Charter Unleashes 60 Mbps Broadband
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: Charter, Broadband, Internet, 60, mbps | Themes: The Internet
Everyone likes a fat pipe, and Charter Communications plans to provide said pipe by offering customers the fastest residential broadband service on the market today: 60Mbps!
Although not as fast as the blazing 160 Mbps internet connection speeds predicted for 2009 (according to Comcast), a 60 Mbps connection is still better than anything available today in the U.S. And what better way to complement that fast, smoking rig than with a fast, smoking broadband internet connection than with Charter Communications' High-Speed Internet Ultra60?
“Not only are we delivering the fastest speed today, but our infrastructure has the capacity to support even higher speeds as demand and usage grow,” said Ted Schremp, Charter’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Charter’s ability to provide increasingly greater bandwidth is critical to our customers’ use and enjoyment of the Internet and delivers greater value. It also highlights our growing superiority over DSL service.”
Currently Charter is testing the Ultra60 service in the St. Louis metropolitan area, with additional markets to follow. The company also stated that it will boost Charter High-Speed Internet Max from 16 Mbps to 20 Mbps at no additional cost.
“Speed and reliability are what consumers value most, and we offer the fastest and most reliable speed,” said Marwan Fawaz, Charter’s CTO. “In addition to select Ultra60 deployments, we’re increasing our 16 Mbps service to 20 Mbps nationwide so our customers can take greater advantage of rapidly growing interactive applications available on the Internet and to help telecommuting workers become even more productive.”
Charter said it is using DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Server Interface Specification), the industry's next-generation modem technology that combines multiple channels together to allow higher connection speeds... basically squeezing more bits into the same pipeline. According to an article over on Multichannel, the new technology will help cable operators "defensively" in areas where Verizon offers FiOS and let them play offense where DSL is the rival.
Apparently, Charter's Ultra60 service will cost subscribers a whopping $139.99 per month, or for an extra $10 discount per month, customers can subscribe to the Ultra60 bundle that includes the broadband connection along with TV or phone service. However, given the state of the economy and current consumer spending habits, it will be interesting to see if Charter - or any other super-fast broadband service provider like Verizon and Comcast - can even sell the service.
Charter also said that it will not impose a bandwidth-usage cap on any high-speed broadband service, so that might actually be a huge selling point for heavy downloaders.
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....WHAT!!!...$140.00!!...thats BS!!...here in South Africa we pay that for 4mbps...yes, no typo...thats FOUR!!...
And here I am stuck with a max 1mb/s with frontier communications. And I seriously mean stuck. They monopolize the area completely, cutting out any possibilities of ATnT providing data connections on their lines, and then charge customers 70 dollars for their fastest connection speeds, which are a whopping 1 meg down, 256k up.
And the cable company doesnt reach areas anywhere outside of city limits, despite the cables that are already run directly in-front of my house. Ugh! Pisses me off just thinking about it again.
I am glad that other companies are starting to offer faster internet, I have had a 50Mbps/50Mbps connection for over 1 year now and I currently have the problem of not being able to find servers that cannot upload to me fast enough. Hate to be mean but for this service I only pay $40 per month. Regularly paying $60 but signed up at a great time. Best thing it is Fiber and they might change it in a year or so to 100Mbps without changing the cost don't know.
On what LuCiUs said, here in SA we get ripped off BIG TIME! I'm looking at getting an uncapped 4mb account but it will cost +-$200 for an almost-premium account. Oh and did I mention our average ADSL CAP is 3gb?!
And here I am stuck with a max 1mb/s with frontier communications. And I seriously mean stuck. They monopolize the area completely, cutting out any possibilities of ATnT providing data connections on their lines, and then charge customers 70 dollars for their fastest connection speeds, which are a whopping 1 meg down, 256k up.
Hey, living on the frontier used to mean no law or shower. LOL.
I am paying RCN $45 a month for 7Mb/800Kb in New York City. Talk about being overcharged.
Your only as fast at downloading something as your source is not your speed. It certainly helps but, as in downloading movies and such your limited to the source's speed your getting it from.
10 Mb/s for ~12$ including cable tv, fixed phone line + mobile 3G service and cheap prices on calls too.
I guess we are lucky here in Romania
Your only as fast at downloading something as your source is not your speed. It certainly helps but, as in downloading movies and such your limited to the source's speed your getting it from.
True, but how nice it would be to have multiple downloads going and then hop into a game with no fear of hitting your cap.
Or a 5MB a second torrent download?
Or depending what the upload is (all that is important to me) run your own web/media/proxy server.
10 Mb/s for ~12$ including cable tv, fixed phone line + mobile 3G service and cheap prices on calls too.I guess we are lucky here in Romania
Oh wow you have no idea. Well, assuming you mean $12usd that is. I'm in Texas,US, and all of that here would be over $150usd even before taxes!
