Author Topic: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)  (Read 6644 times)

snakenbacon

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Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« on: October 03, 2016, 05:42:36 PM »
Took a look at my internet bill, and decided $45 is a bit more than I'd like to pay for Time Warner internet. So I called them up, and ten minutes later, I'm on their Everyday Low Price Internet plan for $15. Speedtest stats are below.



The best part? I haven't really noticed much of a difference in my internet. Youtube and Netflix work fine, although if I look close, things are less "high definition" than before.

NYCMustachian

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2016, 06:16:45 PM »
Awesome job! We use a wifi hotspot at our apartment using my parent's optimum login info. 100% free for us. But it cuts out sometimes, isn't 100% safe and is a pain because we have to login Everytime we use it. I was thinking of getting a cheap twc plan.

Monkey Uncle

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2016, 04:14:08 AM »
Wow, so you can actually use Netflix at 2.35 Mbs?  You're lucky you have a budget plan that you can choose.

Suddenlink is the only cable internet choice in my area.  Their plans start at 50 Mbs for around $60/mo and go up from there.  Pretty much my only choices are to go back to Frontier's crappy DSL, or look into satellite service.  When I had Frontier's awful 0.75 Mbs DSL, I was paying about the same for internet, land line phone, and basic cable TV as I'm paying now for bundling all three of those with Suddenlink.  So not much of a choice.  At least Suddenlink's internet works most of the time, which is more than I can say for Frontier.  Never checked into satellite, but I know people who have it, and they complain about poor bandwidth and reception problems.

Oh well, not sure why I'm telling you all my problems - jealousy, perhaps!
« Last Edit: October 04, 2016, 04:26:43 AM by Monkey Uncle »

snakenbacon

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2016, 06:38:34 AM »
Suddenlink is the only cable internet choice in my area.  Their plans start at 50 Mbs for around $60/mo and go up from there. 

Sorry to hear about their prices! You might be able to call and ask if they have any lower tier internet plans (The Time Warner Cable plan is something you have to call and ask for from their rate card). Even if they don't, mentioning that your current bill is higher than you'd like might lead to some discounted offers (I got a promo offer of $37 / mo for TWC's "basic internet" service, but I passed). Asking takes only about 15 minutes and if you can lower your bill by $5 / month for a year, that's effectively getting paid $240 / hour.

Good luck!

I'm a red panda

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2016, 07:23:42 AM »
There isn't an internet choice in my area under $60. I'm so jealous of people with options!

Adge

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2016, 08:41:06 AM »
I've had the $15 Time Warner internet for over two years now and have found the speed to be consistently good enough to stream video. For an hour long video I might have to let it sit and buffer for a minute beforehand, but I'm not bothered enough by such a small wait to want to pay an extra $30 a month for internet :)

HipGnosis

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2016, 02:18:28 PM »
Suddenlink is the only cable internet choice in my area.  Their plans start at 50 Mbs for around $60/mo and go up from there. 

Sorry to hear about their prices! You might be able to call and ask if they have any lower tier internet plans (The Time Warner Cable plan is something you have to call and ask for from their rate card). Even if they don't, mentioning that your current bill is higher than you'd like might lead to some discounted offers (I got a promo offer of $37 / mo for TWC's "basic internet" service, but I passed). Asking takes only about 15 minutes...
I just got the TWC 2-3Mbs/$15 too.  I had to ask for it too.  It is NOT available everywhere TWC internet is.  I had to give them my street address.
I can watch videos on Roku, but it does take longer for them to 'load', and I only had 6Mbs before.

HipGnosis

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2016, 02:19:07 PM »
There isn't an internet choice in my area under $60. I'm so jealous of people with options!
Did you call and ask?

robartsd

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2016, 04:23:26 PM »
I'm envious of people who got Google Fiber 5 mbps for a one-time $300 install fee. The offerings for consumer suckas lucky enough to be covered by Alphabet, Inc.'s fiber are great; the Mustachian option is no longer available. My area is serviced by AT&T, Comcast, and Consolidated Communications (CCI). The best advertised deal I can find is $15/mo promo for 15 mbps (closer to $25 after equipment, taxes, and fees) from CCI. AT&T offers 6 mbps DSL for $20/mo (customer purchases equipment, I'm not sure about taxes and fees) but adds $10 if you don't bundle a land line phone. Comcast's lowest advertised offering in $45/mo (plus equipment, taxes, and fees). All of these are listed as 12 month promotional rates. I'd be pretty happy paying $15/mo for 2+ mbps internet service; but it is hard to find anyone willing to service a line at that rate.

