Charter Communications

After being with Charter for well over a decade now, I finally canceled my service with them.
Sadly, Charter continues to exercise monopoly power over large swaths of rural communities. AT&T absolutely refuses to upgrade or expand its wireline services in town, as wireless is much more profitable and they are perfectly okay with Charter taking the areas they won’t cover.
In light of the fact that AT&T won’t play ball, Charter has smartly (from a business standpoint) decided to really press their thumbs down on their loyal customers. Years ago, their internet service was $ 19.99 a month for a 15 down /​1 up service. It was quite a good value, if not the fastest.
Over a decade later, our bill now is $ 60 per month for 60 meg down /​4 meg up service. The download speed is consistent at around 55 – 60 meg in actual testing, but the paltry upload often is only 2 meg speeds during peak hours. Despite DOCSIS 3.0 being capable of supporting far higher speeds, Charter gives its residential customers very little in the way of free bandwidth.
Additional problems with Charter include hiring 3^rd party contractors that have damaged wiring in our house (I was able to fix it myself) and also drilling through a stud that should have been avoided when the tech didn’t pay attention and check for a better place to position a wire.
Furthermore, one time a tech who was out here installed a Charter-​owned modem and took the modem I had bought with my own money without my permission. How could he not check to see that it wasn’t Charter property?
With my internet bill now over $ 60 per month including taxes and fees, I will call Charter again to negotiate a better price, otherwise I’m going to cancel their service and just use my T-​Mobile cell data, and spend $ 60 a month at my local coffee shops instead of feeding it to the insatiable Charter behemoth.
I wouldn’t have even quite such the beef with Charter due to price increases if I thought the service and speeds (especially upload) actually reflected true improvements. As someone who works with technology for a living, I can tell you that Charter’s back-​end costs to deliver residential internet continues to drop, even though their prices continue to spike.
There’s simply no excuse for their continued abuse of monopoly power in a smaller market like our area.