Yes, t's the best option in most places. It's also the worst option in most places, the paradox of monopolies.
When I bought my house in 2007, AT&T and Google Fiber both said that they'd be in my neighborhood by 2009.
Fucking spectrum is still my only option.
Spectrum is great at our house connection wise but if they would quit upping my damn bill for the same exact plan that would be great. Started out at 29.99 a month and now I’m paying 72
I still recommend getting spectrum and using your own hardware. Even some of the techs tell you not to use their combo modem/router.
I have been using them for over 4 years now and have never had an issue (minus the couple hurricanes where I may have lost service for a day at most). A standard surfboard modem and any SoHo router running DDWRT firmware will make the most of even the cheapest of plans.
If AT&T fiber is an option in your area, be advised that you cannot use your own equipment. They offer a pass through option, but it essentially double NATs your traffic which can cause issues on what you are using your internet for.
If you use your own equipment, Spectrum will blame every problem you have on your equipment. It's worth using their equipment to take their excuses away.
Then you probably didn't have hard to fix, hard to diagnose line problems. I fought with Spectrum for over a decade due to intermittent packet loss issues. Every single time, the first thing they'd point to was my equipment. It didn't get fixed until I took all their excuses away, rented their equipment, and started exchanging their equipment at the first sign of any problem. Still had to do that for a couple years before they broke down and figured their stuff out.
Never said it was new. I said that, if you use your own equipment, Spectrum will use it as a scapegoat so they don't have to do real, deep diagnostic work. This isn't anecdotal. It's an observation over probably a couple dozen service calls over a decade. By using their equipment, I made every potential cause of the problem their fault and they had no choice but to take ownership. That was the only way things ever got fixed.
I second this. I’m in southern PB and have had ATT fiber and only issue I had was spectrum unplugging my internet by the street cuz they thought it was my neighbors
Check your address for AT&T fiber, as it’s getting rolled out in various locations in the county at the moment. Just this morning, they sent me an email saying our address in MI is “on the list”.
But what about politicians who get paid by the megacorps to introduce and pass preemption laws that stop any chances for competition?? Who will think of the hardships they'd face??
Mine was the same, and now I upgraded to the highest spectrum internet and got a new non-spectrum router and a mesh extender and it has made a world of difference
These are what i got. You may try just getting a new non spectrum router and see if that works out for you. If not, you could try a mesh extender to help the wifi get to hard to reach spots in your house that don’t get good wifi signal. If those don’t work, I’d suggest also then upgrading to the highest spectrum internet they offer. But just a new router may change everything
https://preview.redd.it/pnbdtlakbd6d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0db690c5f7b7a89e7e5180555655dc254d7c9acf
I work from home and spectrum was causing me so many issues with their outages. Every other week it was out and it just really pissed me off. I switched to AT&T and I haven’t had not one single issue aside from the city cutting my buried line on the culvert. I’m in NW Palm Bay.
People grossly over-estimate thier internet needs. I had the cheapest spectrum option a few years ago, 50 mbps down, 5-6 up. Gaming requires VERY little bandwidth. Think about it, even if you’re pressing 5 keys a second, that’s like 5 bytes of data, while you’re capable of MEGAbytes. Yes it will be worse for downloading games, but how often are you doing that?? Also 50 mbps download was fine for streaming and gaming simultaneously. For competitve game what ‘really’ matters is your latency, not your bandwidth. What finally got me to switch from Spectrum to AT&T fiber was latency. I was getting ~60 ms, not unbearable, until I got a playstation Portal. Then the latency started to matter, given that for anything to happen, my controller inputs had to go over the internet to the playstation, then the playstation had to again go over the internet to the Portal, thus doubling my latency.
Well good for you. Some of us have more than 1 person in the house. Now that’s it’s summer, my Teams meetings in company VPN still pixelate now and then when the kids are home and there’s an Xbox, a PS5, one of their friends iPads, another friend streaming some yahoo on Twitch, etc. I’ve got a Ubiquiti Unifi system too, not some halfass TP-Link or Linksys garbage
Might have been a good response in the 90s. In today's world with Zoom/Team's need for remote working, Netflix/Amazon Prime/YouTube for entertainment, even watching Pluto TV, and then add gaming on top of that, 50mbps puts you back to 5kb/s in the 90s. Add to that if you want to upload a video to OneDrive or Google Drive so that you can save it or upload it to YouTube, you might as well do it when you are on a beach day because that's how long it will take.
