seeker47]

I understand that they are about to close the deal to purchase Time Warner Cable. (I'm using the latter for internet presently, not for tv service.) There was a time some years back, in another city than where I'm at now, where they became semi-notorious for certain cable service deficiencies. But I have no recent, relevant info. Are they any good ? Do they suck ? These mergers or acquisitions are often bad news for the consumer. It would be easy enough for me to make a change, after this deal goes through.

I will check places like DSLreports (which I think is not just for DSL . . . ?), but I'd like to field comments here as well.

[HemLok]

I have some pretty grave concerns about Charter. I wasn't happy about the proposed Comcast deal but as bad as I expected it to be I also foresaw some pluses like Comcast's DOCSIS 3.1 roll-out. Otherwise, Comcast worried me. Now we turn to Charter who doesn't have the clout that Comcast has. In order for the FCC to approve the acquisitionof TWC they had to not enforce data caps for 7 years after the merger. That concerns me in and of itself if that had to be a stipulation.

My "cable" company went through various owners having started as a small locally owned one way back when. Adelphia ended up taking it over and being awful. TWC actually managed to upgrade it and make things work better although I never felt their customer service was acceptable. With the failed attempt by Comcast to take over TWC everything changed, however. Going to the local TWC office to exchange a bad cable box was a 10 second process rather than the 2 hour one I had experienced in the past. The 1-2 hour service call windows. Frankly, TWC actually finally fixed its problems so for it to now be taken over by someone else simply angers me. They should have fixed all that stuff years ago. I fear Charter will drive everything into the ground, introduce caps as soon as possible, jack up prices, etc.

I'm holding my breath on this but I'm also preparing. I am not a cord cutter and for a bunch of reasons but if Charter does take over it may be time for me to say goodbye to cable TV. I'll just walk... no Dish, no DirectTV. I'll just live without. As for internet access, I cannot live on a connection via my cell plan so I'll need something. I'll probably switch to DSL again which, frankly, I don't want to do but I'm really that deadset against Charter. I've used DSL over the years but cable is better in multiple ways.

I still laugh every time I hear about how the deregulation of the cable industry improved competition and lowered prices. Really? Where? We have less cable companies now with them goggling each other up like the Big Banks and we don't, as users, get to select who we have as a provider. The local government where I live makes the deal. I have no say. And I ge to watch my bills go up every few months.

To summarize, my verdict is that I am gravely concerned and planning my exfil strategy.

PS: I also have friends who have used Charter over the years and none had anything good to say.

[Seeker47]

Thanks for your reply, HemLok. My past experience (elsewhere, but Adelphia --> TWC) mirrors yours. Similarly, the TWC office experience here -- say, when returning or exchanging a piece of equipment -- showed a huge improvement. But I just won't tolerate data caps, any decline in service quality, or major price spikes, if that's what Charter has in store. But, perhaps there will be some more choices coming. This headline sounds promising

http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/16/technology/gfast-internet-speeds/index.html

if it's not premature hype or vaporware. Verizon FIOS decided not to make the huge investment in fiber optic infrastructure in my area, which would have been required to offer that service here. Lack of adequate competition encourages mediocrity and gouging.

As a DirecTV subscriber, I'm far from convinced that the takeover by AT&T is shaping up to be a good thing. Certainly the prices have been only headed upwards. This despite all the supposed cord cutting that is going on.

[stonesfan129]

I have them for my ISP. I have the high-speed cable, no TV or phone. The price is pretty reasonable and I don't really have any issues with the service. In the last year I have lived at this location, I have had one service outage that was also affecting everyone else.

[Seeker47]

I recently had some issues with TWC, so I looked into whether Cox might be available as an alternative. Relatives about 20 minutes distant were right on the service boundary, and therefore able to choose either of those providers. But it turns out that Cox is not an option at my location. However, news reports suggest that this Gigafast service from AT&T is becoming established in more territories. Verizon FIOS decided not to invest here, a few years back, but perhaps AT&T will. Competition is quite important for consumers, though it seems to be diminishing in today's landscape.

[redwudz]

Probably better in Off Topic as it doesn't seem to be Latest news. Moving it.

Moderator redwudz

[Seeker47]

I'd like to reprise a similar question, this time in regard to Hughes Gen 4 Satellite service. (You've probably seen their commercials.) AFAIK, that is for internet service only. Did a thread keyword search here, but came up with no hits.