America is extremely backwards in terms of internet speeds. Not as bad as south africa by the sounds of it... But overall, America blows. And it's less because of technology, and more because of politicians focusing more on limiting certain technologies while completely neglecting the most important ones.
Same situation where third world countries have extremely hard time getting food support from other countries because of their government.
America has some extreme difficulties in getting fast, reliable, and fairly priced, because the government couldnt care less. They're more worried about keeping our bleeding out corrupt banks and decrepit automakers from dying. But that's what happens when you're government is controled by 60-70 year olds. They'd rather bitch about 4 channel broadcast TV then the mountains of other stupid shit that continues to get worse and worse.
I have to say that I used to envy US people 4-5 years ago. The best locations used to have +1Mbps while I was struggling on dialup or best case 32kbps cable.
Now, for $20 a month, we have 50 Mbit (yes, constant download speeds of 5.7 MB/s), unmetered trafic. For 8 bucks more we have cable, landline + 3G phone with unlimited call time in the network, amazingly cheap rates in other networks + 0.07 USD/minute on ANY landline in the world and 0.15 USD on ANY mobile number in the world.
Can anyone beat that?
They mention a bundle with other services? I have the 10mbps service with them with their Charter Bundle, wonder how much it would cost in the bundled price.
Sorry, made a mistake, the cost for the above mentioned broadband is not $20 a month, it's $12
"Everyone likes a fat pipe, and Charter Communications plans to provide said pipe by offering customers the fastest residential broadband service on the market today: 60Mbps!"
Everyone likes a fat pipe...nice opening Kevin Parrish be careful not to scrape your knees as you hop and skip on the way to elementary school.
Wonder whats wrong with are economy $140.00 bucks over in other country's there not getting charged anywhere near that. Company's and sevice providers are very greedy over here for sure. Then you pay all the taxes for those services LOL. Come on when we going to get a break here.
I pay $10 for 100mbps
Romania's net ftw.
fios have 50/20 and 50/50. We are testing a 100mbps connection as we speak...and 50/20 definately does not cost that price lol.
America is extremely backwards in terms of internet speeds. Not as bad as south africa by the sounds of it... But overall, America blows. And it's less because of technology, and more because of politicians focusing more on limiting certain technologies while completely neglecting the most important ones.Same situation where third world countries have extremely hard time getting food support from other countries because of their government. America has some extreme difficulties in getting fast, reliable, and fairly priced, because the government couldnt care less. They're more worried about keeping our bleeding out corrupt banks and decrepit automakers from dying. But that's what happens when you're government is controled by 60-70 year olds. They'd rather bitch about 4 channel broadcast TV then the mountains of other stupid shit that continues to get worse and worse.
I'd have to say yes and no. On one hand our government (both parties) allowed monopolies in communication/cable for decades. Competition is what drives innovation, lowers prices and generally makes things better for all. There's definitly an argument to be made that this is a large reason we're so far behind.
The other factor though is that it is a huge undertaking delivering the infrastucture to 95% of the country (not population). Take Kansas City here. The metro can fit London AND Paris in it's borders yet the population can't match either one of those cities. (techincal term is Metroplex) There's a lot more cost involved with less profit. I'm not making excuses here cause I'm sick to death of being screwed over by Time Warner, just stating the fact that the cost is more than 2:1 here over other countries.
for the price of $169US, we can have 1000m(fiber to home service) in Hong Kong
for the price of $88US, we can have 200m(fiber to home service) in Hong Kong
You know...it just really occurred to me how very screwed DSL is. Here around me AT&T has tried test cases of satellite and fixed, land based wireless Internet service in my area at least twice.
If I'm not mistaken ADSL2+ is only 15mbps...and that's probably only any good if you're close to the DSLAM. Copper just doesn't have the bandwidth. Or rather I guess the signal loss is too high.
Tons of people get their TV, cell, landline, and DSL with them (and I'm sure it is likewise with other providers) JUST because they can do it all.
You cut out the DSL due to cable and fiber being faster and...well...their business model starts to look in danger to me. After all, you know they don't make any money on that $15-$20 dsl...its the $60 landline charge over a network they own that was laid down a decades ago that is the money maker.
Unless someone comes out with some kind of AMAZING signaling tech...DSL seems to be on its way out.
Schweet.
I have charter now.
I pay about 200 a month for TV/Internet.
I have actually been feeling gross about it and was going to cancel it. $200 dollars is a freakin car payment.
I used to spend about $150 a month on cigarettes. I managed to give that up so I was using my "cigarette money" for cable as a reward.
In my opinion, it's just a waste of money. There's nothing on any of the movie channels. On Demand is only reruns. The military channel and the hd stuff is cool. There's only 14 HD channels and 2 of them cost extra. It's a total rip off except for the internet.