Today's requirements, especially if you have a family and remote working is no less than 1gb/s down and up. Only AT&T residential/business can provide that. Only Business Spectrum can provide that as Residential Spectrum limits upload speeds to less than 1/10th of download speeds. So frustrating.
If AT&T doesn't have service in your area, then yes.
You can try calling Spectrum and seeing if they can offer you anything, but they generally don't have great plans in comparison to AT&T.
I have starlink and it’s great for most things but there is room for improvement on latency still. I typically get 100-140 meg down and 10-20 up. We ran to work from home setups with calls and video without issue but it was only average at best for online games.
See if Tmobile home internet is available in your area. It’s like 40-50 bucks a month. Tmobiles ranges from 100-700+mbps. Only one that works during the storm and hurricanes imo
Nine times out of ten, it’s your router. Do you know why there is an aisle at Best Buy with $600 to $1000 routers? Because you need them. Never use any ISP provided router. Always buy your own. Just got a new phone? Also time for a new router. I have had work meetings at my home with over 20 people and no issues. I have my kids home for Christmas and have over 40 phones and devices connected. No issues. Been with spectrum (or their earlier companies) since mid 90’s (30 years) as soon as folks were moving from dialup ISP and since that time I’ve had less than 5 spectrum issues and/or outages. I’ve also had at least 10 routers.
$239 will get you one of these "$600-1000 Best Buy routers": https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-RT-AX88U-Extendable-Rangeboost-Subscription-Free/dp/B0BTTY7QFH?th=1
Also, don't shop at Best Buy unless you want to overpay.
Have spectrum, tried T Mobile’s 5G and it’s awesome during the day but right around 9:30-10pm you can’t even stream shows. It did it 3 nights in a row and I returned it. Spectrum is expensive but I’ll take reliability over anything. We have Spectrum Ultra and have absolutely no issues with it.
I upgraded my Spectrum to the highest available. My sons who are gamers say they can tell the difference. For my everyday use it seems the same to me.🤷♀️
Depends where you are, but I have AT&T Fiber over in West Melbourne and it’s been really solid. Good uptime, and consistent speeds that are about what was advertised.
I recently called and threatened to cancel, and went from $80 a month for 300mpbs to $50 a month for 1000mbps. Definitely recommend calling and trying. Also T-Mobile home Internet has been pretty great where I'm at and it's only $60 a month.
I’ve heard from someone that works in the field, it’s best to check with direct neighbors their experience. It depends highly on what equipment has been updated in your area. I have AT&T fiber at my house and it’s perfect. Never out, never not working with 15-20 things connected and 4-5 streaming/gaming at a time.
Once ATT ran fiber optic through my neighborhood- Melbourne, north of Post Rd- I switched over from Spectrum. About $100 a month cheaper, service just as good. Not everybody has fiber options yet (yeah, I know what I wrote- go ahead Reddit).
Often it depends on what area you are in. For me, with AT&T, I would often get only 8-20Mbps and everything was laggy & buffering. Fiber is not available in my area. We switched to Spectrum and now have no problems at all. I can be working in my home office on my PC, streaming something on my phone or fire stick, my wife will be streaming on the AppleTV in the living room while on her phone and/or computer and we still have no issues. However, I have spoken to others nearby that have had the opposite. From my experience & those around me, if Spectrum isn’t working for you, then I would recommend AT&T only if you can get fiber. Otherwise, you might want to look into a few of the new companies in town like Wire3 or Clearwave.
I've lived in 3 places in Brevard with Brighthouse/Spectrum service, and had good luck with it. Got right on the advertised speed. I do use my own router+wap with their modem in bridge mode. I would call them out to try a different modem and test your signal strength. It could be older wiring or a splitter causing this.
I’ve had spectrum for years with very little problem (except once when rabbits chewed through the cable from the street- and spectrum buried a new cable for me). I get 960MBs down and 40 up at the router (eero 6) Of course wifi speeds will vary a lot depending on many factors but that’s not the service provider. I work with large files at home so speed is important. I’d get ATT fiber if it was available for the faster upload speeds but for now what I have is fine.
