Pulp Free

Without much fanfare or customer communications, it seems as though Charter has upgraded their bandwidth speeds for their cable Internet services with no additional cost to customers. I can’t complain too much about that, now can I?The new speed increases impact three of their broadband plans. Only “Lite” speeds remain unchanged:

• Lite: Remains the same at “up to” 1 Mbps/128 kbps
• Express: Increases from 5/1 Mbps to 8/1 Mbps
• Plus: Increases from 10/2 Mbps to 16/2 Mbps
• Max: Increases from 20/2 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps

Based on an article by Phillip Dampier, Charter is also being a bit soft on previously announced bandwidth usage caps… Something I’m quite happy with but have spoken about such disappointment before. While I am currently passing over $60 a month for the Max speed, I’d be quite curious what their limited available offering of Ultra60 plan for 60/5 Mbps service would be like. At $140 a month, I won’t be all that tempted to test the waters. And for the most part, I seemingly already have faster Internet services than most corporate locations I visit. The issue isn’t my connection any more but rather the content providers.

Without any HD Winter Olympic coverage to worry about like a few summers ago along with ramping up on my new job (that is providing the need for a lot of ISO and software downloads) – I’ve actually been pretty lean on my bandwidth usage.

August of 2008 still holds the record… Does make me wonder if I could actually set the bandwidth faucet on full and pull down ~264 GB of data a day or close to 8 TB of bandwidth for the month. Whew! I think I’d get bored with trying to find enough stuff to download to keep that queue filled.

So positive vibes right now for Charter – even after spending an hour on the phone with their Customer Service slash retention team to renew my bundle pricing… (Don’t even get me started…)

And Charter Melissa – I hope you were able to finish your research project with your extra bandwidth!

I was happy a few days ago with my updated Charter broadband speeds. Figured today I’d have to have some therapy. My love hate relationship continues.

My overly priced $142.03 HD Cable, Internet and Phone “Bundle” decided to unbundle itself – now coming in at $177.99 – I just about gagged myself.

Called into customer service and they can’t make any adjustments. Every year for many, many years Charter has been kind enough to reset my promo for another 12 months… Usually a few dollars more (meaning less than $5). This time around I’d have to buy more channels… More HBO and Cinemax. More Stars… Things we don’t need or want to watch. I asked for a line manager since I wanted to express my loyalty to Charter that seemed to be going unnoticed.

Line manager comes online and blows attitude after a few words of my background story. I asked why the attitude and he cuts me off and puts me on hold. Then tells me for $147.77 a month I can keep what I already have for 6 more months.

How hard can it be? I suppose for another $5 I could have picked up some more movie channels. Bleh. No wonder why they’re almost bankrupt. Customer service has always been their issue. Of course, people wouldn’t be calling into customer service if they didn’t screw up their billing and promotions all the time. People in the field have always been great.

Best of luck out there… I know a few of you are having your own issues. Care to share?

After being on business for a few days, I returned home to have yet another piece of marketing mail from Charter… My favorite local broadband monopoly. However, this time it was good news!

We are pleased to inform you that Charter has upgraded your High-Speed Internet Max service download speed from 16 Mbps to 20 Mbps – at no additional cost. This speed upgrade is part of Charter’s ongoing effort to provide you the fastest and most reliable Internet speeds available. This means your favorite music, videos, and files can download up to 25% faster than before!

I really can’t find fault with that, now can I? Granted – most of the sites that I visit can’t pulp out that much information. Only sites like Microsoft (when I’m grabbing new ISO images) and fully peg out that connection. It’s finally happened, however… My own connection to the Internet (even if it is a neighborhood shared line) is faster than most upstream providers. Web browsing isn’t any faster… But large file downloads from multiple sites at the same time really do fly.

When I started posting my bandwidth tests back in September of 2007, I was getting 5 Mbps service… That was up from the 3 Mbps service I had previous to that. I was pretty happy (and only paying something like $25 a month…) I tested my work speed and was pulling in close to 12 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up. Seemed “fast” – but with everybody at work surfing rather than being productive, I’m sure it was a bit sluggish. 6 months later and I bumped up to 10 Mbps service, with 16 Mbps service coming another 5 months later.

