Has anyone made the switch from TWC / Spectrum to AT&T Gigafiber? Do me a favor?

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#1

Considering the switch - we have Spectrum (formerly TWC) “200 Mbps” internet. Used to have AT&T Uverse, but when we moved to Richardson, our internet quality went to crap. Something about the wiring/fiber being a pilot project from the '80s and it’s just not up to modern standards.

AT&T is rolling out fiber internet in our 'hood using NEW fiber instead of the crappy infrastructure that caused problems before.

My biggest complaint (and reason for scare quotes above) is that Spectrum “traffic shapes” our connection. If I hit speedtest.net, I get a sweet, clean 200+ Mbps every time, and everything on the network perks up for a few minutes. But if I go to speedof.me or another alternative test website, I get like 20 or 30 Mbps. Sometimes up to 100 if I’m lucky. Also - my blu-ray player shows the connection speed when it accesses Netflix and it’s usually in the 20-30 range. (Wired connection behind gigabit switches) We have a video doorbell and sometimes the connection is so crappy I can’t even view my porch… Unless I run a Speedtest.net session and then BAM I get good speed for a while. So that is fun.

So, long story short, I’m wondering if anyone who has switched from TWC / Spectrum over to AT&T Fiber could talk about the experience, the reliability, and mostly post a couple of speed test results from speedtest.net and speedof.me, plus any other speed test sites you can try. Thanks!

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#2

I’ll try it from other websites soon but I get like 950 Mbps on most bandwidth tests. I’ve maxed it out before with popular torrents like Ubuntu or Debian installers. Game installs from Origin typically do 500+ Mbps, Steam game installs typically do 100 Mbps. You quickly discover who has a lot of bandwidth to dole out and who doesn’t.

Overall it’s very reliable, probably the most reliable internet service I’ve ever had. The one complaint I have is the gateway that you must use with the service. You have to reset it once in a while because the WiFi wigs out. Apparently you can’t use your own because it’s encrypted traffic on the AT&T side but you can setup your own gateway in a DMZ after their gateway which could get rid of the WiFi issues.

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#3

One more thing, they don’t advertise this but you can call and get a static IP address for $15 a month if I recall correctly. If you want to run any kind of server setup at home this makes it a lot easier to manage.

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#4

Replying to page @Mike1942f - you mentioned getting AT&T Fiber…

#5

Yes, but … we had AT&T Uverse copper to the house with whatever out in the neighborhood and it is just internet and phone, NOT cable TV. We have a nice roof top antenna for local digital over the air but neither my wife nor I enjoy current TV offerings either way so most video is internet downloads most often off iTunes for her and PBS for me. No Netflix etc.

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#6

Is your Internet speed constant/reliable? Have you tried any speed tests?

#7

The installer said there was only one other person on the alley (so far) with a lot of visible DISH dishes in the neighborhood. I have noticed an uptick in the starting time of YouTube videos and fewer (no?) delays for buffering. My wife does downloading of audio books for the blind, which are large, but she had several on hand and I haven’t asked if she has noticed any change.

#8

If it’s anything like the fiber U-Verse properties that FTR acquired from AT&T a few years back, that’s because unlike FiOS which provisions to the ONT/OLT, U-Verse (or their latest branding) pushes a lot of the mission-critical provisioning to the gateway itself.

#9

That makes sense. The technician who installed it said it was encrypted which didn’t make a lot of sense. The provisioning procedure seems like a more plausible explanation.

#10

I’d personally monitor it, if wasn’t getting what I was paying for, raise the flag. I started watching mine like a hawk, I only get 30mbs (max speed for my area). If if was anything less than what I am paying for, I will document it & report it. It took Charter several months of reporting to get it fixed. In the end, they credited me for what I called in on & documented.

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#11

That’s nice of them and they probably did it out of goodwill, but residential broadband is oversubscribed by design and they can’t provide max bandwidth to all subscribers all the time. The ratios vary, but 200:1 at the CO/headend aren’t unusual; advertised speeds are “up to…” for this reason. Residential usage is sporadic enough that most subscribers realize their peak speeds most of the time.

If you demand a service level with guarantees, that will necessitate stepping up to enterprise-grade service at a steep multiple of what residential service goes for.

#12

There’s the rub - I do get what I pay for, because Ookla Speedtest is Spectrum’s quasi-official test site. Then they monitor traffic and prioritize a subscriber running a speed test on their official metric.

#13

I think if you could prove that, it’d make for some interesting lawyering…

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#14

The tech told me as much when I had it installed. They only view Ookla results as “official” because of some bs about “their servers are optimized for TWC somesuch” and “them other tests you don’t know how much bandwidth they have to dole out or how far they are” bs.

@ESmith is right - I’m not guaranteed any level of service, just “up to 200 Mbps” and a buncha disclaimers like “results not typical.”

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#15

TWC/Spectrum is the worst game in our neck of the woods. They shape traffic no matter the contract. I had a residential package that I upgraded to an enterprise package with Service Level Guarantee. Then TWC at the time delivered the exact same performance as before. I ended up having a lawyer send a letter to get a refund on 6 months of service and to be released from the terms of the contract as they were not being met.

AT&T is not perfect, but they are far more honest in advertising than TWC from the experiences I have had over the years. That said, AT&T is not available in my neighborhood, but I’m on Verizon/Frontier Fios. It has been a positive, though the switch to frontier I heard was rocky for a few.

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#16

As an insider, all I can say is so much understatement.

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#17

Even many business class subscribers got badly burned in that transition.

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#18

Here are some results from mine today. All are around 900 Mbps up and down. They seem to be delivering what they say they will. Note you have to use a wire in most cases to get these speeds. On WiFi you won’t see speeds like this (until years in the future).

Some of the tests max out around 300 Mbps but I suspect this is a server side limitation since I can max out my connection with things like popular torrents which are sourced from many different servers in aggregate.The bandwidth test can only go as high as the server will allow it to and some are not gigabit connection ready.

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#19

Show off :wink:

It is interesting to see that with a fast enough connection you can see the service limitations of the sites you visit.

I recently switch from Fios which I had since it’s inception in our area ~9 years to Spectrum. Spectrum’s base package is twice as fast 100Mbs but their router sucks hard so hard. It drops Wifi every hour: on 2.4 GHz it goes out for 1-2 minutes every 60 minutes, 5GHz drops for 2-3 minutes every 30 minutes.

Wired is fine so I suspect their radios are overheating and reseting. I bought a DOCSIS 3.0 router to only find out that none support voice, you have to use their provided router for that. Grrr…

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#20

Thanks!!

…and some characters…