time warner internet - broadband vs turbo in CH (Charlotte: chapel, new home)
Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
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I'm trying to figure out our internet service for our new home in CHapel Hill. Looks like the main option is Time Warner. Has anyone experienced the difference between regular broadband and "turbo"? Is it worth $10 a month?
How is the internet market in general in Chapel Hill? Any other suggestions for service providers?
If we go with T-W, we'll get their cable package as well. If you've done the research recently, what did you go with? Thanks!
I found the regular broadband to be very slow and choppy when streaming movies, especially if someone else was online. I'm very satisfied with the 'turbo' though. So for me, the extra $10 is definitely worth it!
I hate TWC and their Internet service. I'm fond of saying that they made the impossible possible; I actually miss Cablevision and their superior service offerings.
I don't know what the non-turbo performance is like but I can tell you that there's nothing truly turbo about the premium service. The day AT&T shows up at my door selling U-Verse I'm gone, gone, gone.
Oh, how I wish that a nearby suburb or municipality would follow Wilson's lead and provide Internet and cable service to its citizens. Wilson installed fiber to the door --- Something Time Warner has been saying they'd do for years. Instead, Time Warner takes your money and gives their gangster CEO a huge raise.
Once Time Warner gets competition, I'll gladly jump ship.
I have whatever the standard internet package is from TWC in Chapel Hill, and I'm perfectly happy with it. (I have their phone service too, and it's been just fine; cable TV leaves a bit to be desired.) I don't stream movies, so I can't attest to how well TWC's service handles that. But for general home use (and occassional work from home), the TWC speeds are just fine for me.
There's no comparison of TW cable internet speed to that which I get at work at Duke, be it downloading journal articles and podcasts or uploading photographs, both of which are very rapid at work while taking minutes for downloads to tens of minutes at home. Skype sucks at home vs work. Streaming actually seems OK at home, although we just watch small screen on the computer.
I find it telling that a graduate student from Hanoi, Vietnam considers the US a second world country when it comes to internet speed (and for that matter, cellular service as well).
Our beloved private sector is charging outrageous fees for the privilege of failing us so miserably!
On a strict numbers basis, the regular service offers nominal speeds of 7 Mbps down and 384 Kbps up, while the turbo offers 10 Mbps down and 512 Kbps up.
If they follow the pattern used in Charlotte when they rolled out Wideband there, those should soon bump up to 10 Mbps down for regular and 15 Mbps down for turbo, with both services seeing 1 Mbps up.
It depends on what you are doing online. If you only have one PC and just browse the web, the base service is fine. if you have multiple devices that are on at once, aor live in a dense area with a lot TW subscribers (as peak hours will effect performfance with TW) you may want to go for a higher speed.
It depends on what you are doing online. If you only have one PC and just browse the web, the base service is fine. if you have multiple devices that are on at once, aor live in a dense area with a lot TW subscribers (as peak hours will effect performfance with TW) you may want to go for a higher speed.
Just as a point of reference - in my house we've typically got 3 or 4 PCs going at once plus xBox live, and we really don't notice any significant performance issues.
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