So what does another 7 months get me? Sweet 20 Mbps service:

Dave’s a happy person for sure!! Score one point for Charter… Even if they are hassling people with bandwidth caps… Time to go see how much of this 20 Mbps I can sustain… However, to be fair – my 95th Percentile usage for the last few months is only around 5.5 Mbps.

I love my graphs! LOL! (And yes – I know I have a gap in week 6… Pesky SNMP!!)

As announced yesterday in an exclusive from DSL Reports, Charter Communications will be implementing new usage caps for their broadband bandwidth.

Broadband Reports has learned that Charter will be updating their acceptable use policy (AUP) next week, setting the stage for clear usage caps and potential overage fees. A source familiar with the plans tells us Charter will be imposing a 100GB cap upon any Charter connection of 15Mbps or less, and a 250GB usage cap for broadband tiers “over 15 Mbps up to 25 Mbps.”

So I was pretty excited when Charter finally hashed out their differences with the local Saint Louis CBS affiliate for HD broadcast rights. Charter Good.

Usage caps when I’m paying $70 a month for bandwidth in a Saint Louis monopoly… Charter Bad.

This news isn’t really news, I suppose. I’ve talked about this a few times already… So how have I adjusted?

Meh… No really. Considering I have the 16 MB service – I’d fall into the 250 GB cap. At $1 a GB overage charge… That would be over $470 for two of my months where usage was pretty high. (Average over the last 12 months was right at 251 GB…) Maybe that’s a better way to measure… A rolling 3 month average perhaps? And what about uploads? Do they count? Better hope that there’s some ways to track usage… (Currently there isn’t any…)

I suppose this is a way for the $20 Billion debt ridden company to force users to upgrade to a higher cost tier of service or have those fees roll in. Right now the next tier up from 10 MB to 16 MB is only $25 a month… Do you think that Charter will automatically upgrade users to the new service if they go over 25 GB in a month? Perhaps I should charge Charter $1 a month for every GB under 250 GB I don’t use? How about banking bandwidth like AT&T does with rollover bandwidth?

Now that I’m a full time telecommuter / work-from-home employee who has to pay for his own broadband (don’t get me started) – this just doesn’t help.

We’ll see how it works out… (Especially considering in a month, “unlimited usage” could equate to 5 TB of download capcity on a 16 Mb/s bandwidth tier…)

BTW – I have had a good time reading the comments on Slashdot… A search on Google will bring you plenty of other fun stories about this issue…

In about a week’s time, Charter Communication will no longer be carrying the Saint Louis CBS affiliate KMOV television signal. I stumbled across this tidbit of fairly relevant information just today as EngadgetHD had an article about the new HDTV channels arriving shortly.

So a possible upside to this would be no longer being subjected to the daily Guiding Light obsession that my wife has had for the last 20 years… However, WE are big fans of How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Gary Unmarried, Flashpoint, and Rules of Engagement… Well – you get the idea. (I suppose grabbing downloaded episodes after they air might work in a pinch but very annoying and very specific…)

Having already been annoyed with Charter over not carrying the HD lineup for CBS, not carrying the entire channel is just ridiculous. Our family spends a good deal of money with phone service, HD and digital cable along with 16Mbs broadband… With rumors of Charter running low on cash – what options are there? Being that their HQ is just a few blocks from our house – there’s been little incentive for other options to present themselves… (I’m not going to say monopoly… but maybe I’ll hint at it…)

So KMOV has their side of the story… But I’ve yet to find any information on Charter’s side of the story… A quick search of Google will give you plenty of links to other newsworthy information…

“For more than two years, KMOV has been trying to reach an agreement with Charter Cable to have KMOV’s signal available to Charter cable customers,” KMOV leaders said in a written statement. “We have made offers, Charter has not responded. We want Channel 4 on Charter, but effective Dec. 31st, Charter will no longer carry KMOV.

Feel like letting off a bit of steam about your favorite shows? Give Charter a call…

Charter Communications offices: 314-965-0555
Charter Customer Service: 1-888-GET CHARTER (1-888-438-2427)
Charter E-mail: SteveGM@chartercom.com

Just as I was actually getting to like Charter after years of crappy customer support, technical support and dodgy quality, I have to wonder if other broadcast channels are going to be going static…