Insight vs. AT&T vs. ? for tv/internet/phone

I see that besides the local cable provider, AT&T offers their Uverse service in Louisville.

Is there one clear-cut winner, or maybe a better alternative? Beside all of them being bloody expensive, it looks like AT&T has slower connection speeds, though comparing cable to DSL is not apples-to-apples.

I may be the slowest person on earth to grasp new technology. I was still locked in the AT&T is the phone company and Insight is the cable company. A year ago I threw in and signed up with Insight for phone, cable and broadband wi-fi. Best decision I have made in a long time. I have had no problems and save money as well. Other peoples mileage may vary but I recommend them without hesitation.

My coworker had a ton of problems with AT&T for internet. In fact, she could never get it to work and was having trouble with the modem they sent and everything. Not even her 15 yr old could fix it and they can do anything technological! She wound up back with insight.
We also have insight for cable/internet and it works great and is super fast. I don't have the phone simply because we don't use a home phone..but it sure is cheaper than the $50+ a month bellsouth wanted to charge me for.

I'll also vote for Insight. I have their business service for the shop - internet plus phone. About $90/month. We need a phone land line here, unfortunately.

I've been playing with google voice and sipgate lately, and have pretty much decided that I don't need any kind of phone anymore, as long as I can access wifi. My laptop becomes my telephone. Incoming calls are free, outgoing are dirt cheap (using sipgate). I can use either a headset, or my laptop has a build in microphone.

I use skype video calls for free to my brother in Hong Kong, and father in Berlin. (laptop has built in webcam too)

Tech is changing fast. I've ditched my cell phone, because the only time I'm away from wifi is when I'm driving, and I shouldn't be talking anyway! Freedom from a cell phone is priceless!

Oh, and cable tv is a thing of the past for me. I watch my "tv" on the computer now. Mostly news, some sports, and good stuff like Daily Show, Colbert, Dexter, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. And some youtube....

I just converted from Insight to AT&T and have been pretty happy. Uverse is not available in all of Louisville so I got the Direct TV package. Prior to switching, we had threatened Insight to switch, so they knocked off $15/month for a year. With the intro rates for AT&T, I was able to get service comparable to what I was getting with Insight pus a DVR and HD for another $15 cheaper a month for the next year, and then the price will revert to monthly rated comparable to what my Insight bill would be.

My main concern was broadband speed, since I work in IT and work from home quite often. Remember that there are alot of factors that go into the true speed you are receiving. For cable, the number of users in your neighborhood using cable broadband impacts your performance. For AT&T DSL, the distance from their office/substation impacts performance. My Insight service was advertised as up to 10mbps, but I was consistently getting around 6.5 mpbs. AT&T's fastest service is only advertised at 6 mbps. After switching, I am still consistently getting 5.5 + mbps, so I really didn't loose enough performance to notice.

I have not needed customer service (and hopefully won't), so I cannot comment on that aspect.

A note about Uverse: We have some friends that tried Uverse and quickly found that it is great but has one big limitation. Right now, they only have the technology to send to HD signals to your house at a time. So if you have more than 2 HD tvs and they are all being watched, someone will get kicked off HD and only get a regular signal.

My 2 cents,
-Pete

We dropped Insight cable for Directv, but kept their internet service. We were dis-satisfied with their cable service, but have had no complaints with their internet service.

We have had customers tel us about problems with both companies. The one thing that we know for sure is when we hook up DirecTv to their TV's and they see the HD from satellite, they are very happy.
We sell mainly commercial but do select residential customers. We just installed DirecTv at Molly Malone's in the Highlands.

TV: I can't speak highly enough of DirecTV. I've had them for over 10 years and have been extremely satisfied in all aspects. Their customer service is simply the best of any large company I've dealt with. On the few occasions I have had to call, I've been speaking with a live and knowledgeable American human being within a minute...none of this phone circle mumbo jumbo. Conversely I've talked to friends who have DISH or local cable who have been extremely dissatisfied (on many levels). In terms of programming and signal, I have never-ever had the reception problems that the cable companies would have you believe is a common occurance. Once, maybe twice a year it will storm hard enough that I will lose reception for a brief period of time...but to be honest, for the most part these outages occur when you should be hunkered down in your basement fearing for you life and not sitting in front of the tube. The only real problem with any satellite TV system is the possibility that your dish can occasionally "ice up" or become too snow covered...even having spent years in MN this has only happened to me a handful of times (3 or 4) and was resolved by simply brushing the accumulation off the dish (THIS is why you want to mount the dish somewhere that you don't have to climb to the peak of the roof).

Internet: I have AT&T and have been relatively satisfied with them. I do not notice any problem with speed but then again I'm not streaming a lot of video or doing a lot of crap that requires a lot of bandwidth. Customer service with AT&T does in fact suck...Although I will say that once you get beyond the foreign nationals staffing their customer service lines that service has been fairly decent (I get around most of the crap by just asking to speak to a supervisor or someone who speaks English as a native language right off the bat).

Phone: Don't have a home phone and don't miss the marketing calls even a little bit.

We have DirectTV and the programming is much better than Insights or U-verse, had them both...I'll keep my dish. It's only gone out on us a few times due to snow, nothing a swipe of a broom couldn't fix. I completely agree with everything Steve P said, we've seldomly lost service, even when we were in all the Michigan snow storms and their customer service has been better than most.

We had AT&T internet when we first moved here...omg BAD!! If it wasn't running super slow, it just wasn't running. I can't tell you how many days I spent on the phone with them getting nowhere. We wanted to stick with them for discounts on our cell phone bill, but wasn't worth it. Went to insight and haven't looked back. The connection is more stable, faster and cheaper than what AT&T offered. We both are gamers and use a large amount of bandwidth, but we've never had problems with it running slow.