Time Warner Cable Misleads Consumers About Its Internet Speeds

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In the wake of its acquisition of Time Warner Cable, New York's attorney general has sent a letter to Charter calling for the company to "clean up Time Warner Cable's act." The AG called Time Warner Cable's performance "abysmal" compared to other Internet providers.

What we have seen in our investigation so far suggests that Time Warner Cable has earned the miserable reputation it enjoys among consumers," the letter reads. "Overcoming this history will require more than a name change; it will require a fundamental revolution in how Time Warner Cable does business and treats its customers." (As a result of this year's acquisition, Time Warner Cable, Charter and Bright House Networks will be collectively called "Spectrum.")
 
No complaints here. Live out amongst farm fields and get 50mbit down (which any test I have done shows 60-70 over time) and rarely an outtage. I know that doesn't represent everyone by any stretch. I just personally have had good experiences in the places ive lived with using twc, now that they sold my part off to charter, who knows. I did get a letter saying they will be improving my performance and maintaining similar 'value' to what I currently have. Which to me means, they are going to want to put in their own modem and charge me more for the same service.
 
I live in NYC and I had Time Warner Cable before switching to Verizon FIOS. TWC's speeds were always advertised as "up to x" speed. During peak hours, that speed was incredibly slower. Another issue is their upload speeds are abysmal unless you pay the premium for the business version of their cable service. For content creation and those who upload videos, upload speeds are vital. Lucky for me Verizon finally started offering FIOS in my area. If it wasn't for that, TWC would have continued to be a monopoly.
 
I'm guessing this is aimed at congested areas like NYC. In upstate NY I never have an issue with TWC internet speeds.
 
I have mixed results with TWC. I can get up to 300 where I live (oddly, they didn't inform us that if you had 50, you now get 300 - that was about 3 months ago they made the switch). However, performance is all over the place. Sometimes I get 1-5. Other times I get random speeds.
It's been very frustrating working with their tech support. The solution is always to reboot the router. If that doesn't work, you are generally screwed.
 
My 300 down 20 up was great before the acquisition. It ran at 350 down and 22 up most of the time. Zero complaints from me. As soon as the sale for completed my 300 / 20 turned into 275 / 19. It will "peak" at 290 once in a blue moon now. Never see 20 up. Then I see this on their website which I'd never seen before.
Unscrambled: When Choosing Broadband, Focus on Your Needs Not Speeds


So what is this trying to tell me? That speed isn't everything? What the hell happened to my darn speed? Can't watch Youtube 4K video at all. Can't watch 1440p video. Buffering like a SOB even at 3am. I used to be able to stream 8K video from Youtube! Steam takes 45 minutes to download a game that used to take 10 mins tops on a bad day.
 
Their network in my area is oversubscribed, there are too many "peak times" when it's painful to stream a 720p video on my 200/20 connection... Pretty embarrassing, but better than it has been in years past, so we've at least got that going for us...
 
Never had a major issue with TWC, just that we pay to damn much for the speeds we are getting. Especially when you start comparing around the country to other providers.

NYC is terrible though, they have constant outages and poor speeds in a lot of areas. They need a serious overhaul over there to fix that issue.
 
If TWC is abysmal, then AT&T is the fetus eater. Here in San Antonio there is no comparison. TWC is miles and years ahead of AT&T. Since there are no other choices here atm (google fiber is coming supposedly), I don't really see what the complaints are unless this is like what others have said about it being NYC. I can tell at 7-9 pm that it gets a little laggy but it still beats U-verse any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
 
I'm in Austin, have 200 Mbps down/? Mbps up service with TWC, and regularly get 26-28 MB/s down which is over 200 Mbps. I'd say my overall average speed over time from sites that I know aren't limiting me from their end is probably about 100 Mbps, which I have no quarrel with. Network conditions are network conditions. Outage rate seems about average based on the many ISPs I've used. No complaints with TWC here.
 
LZ_Xray said:
I'm in Austin, have 200 Mbps down/? Mbps up service with TWC, and regularly get 26-28 MB/s down which is over 200 Mbps. I'd say my overall average speed over time from sites that I know aren't limiting me from their end is probably about 100 Mbps, which I have no quarrel with. Network conditions are network conditions. Outage rate seems about average based on the many ISPs I've used. No complaints with TWC here.
Click to expand...

TWC doesn't offer a 200mbps service in Austin. It's actually 320mbps down. Either way it's been pretty reliable for me. Peak times it slows down in the low 200's but cable is a shared resource. So no surprises. Upload seems to be pretty steady in the 25mbps range.

I have AT&T fiber access as well but given that I have to rent a modem to get gigapower, they deep packet inspect, and have a 1TB cap, the choice is simple. Now if AT&T dropped the packet sniffing or the cap I would probably switch over. I can pay extra for faster service, but tacking on modem rental + vpn cost + $30 for no cap seems excessive for very minimal perceived benefit.
 
I just jumped ship to TWC from the festering mess that is the Frontier FiOS takeover. As soon at they took over, the buffering started. The service outages also started. Oh and we started losing channels. OnDemand stopped working the day of the "turnover". When my cable box died from some update they pushed down, it took them 4 weeks to get me a new one, which didn't work.
 
Being a long time Charter internet subscriber, I can tell you all in NY, screwed. Charter has good speeds on their own network, but when you hop around, it's like dial up at times.
 
