+KimP Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 For all you folks that do lots of streaming of movies at home, what internet service to you use? So far my only choices seem to be Time Warner (or Earthlink as a reseller of TWC) or AT&T U-Verse. The fine print for AT&T said there is a montly cap of 250GB and $10/50GB thereafter. We're concerned that wouldn't be enough, but maybe it is - this is why I'm asking. Plans for TWC seem more expensive but are presumably unlimited albeit slower. I'm not a huge fan of either TWC or AT&T. Verizon FIOS, Charter, Grande, and SuddenLink do not service my area. We only use internet, not the cable or phone services. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesL Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 We have no choice out here in Buda land (just TWC). But we have the Turbo option (I think 20Mbps option) and have no troubles doing lots of video streaming. We dropped cable TV years ago, so live off of internet based media (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon VOD, etc). I am trying to see how much data we use in one month. Found it. According to TWC, we use between 250GB and 300GB per month. Now, a lot of this is probably the kids watching Netflix and PBS kids. Now with that said, you live in Austin proper... you do know Google Fiber is coming next year, right? If you can rally your neighborhood to get enough people to sign up, you could be singing pretty with 1Gbps (1000Mbps) internet speeds at the same price as TWC current process for 20Mbps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Here in Bastrop, for some odd reason, we have choices. We have Uverse fiber and are heavy internet users (multiple devices streaming and games etc). No overages have ever been applied. We are on the "UVerse Max Plus" internet plan if that helps any. I work from home, via the web 3 days a week, so having a good connection is important. This has been pretty reliable IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Planeden Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Kim, I have both TWC and Uverse. TWC comes in at 10 Mbits. That's for my business class, so i think it is slower than residential (residential customers get preferred pricing for speed, i have to pay lots extra), but it is consistent. My uverse comes in at 6 Mbits and is pretty consistent. either of these is plenty to stream HD movies. oh yeah, uverse is claiming to start installing fiber in austin soon (feb i think) but there is no news on where they will start and when they will get to which areas. based on my experience with DSL years ago, i wouldn't hold you breath. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sascha D. Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 I switch providers every year or two depending on the price hikes they hit you with after your contract ends. We had U-verse in 2012 and loved it, but had to switch when we moved because they didn't offer it in my new neighborhood. Back then I had a lot of time to play computer games and stream movies and we never had any additional charges. AT&T also gives you 10% off if you have cell service with them. I now have TWC and hate it. The internet speed is slow and it lags my computer even though the modem is right next to the tower. My cable timing gets thrown off all the time as well. The words don't match the lips ya'know? I have to reset my modem weekly to correct the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimbo662 Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 I've got two co-workers who both had to switch from U-verse to TWC when they moved and both hate it...I've been unlucky in that everywhere I've lived the last 10+ yrs my only option was TWC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 What plans are you seeing from ATT in your area? We can't get anything decent from them. We use TW and have a 20Mbps downstream connection. It costs about double ATT but the fastest DSL from ATT we could get was only like 1.5Mbps. When we had ATT there were constant connectivity problems and we had full outages on a monthly basis. We also couldn't get verizon or anyone else in our area. My parents have ATT Uverse and I am constantly working on their internet as well. With that being said our TW used to suck. I work in IT so I usually have to explain to the technician what's going on if we call for tech support. About a year ago I threatened to cancel and literally spent about 2 hours on the phone and chat with technicians, which finally it was escalated to someone that had a clue of what they were doing. Finally they were able to get the bandwidth up to what it was supposed to be. It hasn't regressed since then. Here's a screenshot that I just took: We can easily stream 3 movies at a time on this connection as well as normal internet and email usage. If anyone else is having the same problem with TW, just keep calling or using their online chat. It should get close to 90 - 100% of the rated connection speed. You can use http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ to see what your connection is currently running at. Our's was at about 10%. Lastly, whatever you get I highly recommend only getting a modem from the ISP and spend the money on a decent wireless router. Those AIO crap that ATT and TW provide are nowhere near as good of quality as a decent Dlink or Netgear wireless router. We use a D-link DIR 655 which is about $30 now, and it's an excellent N router. Could save $5 - $10 per month if you don't use their equipment either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 +1 on Netgear routers. Have a dual-channel one and love it. Our current