A season of Battlestar Galactica is like 5 episodes long. I can rent the DVD for 3.99. Didn't a "season" used to mean like 7 months of episodes?
If they can throw in a static IP maybe I will drop the movie channels and cut some kind of deal. But I don't really need the extra speed.
Wow, with ATT U-Verse, for that price I get 6down/1up and like 200 digital channels with a ton of them in HD over IPTV with VOIP. And a 160GB dvr that interfaces with other receivers in the house for watching recordings on all sets. Actually, 140 is a little more
. I love bringing all this up 
I have their claimed 10 meg service already, to bad it only works at 3meg. By the way Charter is by far the worst of all cable companies I have ever dealt with. I only wish I could swap to something better.
I have their claimed 10 meg service already, to bad it only works at 3meg. By the way Charter is by far the worst of all cable companies I have ever dealt with. I only wish I could swap to something better.
I have the 10 meg service as well, but I often get 1.3 MBps (which is 10.4 Mbps) so I don't know why you are hitting those speeds.
But I do agree their service sucks as far as consistency.
I hate charter. A friend in the IT field has done some contract work with them and says they're, by far, the worst run company he's ever worked with. Case and point, it took me 5 months to get a $100 refund from them when I switched to AT&T's DSL... 6Mbs is fine by me, and I'm actually getting about 900KB/s, which is about 7.2Mbs... AT&T is actually doing something right!! And it's only costing me $40/month. Halo plays great!
The South Africans are in the same situation as Australia. Your constraint is the backbone, not the last mile. As far as Internet is concerned, South Africa might as well be an island. There is no fiber crossing the African continent, and laying undersea cables is expensive.
Frontier Communications is so-named because it serves primarily rural areas. Some of their service area in Vermont doesn't even get digital cell phone coverage. Now, if you live in a city that is in Frontier's coverage area, then that's tough luck because you get lumped in with the farms -- none of the other major carriers are going to fight over you.
Sorry Sir, but we care about the UP, not the DL
We have Charter where I live in Texas. We used to have Comcast in New Jersey, which contrary to many people's opinions was pretty good. We wouldn't have even thought about satellite because of the equipment, weather, trees, etc. Cable was the best deal, and the fastest internet. Well, peak hours weren't, but it was still pretty good. We tried Charter cable when we moved to Texas, it was 7 days of hell trying to get TV to work. Out of two TV connections, they could only get one to work at a time (capability of two TVs to one connection). Bureaucratic mess that was. CS was horrible, when being redirected to the "supervisor" the call really got redirected to another same-level employee. The guy who actually installed our cable the first day apologized profusely and gave us his personal number to get a hold of him two days later, so he could try switching out the boxes at the end of his work day (he thought that might be the problem, but it wasn't). He called in the problem to his base of operations and even he was appalled at how the company was handling our problem. After 1 week of spending on average 8 hrs per day on the phone with CS (6 out of 8 hrs were on hold), we eventually got someone with an IQ greater than 75 who was not reading from a script. They said they were looking at our account on their monitor and said it was as easy as a checkbox in the browser. WTF. After one month of mediocre TV content, we switched to satellite. Couldn't be happier, except that we had to stick with Charter's cable internet because the only other option was AT&T's slow-as-molasses DSL - which we couldn't get to work anyway.
But Charter's rates are also very sneaky. You actually have to go hunting to find out that the advertised rate is only promotional for 6 months, after which it gets hiked WAY up, but you have to go digging even further to find out just how much. Verizon has flat-rate pricing with the first month free. Charter: $80/mo for 16MbpsDL + installation & equipment fees, maximum upload rate not specified. Verizon FiOS: $60/mo for 20MbpsDL/5MbpsUP, or $70 for 20MbpsDL/20MbpsUP; both + installation fees. Nether have bandwidth caps, but cable by its very nature is limited in speed due to local cable bottlenecks during peak hours. FiOS, AFAICT, is limited by its central routers' and servers' ability to process customers' data as it travels at the speed of light. Verizon also offers 50MbpsDL/20MbpsUP for $145/mo (less with bundles), which is what Charter seems to be countering here. Expect Verizon to respond accordingly. I just wish Verizon served our area, AT&T is pretty lackluster.
Wonder whats wrong with are economy $140.00 bucks over in other country's there not getting charged anywhere near that. Company's and sevice providers are very greedy over here for sure. Then you pay all the taxes for those services LOL. Come on when we going to get a break here.
That's what I would like to know as well. Japan is up to 100MBps and FASTER service now.... why can't the United States get to even 20Mbps? Don't give me that "The United States is bigger than Japan!" argument either.
Yes, we are bigger... however, we have proportionately more money, even in this recession/depression to improve things by quite a bit... if the companies would stop being so damned greedy.
Just say NA has more limits on "Pirating", this answer all questions.