Where I am at, Charter is advertising their Spectrum service like crazy.

And the real kicker is, is that I know of no locations remotely near me that can even get the service.

I know of one person way out in the boonies that had it.
 
I have 300 Mbps down and was getting that just fine living in So Cal. I'll have to do some speed tests tonight to see if anything has changed recently.
 
steakman1971 said:
I have mixed results with TWC. I can get up to 300 where I live (oddly, they didn't inform us that if you had 50, you now get 300 - that was about 3 months ago they made the switch). However, performance is all over the place. Sometimes I get 1-5. Other times I get random speeds.
It's been very frustrating working with their tech support. The solution is always to reboot the router. If that doesn't work, you are generally screwed.
Click to expand...
They only mailed an advertising card to let people know, no email or web announcement either. Very strange .

My lowest peak here in HI is 100mbps so far and I'm on the 300 plan too.
 
cageymaru said:
My 300 down 20 up was great before the acquisition. It ran at 350 down and 22 up most of the time. Zero complaints from me. As soon as the sale for completed my 300 / 20 turned into 275 / 19. It will "peak" at 290 once in a blue moon now. Never see 20 up. Then I see this on their website which I'd never seen before.
Unscrambled: When Choosing Broadband, Focus on Your Needs Not Speeds


So what is this trying to tell me? That speed isn't everything? What the hell happened to my darn speed? Can't watch Youtube 4K video at all. Can't watch 1440p video. Buffering like a SOB even at 3am. I used to be able to stream 8K video from Youtube! Steam takes 45 minutes to download a game that used to take 10 mins tops on a bad day.
Click to expand...

Something is wrong there - I was able to watch Netflix 4k fine with my old 50mb connection thru comcast.
 
haste. said:
Something is wrong there - I was able to watch Netflix 4k fine with my old 50mb connection thru comcast.
Click to expand...

Yes, before the acquisition my Youtube 4K videos would literally load the entire video in seconds. Now I can only watch 1 - 3 seconds of video before I have to wait 30 secs to a minute for the next 1 - 3 seconds of video to load. My ping today is the best it has been since the sale. Usually it is 50ms+. It was 19ms before TWC was sold.

5394230772.png
 
Must be a New York thing. Here in the great state of KY, my new 200/20 mb/s service have been performing great. But now i'll have to keep an eye on things
 
cageymaru said:
Yes, before the acquisition my Youtube 4K videos would literally load the entire video in seconds. Now I can only watch 1 - 3 seconds of video before I have to wait 30 secs to a minute for the next 1 - 3 seconds of video to load. My ping today is the best it has been since the sale. Usually it is 50ms+. It was 19ms before TWC was sold.

5394230772.png
Click to expand...

That sucks man. Your numbers show you should have no problems at all.
 
Strange, I read cageymaru's post and decided to check mine. This was my result seconds before loading up a 4k Youtube:

Capture.PNG


The video played fine most of the time, but started buffering toward the end. Stopped it and did another speedtest:

Capture1.PNG


Nearly exactly the same. Seems like at these speeds even a 4k Youtube should be flawless?
 
In my 10+ years with TWC, I have always got the max advertised speed in my tier plan (including max 300mbps plan) so there is no misleading going on here. I'm actually more worried about losing the advertised speed now that TWC has been acquired by Charter. This clean up act has a chance of making things worse too.
 
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As the other posters have stated. Before the sale no buffering issues now after the sale at times YT can't serve me a 1080p vid. I have to manually select 720 or sometimes 480 so it won't buffer every few seconds. Sucks because before the sale I had no issues with TWC and was pretty happy with the service.

On 300/20 plan.
 
I've yet to encounter an ISP I like. TWC, Cox, Comcast, AT&T, and Frontier are what I've used in different corners of the country. While they often work, they also often have issues. Worst by far was AT&T. Constant outages, speeds all over the place, and just abysmal service. TWC in Columbus, OH was also pretty horrid. Rolling outages all of the time, speeds were highly variable, and cable service was equally bad with quality issues, outages, and equipment that would randomly decide to stop working for hours at a time. Frontier simply refuses to acknowledge their equipment is utterly ancient and wants to charge massive fees to upgrade. They're all garbage and every support call always results in them attempting to upsell me and treat me as an idiot. That I really don't appreciate and find particularly insulting.
 
Brighthouse has been pretty decent here awhile now, I used to have TWC for awhile.

I hope the merger doesn't bork things here.
 
Wizard220 said:
As the other posters have stated. Before the sale no buffering issues now after the sale at times YT can't serve me a 1080p vid. I have to manually select 720 or sometimes 480 so it won't buffer every few seconds. Sucks because before the sale I had no issues with TWC and was pretty happy with the service.

On 300/20 plan.
Click to expand...

Same here basically. Except I wasn't happy with TW before, but now it's worse. I'm in Maine
 
I've got the TWC 50/5 plan (fastest I can get in Yuma, AZ). Haven't really had an issue with the service itself even with two roommates killing my wifi, just with the sales people (went to "break the TV/internet package" I originally had to upgrade to the 50/5 internet service and was lied to over the phone and had to square it away at a local office).

Had Charter when I lived in WI back when their fastest internet was 1.5Mb/256Kb (or was it 128kb?). Didn't have any real issues with them outside of the occasional drop in connection.

Just curious how Charter could afford this merger since they were pretty much bankrupt not too long ago...
 
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