Monkey Uncle

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #9 on: October 05, 2016, 04:30:42 AM »
Suddenlink is the only cable internet choice in my area.  Their plans start at 50 Mbs for around $60/mo and go up from there. 

Sorry to hear about their prices! You might be able to call and ask if they have any lower tier internet plans (The Time Warner Cable plan is something you have to call and ask for from their rate card). Even if they don't, mentioning that your current bill is higher than you'd like might lead to some discounted offers (I got a promo offer of $37 / mo for TWC's "basic internet" service, but I passed). Asking takes only about 15 minutes and if you can lower your bill by $5 / month for a year, that's effectively getting paid $240 / hour.

Good luck!

I did call a while back, after their last price increase, to complain about my service being too expensive.  When I asked what they could do to reduce the price, they told me I could drop wifi and save $11/mo.  They know all too well that they're the only game in town.

monte0930

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #10 on: October 05, 2016, 05:36:27 PM »
I have the same plan OP. Had it for about two years now, and like you said I can stream Netflix pretty reliably. This is by far the best deal on cable internet I have ever found.

robartsd

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #11 on: October 06, 2016, 11:37:47 AM »
I did call a while back, after their last price increase, to complain about my service being too expensive.  When I asked what they could do to reduce the price, they told me I could drop wifi and save $11/mo.  They know all too well that they're the only game in town.
Is that access to their wifi hotspots (value would depend on your use) or a lease on wifi equipment in your home. It would be easy enough to set up your own wifi router to distribute the connection they provide. Most ISPs do not "support" your router, meaning they will blame connection problems on it; you'd have to try directly connecting your computer to the modem before calling for help with a connection problem. Properly configured, the ISP will see the router as the only device connected to the internet and the router will share that connection with devices on the internal network. At $11/month it would only take a few months to pay for the cost of a new wifi router. You can probably find one at a thrift store for less than $11 (but I have yet to find one at a thrift store that I can flash with OpenWRT).

I have the same plan OP. Had it for about two years now, and like you said I can stream Netflix pretty reliably. This is by far the best deal on cable internet I have ever found.
HD video may need 5-7 mbps per stream but SD should work fine with 1-2 mbps per stream. Some services automatically adapt to available bandwidth to provide smooth playback (rather than trying to buffer streams that can't be sustained). Personally, I can't stand YouTube videos at 240p. I'd rather wait for 360p to buffer in low bandwidth situations. If bandwidth is sufficient to sustain 480p, it is noticeably better (but not enough better to be worth waiting for 480p to buffer when bandwidth is inadequate). IMHO it's not worth paying extra for the incremental improvements beyond 480p.

Monkey Uncle

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #12 on: October 07, 2016, 05:02:32 AM »
I did call a while back, after their last price increase, to complain about my service being too expensive.  When I asked what they could do to reduce the price, they told me I could drop wifi and save $11/mo.  They know all too well that they're the only game in town.
Is that access to their wifi hotspots (value would depend on your use) or a lease on wifi equipment in your home. It would be easy enough to set up your own wifi router to distribute the connection they provide. Most ISPs do not "support" your router, meaning they will blame connection problems on it; you'd have to try directly connecting your computer to the modem before calling for help with a connection problem. Properly configured, the ISP will see the router as the only device connected to the internet and the router will share that connection with devices on the internal network. At $11/month it would only take a few months to pay for the cost of a new wifi router. You can probably find one at a thrift store for less than $11 (but I have yet to find one at a thrift store that I can flash with OpenWRT).

The charge is for the use of wifi through their router/modem (all one piece of equipment).  Thanks for the tip; it never dawned on me that I could use my own equipment to generate a wifi signal from their wired signal (I'm not much of a techie).  I'd have to do some research on how to set it up (again, not much of a techie).