[stonesfan129]

I like Charter. I had some problems with their services when I lived with my parents. I'm out on my own now and their services have been great.

[Seeker47]

I'm not sure what happened regarding 'Charter': the name being used now for the TWC successor is "Spectrum." Simply a new name ? In any case, I had to call their tech support this morning, and it was better than expected.

[HemLok]

I'm not sure what happened regarding 'Charter': the name being used now for the TWC successor is "Spectrum." Simply a new name ? In any case, I had to call their tech support this morning, and it was better than expected.

Charter merged with TWC and Bright House Networks and the services will be marketed as Spectrum. The company remains Charter Communications.

Reference: https://www.charter.com/merger-twc

[HemLok]

Obviously, this thread is now dated but I felt like leaving some feedback. Yes, the deal went through with Charter and the cable and internet services are now marketed under the brand name Spectrum. I was prepared to jump ship but decided to wait for the transition and see how things go.

I received a notice in the mail of the upcoming change and some information. I don't remember exactly how things happened but I believe I called them to compare the plan I currently had under TWC and to see what Spectrum was offering at what price since their "packages" differed. I was never one to purchase the all-included high-end cable package. I've never actually had HBO, etc. I got by without it and watched whatever shows via alternative means either at a friend's house, later on DVD, etc. Anyway, going back and forth with the person I dealt with I wound up going with a plan that offered more including HBO and more channels, by far, than I previously had and I'm paying less than I did under TWC and it wasn't an introductory offer. That's the price. Now, that's not to say that come next year the rates won't go up later due to Spectrum making deals with networks, etc, but for now I'm impressed on pricing.

With respect to my cable internet service, I had previously been paying for the standard cable internet plus extra for enhanced speed. My package for faster speed was 30 Mb/s. TWC had offered 50 Mbit/s but it wasn't available where I am (?). Okay. Under Spectrum the default standard internet is 60 Mbit/s. Again, the pricing is lower than I was previously paying and it is truly 60 Mbit/s if not faster when doing speed checks.

Summation: When I made the transition which was maybe 2-3 months ago my monthly cost has gone down with more channel options and faster internet connectivity. That's great. The transition was seamless and didn't even require a reboot of cable boxes, etc. They simply updated something on their end that immediately changed everything. That said, I do feel that there are more issues with the cable TV. I find that I run into issues with some channels not wanting to work properly requiring a cable box reboot to fix be more frequent. I also have noticed what appears to myself and others to be lesser quality HD channel reception. Sure, it could be subjective but it's noticeable to people I know who are generally pretty blind at noticing differences in video or audio quality. So, what is causing that I do not know. For the time being since I am saving money over what I used to spend I am sticking with Spectrum until I have no need for it or I find something better.

On a sidenote, when I switched from TWC programming to Spectrum it was voluntary. I do not know when the push to the Spectrum plans becomes/became mandatory but I believe I have at least one friend who still hasn't made the switch and, frankly, I have no idea why they haven't.

[Seeker47]

Your report was most welcome, and any time lapse here on the posting is (certainly in this example) irrelevant.

My observations run generally parallel. I remain a DirecTV customer for the main, actual tv portion of my service. It remains the best quality tv service available to me. That said, their pricing creeps ever upward, to an excessive level now on a par with the old Adelphia cable back in L.A. -- also fraught with service issues -- at the time that I dropped them. (And gladly dropped L.A. also.) That said, so far I have periodically been able to negotiate with DTV, gaining a 6 month rollback on the most important part of the package. It's getting to be that time again, so I hope this pattern continues.

I also stuck with Spectrum for internet service, as it changed over from TWC. Curiously enough, a lot of their trucks around here are still labeled as TWC. There was a period of almost a year where we had to use this crappy, clunky adapter box to get the few tv channels that originally came bundled for free as a promo, on the last plan I had with TWC. After awhile, those were no longer free, and the price began ratcheting upwards. That tv portion of the service was only to a very small tv in the office, where I might occasionally have news or a ballgame on in the background while tending to computer chores like email. So, this was a convenience I did not really want to pay for -- optional but expendable.

