Another internet provider question

Posted by amosborn@reddit | Dallas | View on Reddit | 11 comments

I am so sick of Spectrum and the outages, slow connection, etc. I pay $93/month for wifi which is absurd. All the posts I've seen doing a search recommend fiber, but I don't think any of them are available in my area. I also feel 100 year old trying to research this. All the google results are just 5 best providers in the area. Is there a good website that lists them without having to go to each providers site? Even the plan names are confusing to me. What the hell is AT&T Internet Air? Frontier is not available at all here. 75287 if that matters. I appreciate any help.

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11 Comments

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Professional_Sand771@reddit

AT&T air is just a fancy name for “you plug in this device to an outlet, turn it on, scan a QR code on your phone, and set up wifi on your phone”. Basically AT&T (and other companies) have different types of names for their wifi services and each one isn’t that different from either other - the only major differences is only some wifi services are available in certain areas/not others. For example, AT&T also has a service called Fiber; this is just a service that requires you to have something like a “central control” box installed in a closet. This box is connected to fiber optic cables to deliver wifi/internet however this isn’t available everywhere since not everywhere has fiber optic cables running under their homes/apartments. I know the 2 biggest providers here are Spectrum and AT&T. Your first step should be determining which providers actually service your area. You can use [this](https://www.att.com/buy/internet/) from AT&T to see what kinds of internet AT&T can provide at your address - most providers have a tool like this where you can check.

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Commercial-Editor775@reddit

Att has fiber to my house BUT they switch to coaxial WITHIN house BUT if u get conduit placed yourself then will connect fiber to box in house so u have no bottle neck with copper Verizon 5g quoted me $80 a month for 300 mbs....I pay $80 for giga speedd with att already

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amosborn@reddit (OP)

Thank you for this explanation.

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Chekeleke@reddit

I just switched to Frontier I got a Promo of fiber 500mb for $24.99. I'm happy

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Sneezer@reddit

Richardson, we have Spectrum. We had AT&T for years, but that was pre covid. At the time they did not have fiber in our neighborhood, and when my wife and I both went WFH during covid we had to hop to Spectrum for the higher bandwidth. It has been mostly reliable except for the last two months. We always had periodic drops, but nothing major. Our Nighthawk router was OK, but signal was not great at the other side of the house where my wife’s office is. We got a Deco mesh system from Costco in March, and things got much better. Last couple weeks though we have been experiencing internet drops a couple times a day. Tech came out, said modem was bad, gave us a new one, still having issues. Now they are going to run a new line (admittedly our existing line is decades old) and will see if that works. If not then we may be looking at going back to AT&T, as they brought fiber in to our neighborhood over the last 2 years. FIOS is not available here - only two choices is Spectrum and AT&T, or a cell hotspot.

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No_Guava@reddit

Spectrum was down for us for about 4 hours recently (of course I was trying to WFH). I called up and asked them to credit my account for the time it was down. It worked. At least I won't have been paying for nothing for that day. I plan to do this every time it's down.

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_vandaliser_@reddit

I have been using TMobile home internet and haven’t had any major issues till now. Streams works fine on multiple devices but probably not a good one for online Gaming if you are into it. Am paying $50 flat it is probably about 5-10 bucks more now if you dont have a line on their network. Worth a try since you can cancel anytime and comes with a trail period.

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IAmSixNine@reddit

Sadly most of Dallas is split up and providers have a monopoly. Where i live its ONLY spectrum and no other broadband providers. Fiber and cable are the only two true sold reliable way to get home internet. Spectrum did upgrades recently to do fiber backbone and cable to the last mile as they say to the home. From there you have cellular providers but i personally stay away from them. Cellular can be unpredictable as your relying on radio signals, and it can get pretty congested and deprioritized rather quickly. Plus you also get way less options to optimize your home network. No port forwarding, CGNAT on TMO for example. I have spectrum and am happy with them. What steps have you taken to trouble shoot your issues? Are you using their factory provided modem and wifi? If so they dont provide the best equipment. I own my own modem and seperate router/wifi. I am happy with my service. 300 down 10 up. Paying about the same as you. It might make sense to try to get spectrum working properly first then if the issues are in their network up stream (from your cable tap up the network) versus completely switching. I know before they did service upgrades in my area, i had some issues, a squirrel had chewed through the main trunk line about 2 blocks from me. That caused issues for about 5 months till they tracked it down and fixed it.

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