I’d like to share a journey I’ve been on the past year in search of gigabyte Internet service. It starts with dumping the coax cable world of Spectrum and moving ahead with Allo who actually did install fiber cable in our house, albeit cutting our irrigation lines and controller, with the promise of blazing 1 gigabyte performance. What they failed to tell you is that the performance for 1 gigabyte is only guaranteed directly at the modem and router. If you are lucky and everything is just right and you spend gobs of dollars on a mesh system, you might, just might, reach 500 megabyte down and 39 megabyte up. No better. Unhappy with the constant increase in the bill every three months with Allo, I called back my old nemesis Spectrum aka. Charter. They promised fiber cable to my home, and actually 1 gigabyte service to my devices. Well, after a week, it’s still about 500 down and 39 up. This, after adding a mesh device, battery backup, upgraded router and other stuff to the tune of another $45 a month and guess what? You guessed it. 500 up and 39 down. I was told my laptop was too old to handle gigabyte speed. Of course they couldn’t explain away by TVs that are hard wired into the router still stuttering a dramatic death.
I go and buy a brand new Lenovo laptop and guess what? 500 up and 39 down, with hard wire, without hard wire, with mesh, without mesh running a cable all the way to the router and guess what 500 down and 39 up. AND I find out that Spectrum is running my “broadband” gigabyte through coax cable that they told me needed to be replaced two years ago. We chose to not do that because they wanted to run cable along the walls and ceiling in our lower level, you know that “Grapes of Wrath” down home hillbilly style.
So after waiting and fighting with a stubborn AI who refused to let me speak to a human until I cursed, I now wait until Wednesday for a ” WiFi” evaluation. I should also add that when the tech came out last week to “improve” my setup, it cost me $65 and I got nothing out of if except a lot of excuses.
For too long cable and these communications companies have gone unregulated (I can’t believe I said that) with respect to accountability responsible service delivery. If the electric company only gives you 110 volt service instead of 220 and burns up your AC. You have a recourse. Not with the cable and broadband folks. I guess Elon Musk may have the idea, satellite internet, until it rains, snows or we have a solar eclipse. Well you get the slant.
Most people probably go along life thinking that have this blazing fast internet when actually they aren’t moving much faster than they were a few years ago and a lot less cost for service. If you truly want to find out your internet speed, click on OOKLA the free site to test your internet. I bet you will be surprised. It will tell you the distance to your ISP and speeds. It’s worth a try and then maybe if enough people start screaming about the ripoff taking place by the carriers maybe we can make them honest.