High Speed Internet

[Tivoman44]

With Time Warner going to Comcast to then give Milwaukee to Charter, I have been debating trying another high speed internet.  

Other than AT&T Uverse, are there any good deals for DSL or other high speed services in the Milwaukee area.  Do you need a phone line with DSL?  If anyone has DSL, how much do you pay a month and how fast is it?  Do they have tech support with techs that arrive within a day to fix any problems?

[budda]

I would say as far as a tech coming out. Maybe? Also try Milwaukee PC. If you need a tech out that often you have other problems. I have had DSL and cable. But for the most part cable. Other then installation, I have never had a tech out. Since 1998. So if you feel a need to call for help try utube there are video's on how to trouble shoot stuff. JMO. Also IMO DSL sucks sucks! Cable is faster, better! Good luck.

[Jack 1000]

With Time Warner going to Comcast to then give Milwaukee to Charter, I have been debating trying another high speed internet.  

Other than AT&T Uverse, are there any good deals for DSL or other high speed services in the Milwaukee area.  Do you need a phone line with DSL?  If anyone has DSL, how much do you pay a month and how fast is it?  Do they have tech support with techs that arrive within a day to fix any problems?

My concerns would be the following:

DSL is slower than cable High Speed Internet.  We had some Intermittent problems with TWC Internet two days ago, but over the long haul for the last five years- (since getting my own modem and router,) speeds and reliability have been excellent.

I had DSL in the past with a crappy ISP Phoenix Internet years ago!  Oh, it was such a POS!  Our phone lines sucked, their customer service sucked, everything sucked about it.  The reps were AWFUL!  DSL service is contingent on the quality of your phone-lines,  I would not go back to DSL if you paid me!

Any merger or buy out for TWC will not have a noticeable effect for a good five years.  It may not even be approved.  Five years down the road IMO is too long to consider a possible service change at this point in time.  If you feel your TWC Internet monthly fee is too high, call and ask about possible discounts.  The only advice I can give here would be you can only call for deals about once every six months to a year.  If you call like every one to three months, they keep a record of that, and will stop negotiating with you.

Are you considering DSL because of cost, problems with cable Internet or both?  What other cable services do you have?  High Speed Internet is actually something that for us, TWC does right.  I think if you are having problems, get a tech out for signal and line tests, especially if you are having problems and you have not had your signals checked for three to five years.

DSL is a MAJOR DOWNGRADE.  I would keep that in mind.

Jack

[grenier]

We had some Intermittent problems with TWC Internet two days ago,

I've been having issues for the last few days, what kinds of things were you experiencing?

[kevbeck122]

I'd personally stick with cable.  TWC has a pretty decent infrastructure in place, not sure how Charter can mess it up enough to cause a significant decrease in quality of service.  I'd be more worried about Charter bringing in their crappy (or at least very dated looking) Motorola EPG system on the cable TV side.

I think regular DSL still maxes out at 6Mbps, don't think they require phone service anymore.

[Jack 1000]

I've been having issues for the last few days, what kinds of things were you experiencing?

About three days ago, sites would not come up, or only partially load.  "Page cannot be displayed."  Than within minutes it would be fine again, but it would happen several times a day or night at very random intervals.  Yesterday, everything seemed  back to normal.  People around the country were also having problems.  Two days ago, Netfix was down all day.  Everything else was fine.

Satch

[grenier]

That sounds like the same problem I was having.

[John L]

Someday I may drop TWC myself and rather than get cable or satellite I will use the antenna to get all the local channels and something that can provide me with High Speed broadband Internet so I can use my ROKU player to watch movies, dishworld, and most other channels to watch even local news from TV stations in big cities across the USA.

I only wish that FSN could be seen via the ROKU player so I can watch Brewers and Bucks games.  Maybe if a lot more people dropped cable and satellite, perhaps some Brewer and Bucks games might comeback to OTA. Or maybe FSN could make an agreement with a station like WITI and air FSN on 6-3.  Course, unfortunately that would cut into WITI  HD bandwidth if they did that.

-John L.

[Tivoman44]

Thanks for the response.  

I was just wondering about alternatives to TWC road runner.  I agree that TWC road runner is done right.  I got ride of cable TV, have gone to 2 meg internet for 20 some dollars a month.  

It sounds like DSL is just awful so I won't go there.  I do not want to have to go to Uverse for TV and internet so I was just trying to see about alternatives to maybe see if I could pull additional leverage w/ TWC.  

As for FSN with Brewers games.  I think the days of them being on OTA is long gone.  It has to do with ratings and how they get more money for being on cable only.  In fact I read this year how the World series will be the only thing on OTA, all other playoffs will be MLB network and TBS.  Prior years they would have at least one of the Pennants on Fox.  But that would be nice to have FSN on 6.3.  It's all about money and ratings.  

I work with a guy who used to be a TWC employee (15 or so years ago).  He told me that if you have an amp, all that is doing is putting a band aid on a bigger issue.  I have an amp in my attic and would love to get rid of it.  I know I have slightly older cables in my attic.  If TWC came and put a new line up, is it true they could get ride of the amp?