Internet Speed - Please Help!

[SpaceBooger]

I currently have cable internet 30mbs (speed test says 35 as of 7:40pm right now) but the cable company is jacking up prices. I can get ATT and DirectTV for almost half the price, unfortunately, the internet speed they offer is also about half - 18mbs.

I have heard that ATT is dedicated so the 18mbs will be fast enough for my family of 6 (soon to be 7) with our AmazonTVs, Kindles, PC, etc...

If I did drop from 30mbs cable internet to 18mbs ATT - would my family notice a difference? If so how much?

note: next month the internet will be switching to Spectrum and go up to 60mbs - but we are doing fine with 30 right now.

[CRTGAMER]

Cable Modems tend to be the fastest, the reason I have not switched to Dish or ATT. Videos will be the biggest slugfest stream draw, especially of multiple devices running.

I telephone Cox Cable once a year, ask for the customer loyalty department and then get a discount as a long term customer. The justification that new customers get a very good introductory price. A pain making the annual phone call and I do not get a matched to new customer rate. The other option is switching providers every few years to get the new customer rate which is more of a pain. Hopefully as smart cable boxes are more integrated and too many cable cutters leaving to Hulu, better package choices will be offered getting rid of paying for bloat.

[SpaceBooger]

CRT, with Time Warner that's what I did - call every year and negotiate. Now that they are owned by Spectrum there is no contacts and no negotiation, just a flat rate. I'll be getting more speed but losing my kids cable channels...

I can't help but think 30mbs is faster than 18, but the whole dedicated line argument...

[marurun]

Well, 18 is probably going to be just fine as long as everyone isn't streaming video at the same time. If you want to watch something in HD, you'll want to not fight for bandwidth.

Spectrum sucks. Just dropped them for WOW. 100 mbps for $45 a month, totally off contract.

[bmoc]

I think it is probably going to hing on how many people are going to stream video at the same time. Also depends on whether the ISPs are measuring in megabits or megabytes.

Here are Netflix's bandwidth recommendations on bandwidth in megabits. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

8 bits = 1 byte

[Segata]

If you are low income some companies will give you a 1 year discount and every year you renew it. I did that when I was with Century Link. I got it reduced nearly in half. Every year.

I now use Google Fiber even if they cost $10($50 no taxes or fees. Flat 50 for 100MB) more the speeds I am getting at 10X faster.

[Jagosaurus]

I personally don't trust any residential fiber claiming it is dedicated. They may carve out your bandwidth (how they were required to do in DSL world) & back into the the math to not over-subscribe the nearest fiber node but there is no SLA (service level agreement) so claiming it is dedicated is just a sales pitch. Until you enter Enterprise business fiber with money backed 99.999% up time... fiber and coax aren't that different. Many residental fiber connections are a copper handoff behind your house (not all) or hit copper 66 blocks leaving your neighborhood. You likey pass these utility boxes often around your home & don't recognize them (copper not glass inside):


All the ATT fiber in my neighborhood eventually hits those.

Coax is fine for 99% of home users. I work from home often and have constant VPN, Cloud apps, VOIP, & streaming IPTV going over my coax connection with no issues.

Now I get nice speeds but at some point, higher bandwidth the vast majority of the time is better than a lower guaranteed carved out bandwidth.

I vote for the overall higher speeds but I've never used Charter or Cox. For example, with Comcast I pay for 200 mbps down, I regularly get 237 mbps down. They could guarantee me that I'll never get below 175 mbps which is the low end I get. I'll take that over a guaranteed 50 mbps from ATT fiber any day. Now enter the business world with SLAs & hundreds in businesses on 1 node, different story. I recommend fiber there.

Also, no ISP is advertising in bytes. It is a common end user mispronounced word. Carrier speeds are measured in bits (mbps). Storage (such as HDD or flash) is measured in bytes. The "B" is shown as a capital letter such as 1TB HDD. I even hear Telecom savvy people who work at carriers say this wrong often. If you hear a carrier rep saying "bytes" then they are 99% likely just mistaken. I seriously doubt they are doing the math and dividing by 8.

[marurun]

HD streaming usually starts at 5 Mbps, so 18 actually isn't horrible.