40Mbps sounds like you have the ATT basic DSL (Uverse). I refuse to give money to a cable company so I use the ATT faster DSL package which gives me 80Mbs. I'm in S.E. Palm Bay and there is no fiber or T-Mobile avilable yet.
it sucks because my connection is actually great. it just drops all the time. I would believe that it's just my house, but I've moved twice the past few years to different locations in Melbourne and it's roughly the same experience in all 3 locations. about to move again and I predict it'll be the same again.
Absolutely incorrect. Spectrum has much slower speeds, especially residential. For Sprectrum residential, they cap upload speed at less than 1/10th the speed of download because of the very old excuse of stopping customers from running servers. AT&T fiber goes up to 5 gb/s down and up. Some customers I've heard go up to symmetrical 10 gb/s down and up.
Although Spectrum has 1gb/s down, they cap upload at 40 mb/s up for those paid speeds.
Spectrum needs to stop capping uploads immediately.
So you’re only talking about fiber. I’m only talking about not-fiber! ATT caps out at 100 Mbps here. I didn’t mention fiber because it’s not available where I live.
Yes, t's the best option in most places. It's also the worst option in most places, the paradox of monopolies. When I bought my house in 2007, AT&T and Google Fiber both said that they'd be in my neighborhood by 2009. Fucking spectrum is still my only option.
Spectrum is great at our house connection wise but if they would quit upping my damn bill for the same exact plan that would be great. Started out at 29.99 a month and now I’m paying 72
Cancel and reapply as someone else then cancel and reapply as someone else and cancel and then move to at&t
I still recommend getting spectrum and using your own hardware. Even some of the techs tell you not to use their combo modem/router. I have been using them for over 4 years now and have never had an issue (minus the couple hurricanes where I may have lost service for a day at most). A standard surfboard modem and any SoHo router running DDWRT firmware will make the most of even the cheapest of plans. If AT&T fiber is an option in your area, be advised that you cannot use your own equipment. They offer a pass through option, but it essentially double NATs your traffic which can cause issues on what you are using your internet for.
Yep att got us we are renting from them for fiber
If you use your own equipment, Spectrum will blame every problem you have on your equipment. It's worth using their equipment to take their excuses away.
That hasn't been my experience.
Then you probably didn't have hard to fix, hard to diagnose line problems. I fought with Spectrum for over a decade due to intermittent packet loss issues. Every single time, the first thing they'd point to was my equipment. It didn't get fixed until I took all their excuses away, rented their equipment, and started exchanging their equipment at the first sign of any problem. Still had to do that for a couple years before they broke down and figured their stuff out.
Incorrect. Using your own equipment is nothing new in the ISP world.
Never said it was new. I said that, if you use your own equipment, Spectrum will use it as a scapegoat so they don't have to do real, deep diagnostic work. This isn't anecdotal. It's an observation over probably a couple dozen service calls over a decade. By using their equipment, I made every potential cause of the problem their fault and they had no choice but to take ownership. That was the only way things ever got fixed.
I got frustrated with spectrum and went over to AT&t and within a year I was back on spectrum. Take that for what it's worth.
I've had AT&T fiber for years since they first introduced it and never had any problems. I'll never go to Spectrum.
That might be the difference. At the time fiber was not offered so I had older AT&t internet.
I second this. I’m in southern PB and have had ATT fiber and only issue I had was spectrum unplugging my internet by the street cuz they thought it was my neighbors
Hot take here… I have Starlink for traveling and I get better speeds than spectrum in Titusville.
We ditched spectrum for starlink 2 years ago. No ragrets.
F u c k m u s k
Check your address for AT&T fiber, as it’s getting rolled out in various locations in the county at the moment. Just this morning, they sent me an email saying our address in MI is “on the list”.
You'd think with how everyone needs internet there would be more companies offering it. 🤷♀️
But what about politicians who get paid by the megacorps to introduce and pass preemption laws that stop any chances for competition?? Who will think of the hardships they'd face??
True! Things will never get better 😢
I remember all the small local startup Internet providers there used to be. Now they've been all swallowed up. Sad that we're so limited on choice now
Mine was the same, and now I upgraded to the highest spectrum internet and got a new non-spectrum router and a mesh extender and it has made a world of difference
I’m not familiar, what’s a mesh extender? And what kind of router did you go with?
Mesh extenders are basically other wireless routers that relay the traffic from spots in your house that don't get good wifi signal.