Imagine my surprise when not long after Spectrum fully took over that they offered me a better version of that last TWC plan I had, at around a 1/3 reduction in price ! I mean, C'mon: gotta give that a try. And I have. They replaced that nasty, cheap adapter box with a full fledged cable receiver. Even gave me a choice of receiver models, so that I could choose one with the smallest footprint for my desk. There turned out to be some glitches in getting the new setup working for tv (no issues at all for internet), so they sent out a tech at no charge to resolve it, who provided a much reduced appointment window and was right on time. Internet speeds appear to be improved to an appreciable degree, but I have so little confidence in the accuracy or consistency of all of the speedtest thingies that I've tried that I think I would be very hard pressed to prove this. As far as the quality of the tv part, whatever you can get on a 7" tv picture renders this academic.

So far, my verdict is positive. At this point, they seem to be intent on making a good impression. I will monitor price changes and their service. If data caps or some other bad behavior should materialize one day, I can certainly switch to some alternative, although those options are not exactly plentiful.

The next thing I'm curious to check out is the Spectrum Android app, for possible streaming to one or another of my streaming boxes, such as the Fire TV, also equipped with a side-loaded Kodi. (The Spectrum streaming tv app has gotten not-so-good reviews.) This would only be as a possible backstop for DTV service problems, which are typically infrequent. If it works at all, great; if not, no biggie.

[HemLok]

Currently there are 4 TVs in the house that are actually used. For some time 2 were HDTVs with digital HD cable boxes and the other 2 used the digital to analog boxes you mentioned. During the transition period to all digital TWC waived the monthly lease price for those. That ended and they were like $2-3 a month. I was constantly having one issue or another with them. Spectrum is trying to do away with the boxes and I suspect it is for three reasons: (1) I found them to be a pain where they would stop working right and need a reboot far more frequently than a regular cable box, (2) using those boxes didn't allow access to all the channels you actually were paying for which sucked, and (3) once they started charging for them they were only making $2-3 a month off them. What they offer now is a full cable box that has all the connectors so they work on newer HDTVs or older non-digital non-HDMI TVs and now they change charge more for the box you lease every month.

Prior to the official move from TWC to Spectrum I returned an ancient cable box that I simply couldn't stand. It was too big, old, and acted like a space heater. I exchanged it for a Samsung box. Very nice new box that changes channels way faster and defaults to HD rather than tuning to SD and then kicking over to HD after a delay. Post transition to Spectrum I had to grab another box for a new HDTV that replaced one of my older TVs and they gave me a new box (Samsung) but not the same as the other 2 Samsung boxes that I have. In the convo the guy said they were doing away with the little digital to analog boxes and gave me the replacement for that and it's made by Cisco. Seems to work well and it's smaller than the rest as far as footprint and height.

On a sidenote, the Cisco box has a design flaw. The front LED panel uses blue light and you can have the display on or off. No dimmer option. When it's on it is ridiculous. In a bedroom it would cause issues sleeping. It'll light up the whole room in the dark. In a room with a TV it would be distracting because it's so bright. I ended up using a product called "Light Dims" to reduce the brightness. For those who don't know what Light Dims are, they are a tinted cling that you can put over something that you want to make less bright. It reduces the brightness by around 80%. Worked perfectly and still is completely readable. I've used the product for years with other things so I already had them on hand.

With respect to the Spectrum trucks they all went from TWC to Spectrum overnight where I am but I will note that for the time being they are still differentiating themselves because there is a lot of reference to TWC Spectrum since Spectrum encompasses Charter, TWC, and now Bright House. Over time I expect to see that slowly fade away.

The older TWC app was garbage, IMHO, and I would suspect the newer Spectrum app won't be much different. Although it would be nice if it wasn't. Thankfully I've never really had to use the app.

[Seeker47]

The older TWC app was garbage, IMHO, and I would suspect the newer Spectrum app won't be much different. Although it would be nice if it wasn't. Thankfully I've never really had to use the app.

In that case, I'll probably just skip it. Already pissed at how many hoops you have to jump through, just to d/l anything from the Google Play Store. Get to the end of filling out the form, and, uh . . . Hell NO, I'm not giving you my cell # ! (Among other info they don't need to have. I always give such forms my brother's birthday. ) Why? So that they can Robo-Spam me and give it out to third parties ?! Then just forget the whole thing ! It can lead me to seek out some apps from other sources, even at the risk they could have gotten tampered with.