tests here are( 21.39 Mbps download and 1.45 Mbps upload) Also +1 on the TWC equipment. I had to reboot the modem/router at least once a month. I don't have to do that with AT&T but like every 4-6 months and power outage usually takes care of that for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ckyuv Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Att now provides a Cisco wireless access point which works great in my opinion. If your on the fiber loop for att I would recommend it, I had to dump it when I moved to lago but I would have it still if I could. If you don't like your price call to "cancel" and they give you lots of promos, my bill dropped from 160 to 90 and I got good internet, tv and a free Xbox lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 I use uverse. For reefing purposes, setting up the router is much more of a pain than when i used TWC. However in terms of service there is no comparison, uverse by a mile. I'm a pretty heavy internet consumer (netflix, games, etc) and i've never busted the cap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sascha D. Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 What plans are you seeing from ATT in your area? We can't get anything decent from them. We use TW and have a 20Mbps downstream connection. It costs about double ATT but the fastest DSL from ATT we could get was only like 1.5Mbps. When we had ATT there were constant connectivity problems and we had full outages on a monthly basis. We also couldn't get verizon or anyone else in our area. My parents have ATT Uverse and I am constantly working on their internet as well. With that being said our TW used to suck. I work in IT so I usually have to explain to the technician what's going on if we call for tech support. About a year ago I threatened to cancel and literally spent about 2 hours on the phone and chat with technicians, which finally it was escalated to someone that had a clue of what they were doing. Finally they were able to get the bandwidth up to what it was supposed to be. It hasn't regressed since then. Here's a screenshot that I just took: We can easily stream 3 movies at a time on this connection as well as normal internet and email usage. If anyone else is having the same problem with TW, just keep calling or using their online chat. It should get close to 90 - 100% of the rated connection speed. You can use http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ to see what your connection is currently running at. Our's was at about 10%. Lastly, whatever you get I highly recommend only getting a modem from the ISP and spend the money on a decent wireless router. Those AIO crap that ATT and TW provide are nowhere near as good of quality as a decent Dlink or Netgear wireless router. We use a D-link DIR 655 which is about $30 now, and it's an excellent N router. Could save $5 - $10 per month if you don't use their equipment either. Forgive me for this question. I'm kind of a computer idiot. Are you saying you should connect the modem to a wireless router? I have a DLink router, but they didn't use it when they hooked up the service. They only connected a cable box to the modem and that was it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Do you have wireless internet in the house? If it's just a cable or dsl modem it will be very small and normally just has 1 ethernet port that you would plug into your own router. If you have wireless internet and there's only 1 box, it's a combined modem and router unit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Kim, I have UVerse just down the street from you and have had it for the last 5 years. We started with the 6MBps connection and now have the 12 since we cancelled tv and just watch everything streaming. We've never once been hit with a charge for overages so I think you'll me more than safe with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted December 10, 2013 Author Share Posted December 10, 2013 I appreciate all the responses, it's been very helpful! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted December 21, 2013 Author Share Posted December 21, 2013 (From the husband) Thanks all for the comments. As far as I could dig up, the U-Verse cap hasn't affected anyone in Austin. The consensus is that it is something imposed nationally by AT&T but they unofficially exempt Austin. We just saw an ad for 300 gbps U-Verse called GigaPower that rolls out this week and *is* available to us, so we opted for that. The fine print for this deal said that there is a 1TB cap per month then $10/50GB overage with $30 max. Perhaps that might be enforced. The cost for Standard is $100/mo but you can get $70/mo for Premier which is the same thing but you consent to them monitoring your web browsing and searches to target ads towards you (including direct mail). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted December 21, 2013 Share Posted December 21, 2013 Yes, our upgrade to uverse fiber (gigapower) was complete on Wednesday. The installation took about two hours, I was told this is shorter than a new install since ours was considered an update of our original install. We currently now have a 322Mbps connection that will automatically shift to a gigabit connection around July 2014. $70/mo, rate locked for 3 years, one year commitment. Considering Google fiber won't even be available for at least that long it seemed like a no brainer. All of the fiber services have that same condition about monitoring your usage, so don't let that dissuade you, especially if you already use Google products Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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