Internet speed advice

[Borgholio]

So we wanted to cut our monthly expenses a bit and were looking at our internet service. Currently we pay $65 per month for Verizon FIOS. 50mb down / 35mb up. We've been happy with the service but we wanted to save some money. After speaking with Verizon, we have three choices.

1. Stick with 50 down / 35 up and get a $10 discount for a total of $55 per month.

2. Downgrade to 25 down / 25 up and get a $20 discount for a total of $45 per month.

3. Switch to Time Warner Cable and get 100 down / 10 up for $45 per month.

Options 2 and 3 are the most appealing due to the lower monthly fees. The only thing I'm concerned about is the upload speed. I'm not a heavy uploader...I backup to cloud backup services and transfer files from time to time but it's not like I run a fileserver or anything. So the downgrade from 35 up to 10 up may not be noticeable...but I'd hate to have to make the switch and then realize it actually kinda sucks. The increase to 100mb down is a good thing though.

Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks!

[Ace Pace]

If you don't constantly work with a cloud service (or work from home, video calls etc.) then you won't notice the difference with upload speeds.

[Starglider]

The rated 'up to' speeds can be highly misleading. Try and find the actual average speeds in your area. One important factor is the 'contention ratio' which is the number of users that your notional bandwidth is shared by. In the UK consumer broadband is 50:1 and thus slows down a lot at busy periods where everyone is trying to use it at once. Business broadband is 20:1; these figures used to be clearly advertised but these days you often have to dig through the fine print to find them.

[Borgholio]

Didn't find any reviews on how much speed people in the area were actually getting, but got plenty of negative reviews about their service level. Yelp has TWC at 1.5 stars out of 170 reviews. Ouch. I'm almost wanting to stick with Verizon since I know their service is reliable and their support is decent.

[Edi]

Stick to Verizon. Time Warner Cable has a bad reputation from what I have read. Besides, the available speed in a cable modem network is dependent on just how congested the network is, since if they do not have enough capacity, it will slow to a crawl during peak hours.

We had that problem in several parts of our cable network several years ago before we upgraded capacity so we can actually provide customers the 100 Mbps down.

In your position, I'd take the Verizon 25/25 fiber. It will also give you more control over what kind of network device you use at your own end, whereas in a cable modem network the device usually comes from the ISP and you cannot swap it for a different model without their permission, which depending on the terms of service and other things might not be forthcoming at all. In a fiberoptic system, you can use any router for the connection, which allows you leeway to set up your internal network or other things as you please without being stuck to artificial limitations.

[Executor32]

I can't speak for TWC specifically, but Comcast allows you to use a modem you own at any time, it just has to be DOCSIS 3 compliant. You have to call them and have them provision the modem, and of course return your rented modem if you had one, but other than that it's easy as can be. I remember it being just as easy with AT&T Broadband, back before the Comcast merger, and I had assumed it was the same with any other cable ISP.

[Lord Revan]

Stick to Verizon. Time Warner Cable has a bad reputation from what I have read. Besides, the available speed in a cable modem network is dependent on just how congested the network is, since if they do not have enough capacity, it will slow to a crawl during peak hours.

We had that problem in several parts of our cable network several years ago before we upgraded capacity so we can actually provide customers the 100 Mbps down.

In your position, I'd take the Verizon 25/25 fiber. It will also give you more control over what kind of network device you use at your own end, whereas in a cable modem network the device usually comes from the ISP and you cannot swap it for a different model without their permission, which depending on the terms of service and other things might not be forthcoming at all. In a fiberoptic system, you can use any router for the connection, which allows you leeway to set up your internal network or other things as you please without being stuck to artificial limitations.

I had a problem in my previous appartment (granted that was about 5 years ago) that while nominally it had very good connection speeds (I think it might even had been better then I have atm) in practice if I wasn't using it in the middle of the night or during work hours the connection actually very poor (for the record the ISP was DNA using Welho connection), to give an exmple when the connection worked I had about 50-100 ms latency in WoW (which is about as good as I can get this far from the EU servers), when it didn't work I had about 4000-6000 ms Latency (and that's just numbers the game gave me, how bad my actual latency was I dunno).

[General Zod]

I can't speak for TWC specifically, but Comcast allows you to use a modem you own at any time, it just has to be DOCSIS 3 compliant. You have to call them and have them provision the modem, and of course return your rented modem if you had one, but other than that it's easy as can be. I remember it being just as easy with AT&T Broadband, back before the Comcast merger, and I had assumed it was the same with any other cable ISP.

Comcast has shit service and their speeds are spotty. I wouldn't recommend them if you have other options.

[Borgholio]

Comcast has shit service and their speeds are spotty. I wouldn't recommend them if you have other options.

Yeah I'm getting mixed reviews online about TWC as well. Some say it's rocket-fast speed and decent customer service, while others say the speed is horrible, connection unreliable, and the support reps are something out of the movie Idiocracy. It all depends on what they can do for me price-wise. If they can offer me a good price, I can switch and try them out. They don't do contracts so I can go back to Verizon at a moment's notice if there are any problems, so no real risk for me.

[Executor32]

Comcast has shit service and their speeds are spotty. I wouldn't recommend them if you have other options.

Actually, the trailer park I live in is on its own dedicated trunk line, so the connection is shared between less than 100 homes, and I almost always get close to my provisioned speed of 93.75/12.5 Mbps, not just the 75/10 Mbps I'm paying for.

Plus, the only other hardline option around here is Frontier, which makes even Comcast look like fucking Google Fiber.

[General Zod]

Comcast has shit service and their speeds are spotty. I wouldn't recommend them if you have other options.

Actually, the trailer park I live in is on its own dedicated trunk line, so the connection is shared between less than 100 homes, and I almost always get close to my provisioned speed of 93.75/12.5 Mbps, not just the 75/10 Mbps I'm paying for.

Plus, the only other hardline option around here is Frontier, which makes even Comcast look like fucking Google Fiber.

Admittedly the last time I used Comcast was about 5 years ago and I was paying for an 18mb line in an apartment building in downtown Denver.