We actually don't even use the wifi that much.  We use a desktop that is plugged directly into the modem, and we don't have smart phones that would need wifi to minimize data usage.  But I do use the wifi when I work from home on my employer's laptop.  And we've been considering replacing the old dinosaur TV with an internet-capable TV so we can do Netflix/hulu and skip the basic cable TV service.  Definitely would need the wifi if we go that route.

robartsd

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #13 on: October 07, 2016, 08:58:03 AM »
We actually don't even use the wifi that much.  We use a desktop that is plugged directly into the modem, and we don't have smart phones that would need wifi to minimize data usage.  But I do use the wifi when I work from home on my employer's laptop.  And we've been considering replacing the old dinosaur TV with an internet-capable TV so we can do Netflix/hulu and skip the basic cable TV service.  Definitely would need the wifi if we go that route.
Normally I'd recommend running a wired connection to the TV, but with very few wifi devices that might not be needed.

Which wifi standards you need supported by your router depends on your RF environment. Even a router two generations back, 2.4 GHz 802.11g, is plenty fast (up to 54 mbps) for video streaming and internet sharing if the signal is strong; however, the 2.4 GHz band may have too much interference from other devices nearby (including microwave ovens). I'd look for a used 802.11n router that uses both bands simultaneously (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) for maximum compatibility with other devices and best resistance to interference. The latest and greatest consumer wifi standard, 802.11ac, allows use of more bandwidth in the 5 GHz band (both wider bands and more streams) to provide more speed; however, you wont get any practical advantage from this speed because your internet connection is the bottleneck.

terran

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #14 on: October 13, 2016, 05:40:06 AM »
^^^ he seems to be a lot more knowledgeable than me when it comes to modem/routers but here is the one I bought after giving back the crappy TWC units. 

https://www.amazon.com/ARRIS-SURFboard-SB6141-DOCSIS-Cable/dp/B00AJHDZSI

It was stupid easy to install and has supported up to 7 phones and Netflix player at the same time with no issues whatsoever.

That's a modem, not a wifi router. For what it's worth, I got the same one to get out of paying the fee to time warner. Monkey Uncle may need one of those too to get out of paying the fee, but mentioned wifi specifically. Any wifi router should work, but I believe what models of modem will work depends of the company, so it would be a good idea to get a list of acceptable modems from the cable company.

robartsd

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #15 on: October 13, 2016, 08:15:26 AM »
That's a modem, not a wifi router. For what it's worth, I got the same one to get out of paying the fee to time warner. Monkey Uncle may need one of those too to get out of paying the fee, but mentioned wifi specifically. Any wifi router should work, but I believe what models of modem will work depends of the company, so it would be a good idea to get a list of acceptable modems from the cable company.
DOCSIS refers to the standards for cable modems. I believe higher version numbers are backwards compatible, so a DOCSIS 3.0 modem should work with DOCSIS 2.0 service, but a DOCSIS 2.0 modem will not work with DOCSIS 3.0 service. Asking the cable company for a list of modems is probably a good idea.

Monkey Uncle

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Re: Reduced my cable internet bill to $15 a month (TWC)
« Reply #16 on: October 14, 2016, 04:17:08 AM »
^^^ he seems to be a lot more knowledgeable than me when it comes to modem/routers but here is the one I bought after giving back the crappy TWC units. 

https://www.amazon.com/ARRIS-SURFboard-SB6141-DOCSIS-Cable/dp/B00AJHDZSI

It was stupid easy to install and has supported up to 7 phones and Netflix player at the same time with no issues whatsoever.

That's a modem, not a wifi router. For what it's worth, I got the same one to get out of paying the fee to time warner. Monkey Uncle may need one of those too to get out of paying the fee, but mentioned wifi specifically. Any wifi router should work, but I believe what models of modem will work depends of the company, so it would be a good idea to get a list of acceptable modems from the cable company.

The charge on my bill is specifically for wifi.  But the modem is a combination modem/wifi router, so I might need both to get out of the charge.  As suggested, I probably should ask Suddenlink what will work.