Internet Service Provider Options?

Hi, I live in the Anchorage/Forest Springs area and I have been skewered by TWC yet again. My "special offer" has expired, and for internet only they're wanting to charge me 67.99 a month! That's the base rate - before taxes, fees, etc.

I've done quite a bit of googling, but can't find another carrier that services my area. Does anyone know of alternatives, or am I stuck with getting hosed?

Thanks!!!
Joni

[Robin Garr]

Joni, it's a real lousy choice around here. Does ATT UVerse not reach your area? We have fiber optic on our street, but their sales practices are so sleazy that I've declined to consider it. We're paying about what you are being charged for TWC, and had to fight them to avoid an increase. (Hint: Tell them you're going to switch to ATT if you can't get a better price, and they will almost invariably offer you another 12 months at a lower rate. Lather, rinse, repeat.)

Also, Louisville's Iglou.com re-sells ATT, but with the great advantage of getting it through a local company with nice customer service. You might check their website, http://www.iglou.com, for more info.

What Robin said. Call TWC and tell them you are cancelling and they will fall all over themselves to offer you better. Iglou are good people, too. (Disclaimer - hubby used to work for them).

Wait until Google Fiber comes. We were KC after Google Fiber was put in and TWC was offering $300 gift cards just to sign up. They were crazy desperate.

ATT UVerse... but their sales practices are so sleazy that I've declined to consider it.

Wow, precisely my experience. Relentless email, snail mail, voicemail, phone calls and even reps coming to the house. I won't consider it, either. I ask them to stop, but they won't.

The "threaten- to -switch" tactic for the ISP is the best option.

[Robin Garr]

reps coming to the house.

Reps coming to the house and pretending to be engineers doing installations in the neighborhood and offering special deals because they're nearby! The exact same scam as the itinerants who'll claim to have leftover paving material and then paint your driveway black.

This may be even worse, though, because the earnest young reps are almost certainly college kids lured into working part-time in hope of making a few extra bucks.

Has anyone used or tried Hughes. Net or satellite providers?

[Robin Garr]

Has anyone used or tried Hughes. Net or satellite providers?

I haven't got much, but I've known a few friends with satellite providers who seem to like it okay. You have to accept that whenever there's a hard rain, your cable picture is going to go zooey, though.

It's also my understanding that satellite for Internet is relatively slow, but I don't know much, and that's one of the things I don't know much about.

<shrugs>....We pay right at $100 bucks a month for our U-verse Internet service....It's blazing fast (streaming music/video on multiple devices is nooooooo problem), it very VERY rarely goes out and I can't tell you when (if ever) we've had any kind of issues with excessive and/or hard selling. Is it "cheap" ? No. Does it do what I want it to do WHEN I want it to do it ?...Yep. We're TOTALLY satisfied with U-verse

I'm on the same bandwagon that Steve is.

Has anyone used or tried Hughes. Net or satellite providers?

Not myself, but I've known folks who had satellite internet. It's usually the choice when your home isn't served by one of the traditional cable providers (Time Warner or AT&T Uverse), or if you're so frustrated by those service providers that you're willing to put up with the challenges of using the internet via satellite.

Pull up a chair and I'll explain.

The first thing you'd notice is something called latency. With satellite, when click on a web link your request goes up to a satellite, and back down to earth to a server somewhere. Then the web page you requested gets transmitted back up to the satellite, then back down to your computer. And that can result in quite a wait.

The other challenge with satellite internet is storms. In a heavy downpour your internet speed slows way down, or you might lose the connection temporarily.

In our house we've done away with cable TV and have a Time Warner internet connection (at around $60/month) using a modem I bought at Costco, and something called a Roku box to watch movies and shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Besides that, with an inside antenna hooked up to our television we can get about a dozen local digital stations.

This combination does the job for us, and it feels good to not pay for 100 cable channels that we just wouldn't watch.

Finally, you should be aware that the cable market in Louisville Metro is in a state of flux. There's a deal in the works to sell Time Warner in Louisville to Charter Cable. The deal's currently under review by the FCC, and we should know by the end of March of this year (2016) if it's going to happen. In markets that Charter currently serves, internet prices are cheaper for faster speeds. Also, the city has been making a big push to get Google Fiber in Louisville. This added competition has proven beneficial for service and pricing in other markets that have started Google service.

[Robin Garr]

In our house we've done away with cable TV and have a Time Warner internet connection (at around $60/month) using a modem I bought at Costco, and something called a Roku box to watch movies and shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Besides that, with an inside antenna hooked up to our television we can get about a dozen local digital stations.

This combination does the job for us, and it feels good to not pay for 100 cable channels that we just wouldn't watch.

Almost exactly the same here, except that we got Apple TV in place of an older, early Roku box. I'm ecstatic 99 percent of the time, the rare 1 percent being sports events (World Cup!) that are only partially (if at all) on broadcast TV.

Also, I miss DVR a little bit, but as far as I can tell, the alternatives, like Tivo, cost more than I want to spend for that. Any thoughts on that, Steve?

Oh, and also, you didn't mention it, but I assume you got a digital broadcast antenna? Broadcast TV starts to look a lot more like cable - complete with 4 channels per broadcaster - if you have a big digital antenna up in the attic.

All good info and many thanks for it. I'm kind of in a rural area so looking at options.

Not sure how apropos this is to the topic of ISP's but I just (like 20 minutes ago) had a DirecTV tech over replacing some wireless components to my system...She said that the TV portion of Uverse is on it's way out and (in at least some areas) it is already AT&T's policy that "if you drop U-verse TV - you can never get it back"...period. This kind of dovetails with things my daughter (who managed an AT&T store at the time) told me a month or two ago. Not sure how I feel about this...I mean I'm a DirecTV guy, have been for almost 20 years but if Uverse goes away it is just going to throw a LOT of that business to the (evil) cable companies.

There's a deal in the works to sell Time Warner in Louisville to Charter Cable. The deal's currently under review by the FCC, and we should know by the end of March of this year (2016) if it's going to happen. In markets that Charter currently serves, internet prices are cheaper for faster speeds.

I had Charter Cable for the better part of 6 or 7 years while living in Minnesota....They MAY be The Anti-Christ.