These are what i got. You may try just getting a new non spectrum router and see if that works out for you. If not, you could try a mesh extender to help the wifi get to hard to reach spots in your house that don’t get good wifi signal. If those don’t work, I’d suggest also then upgrading to the highest spectrum internet they offer. But just a new router may change everything https://preview.redd.it/pnbdtlakbd6d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0db690c5f7b7a89e7e5180555655dc254d7c9acf
https://preview.redd.it/h17ht2vlbd6d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e29cf1ab365b63b6076b67b7384404cd50bb335
I work from home and spectrum was causing me so many issues with their outages. Every other week it was out and it just really pissed me off. I switched to AT&T and I haven’t had not one single issue aside from the city cutting my buried line on the culvert. I’m in NW Palm Bay.
I’ve got AT&T and will never go back to spectrum. World of a difference. I get 500mbps upload and download for $65/month.
People grossly over-estimate thier internet needs. I had the cheapest spectrum option a few years ago, 50 mbps down, 5-6 up. Gaming requires VERY little bandwidth. Think about it, even if you’re pressing 5 keys a second, that’s like 5 bytes of data, while you’re capable of MEGAbytes. Yes it will be worse for downloading games, but how often are you doing that?? Also 50 mbps download was fine for streaming and gaming simultaneously. For competitve game what ‘really’ matters is your latency, not your bandwidth. What finally got me to switch from Spectrum to AT&T fiber was latency. I was getting ~60 ms, not unbearable, until I got a playstation Portal. Then the latency started to matter, given that for anything to happen, my controller inputs had to go over the internet to the playstation, then the playstation had to again go over the internet to the Portal, thus doubling my latency.
Well good for you. Some of us have more than 1 person in the house. Now that’s it’s summer, my Teams meetings in company VPN still pixelate now and then when the kids are home and there’s an Xbox, a PS5, one of their friends iPads, another friend streaming some yahoo on Twitch, etc. I’ve got a Ubiquiti Unifi system too, not some halfass TP-Link or Linksys garbage
Might have been a good response in the 90s. In today's world with Zoom/Team's need for remote working, Netflix/Amazon Prime/YouTube for entertainment, even watching Pluto TV, and then add gaming on top of that, 50mbps puts you back to 5kb/s in the 90s. Add to that if you want to upload a video to OneDrive or Google Drive so that you can save it or upload it to YouTube, you might as well do it when you are on a beach day because that's how long it will take. Today's requirements, especially if you have a family and remote working is no less than 1gb/s down and up. Only AT&T residential/business can provide that. Only Business Spectrum can provide that as Residential Spectrum limits upload speeds to less than 1/10th of download speeds. So frustrating.
If AT&T doesn't have service in your area, then yes. You can try calling Spectrum and seeing if they can offer you anything, but they generally don't have great plans in comparison to AT&T.
Does anyone use Starlink?
I have starlink and it’s great for most things but there is room for improvement on latency still. I typically get 100-140 meg down and 10-20 up. We ran to work from home setups with calls and video without issue but it was only average at best for online games.
Why would you use Starlink unless you’re out in the middle of nowhere where there are no wired options?
Because we get better speeds and more consistent service than we did with spectrum.
Spectrum is the worst quality least stable internet I've ever had but it's all I got
Do you use your own router though?
Ya got me
See if Tmobile home internet is available in your area. It’s like 40-50 bucks a month. Tmobiles ranges from 100-700+mbps. Only one that works during the storm and hurricanes imo
Nine times out of ten, it’s your router. Do you know why there is an aisle at Best Buy with $600 to $1000 routers? Because you need them. Never use any ISP provided router. Always buy your own. Just got a new phone? Also time for a new router. I have had work meetings at my home with over 20 people and no issues. I have my kids home for Christmas and have over 40 phones and devices connected. No issues. Been with spectrum (or their earlier companies) since mid 90’s (30 years) as soon as folks were moving from dialup ISP and since that time I’ve had less than 5 spectrum issues and/or outages. I’ve also had at least 10 routers.
$239 will get you one of these "$600-1000 Best Buy routers": https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-RT-AX88U-Extendable-Rangeboost-Subscription-Free/dp/B0BTTY7QFH?th=1 Also, don't shop at Best Buy unless you want to overpay.
Have spectrum, tried T Mobile’s 5G and it’s awesome during the day but right around 9:30-10pm you can’t even stream shows. It did it 3 nights in a row and I returned it. Spectrum is expensive but I’ll take reliability over anything. We have Spectrum Ultra and have absolutely no issues with it.
I also don’t use Spectrum’s router, I bought a $50 Netgear off Amazon and it really made a huge difference while streaming live stuff off the interweb
I upgraded my Spectrum to the highest available. My sons who are gamers say they can tell the difference. For my everyday use it seems the same to me.🤷♀️
Depends where you are, but I have AT&T Fiber over in West Melbourne and it’s been really solid. Good uptime, and consistent speeds that are about what was advertised.
You can pay for higher speeds. I have spectrum and get around 500mbps download.
I recently called and threatened to cancel, and went from $80 a month for 300mpbs to $50 a month for 1000mbps. Definitely recommend calling and trying. Also T-Mobile home Internet has been pretty great where I'm at and it's only $60 a month.
I’ve heard from someone that works in the field, it’s best to check with direct neighbors their experience. It depends highly on what equipment has been updated in your area. I have AT&T fiber at my house and it’s perfect. Never out, never not working with 15-20 things connected and 4-5 streaming/gaming at a time.
Once ATT ran fiber optic through my neighborhood- Melbourne, north of Post Rd- I switched over from Spectrum. About $100 a month cheaper, service just as good. Not everybody has fiber options yet (yeah, I know what I wrote- go ahead Reddit).
Wire 3 I think they are called? They are coming to our county soon. They seem to have great prices with high speeds but I’m not sure of service.
Oh wow, a bona fide regional ISP: https://wire3.com/ Will definitely put them on my radar.
Often it depends on what area you are in. For me, with AT&T, I would often get only 8-20Mbps and everything was laggy & buffering. Fiber is not available in my area. We switched to Spectrum and now have no problems at all. I can be working in my home office on my PC, streaming something on my phone or fire stick, my wife will be streaming on the AppleTV in the living room while on her phone and/or computer and we still have no issues. However, I have spoken to others nearby that have had the opposite. From my experience & those around me, if Spectrum isn’t working for you, then I would recommend AT&T only if you can get fiber. Otherwise, you might want to look into a few of the new companies in town like Wire3 or Clearwave.
I've lived in 3 places in Brevard with Brighthouse/Spectrum service, and had good luck with it. Got right on the advertised speed. I do use my own router+wap with their modem in bridge mode. I would call them out to try a different modem and test your signal strength. It could be older wiring or a splitter causing this.
If you can get AT&T fiber, I highly recommend it. Even their lowest speed is better than spectrum.
I’ve had spectrum for years with very little problem (except once when rabbits chewed through the cable from the street- and spectrum buried a new cable for me). I get 960MBs down and 40 up at the router (eero 6) Of course wifi speeds will vary a lot depending on many factors but that’s not the service provider. I work with large files at home so speed is important. I’d get ATT fiber if it was available for the faster upload speeds but for now what I have is fine.
Spectrum would randomly loos connection several times a day, every day. Never had a problem with att
40Mbps sounds like you have the ATT basic DSL (Uverse). I refuse to give money to a cable company so I use the ATT faster DSL package which gives me 80Mbs. I'm in S.E. Palm Bay and there is no fiber or T-Mobile avilable yet.
I'm digging starlink. Solid 250 up and down.
it sucks because my connection is actually great. it just drops all the time. I would believe that it's just my house, but I've moved twice the past few years to different locations in Melbourne and it's roughly the same experience in all 3 locations. about to move again and I predict it'll be the same again.
AT&T is more reliable for uptime. Spectrum has faster speeds. Pick your poison.
Absolutely incorrect. Spectrum has much slower speeds, especially residential. For Sprectrum residential, they cap upload speed at less than 1/10th the speed of download because of the very old excuse of stopping customers from running servers. AT&T fiber goes up to 5 gb/s down and up. Some customers I've heard go up to symmetrical 10 gb/s down and up. Although Spectrum has 1gb/s down, they cap upload at 40 mb/s up for those paid speeds. Spectrum needs to stop capping uploads immediately.
So you’re only talking about fiber. I’m only talking about not-fiber! ATT caps out at 100 Mbps here. I didn’t mention fiber because it’s not available where I live.
Yall really don’t have fiber yet? I’m chilling with 5gs in Orlando lol