Resolved Upgrading to Fibre - Router upgrade necessary?

My prices are ridiculous. I pay $222.19 per month for both cable Internet and TV.

That contract says, "up to 50Mbps up, 5Mbs down" (but as seen here, I cannot complain about that).
It also gets me 10 email addresses - but I only use 4. Oh well.

My TV service includes 280+ channels, but that is a HUGE waste as I might watch 24. But to watch 2 channels I like (BBC America and Smithsonian), and I have to get an extra package that includes 25 other channels I never watch. Its a racket! They don't offer a "roll-your-own" plan.

But still, it would not be that bad if not for all the extra fees, surcharges, rental charges and taxes. Before they add all that, it is $71.99 for the Internet, and $96.99 for TV. So that's $168.98. But then they tack on another $53.21 (or $638.52 annually!) for those fees and taxes.

And I bought outright my own cable modem and router! The rental fees are for the HD cable TV/DVR box, and a "mini" box for the basement TV.

Its a racket, I tell you. A racket!

 

Yeah, mine is Cox. I can't really complain about the reliability. And their "field" tech support has been great to me. About 10 years ago during a bad storm, a tree branch took out my cable drop. When I told their field tech I was a tech and I could terminate my own cable end, they left about 50 feet on the end of the cable. So my drop goes from the poll, though my outer wall and (I was redoing the basement ceiling at the time - so all the upstairs floor joists were exposed) through the basement ceiling and up into the closet in my spare bedroom/computer room/office. So I have one continuous run from pole to splitter in the closet where one side feeds the modem, the other side goes to the TVs throughout the house. No worries about the weather chewing up any exterior splitters or splices.

What irritates me is I have been a Cox TV customer for nearly 30 years and I added Internet over 25 years ago. And except for that downed line, they have not had to come out to my house. Any extra features (like adding the Internet, HD and DVR services, or me changing modems) has been done over the phone by one of their techs updating my account and authorizations via their keyboard. A whole 5 minutes worth of labor on their part.

I went out to the Cox store to get my new TV boxes. I installed them. I maintain my own house wiring. Way back in the day, my bill was less than $50 per month. Now it is over $200. What am I paying for? I'll tell you. I am paying for Cox to expand their reach into new neighborhoods so they can gain more paying customers. How does that help me?

New customers should be paying for the ISPs to come to them. Old customers should not be funding the ISPs to sign up new customers. Like I said, "its a racket!"

Personally, I think Internet access should be treated like a public utility - and totally free. But of course, totally free does not mean free. It means taxpayer funded and that brings in a whole new bucket of worms. Oh well.

[Rant off]

 

I've thought about "cutting the cord" too. But to watch everything I watch now, I would have to subscribe to multiple streaming services to get the bundles and individual channels I want. To make matters worse, I live on the side of "the other side" of a large hill from my local metropolitan center - where all the local over-the-air station transmitters are located. So an antenna does not work for me either. So those in my neighborhood I stuck with cable TV. I need to move.

 

Is that an introductory cost? Here in the US, all the providers market great low introductory (fine print) costs that balloon after one year. When the year is up, the monthly bill is not very attractive at all.

 

Sounds pretty good then!

 

Wish my Xes and kids would read that!

Anyway, glad you got it going and are happy with the results.

Out of curiosity, what router model did you rediscover and put in there?

 

Can't say that I have ever heard of a "boardband" router but as long as it works!

The dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 11ac is nice and should give you some nice bandwidth - should the time come you use any wifi connected devices. I am seeing conflicting Ethernet specs with some saying only 100Mbps is supported, others saying 1Gbps is supported. While 100Mbps is fine for smaller families (fewer simultaneous connections), 1Gbps would be nicer, especially since it is likely your connected computer(s) most likely support gigabit Ethernet.

 

It just seems odd it would have 802.11ac but not 1Gbps Ethernet since gigabit Ethernet has been around since the late 90s. Does it say anything on the box?

 

Oh well. The price was right anyway!

FYI, it would appear you can buy and use your own router: Set up a non-TalkTalk router. If you ever set up a NAS or wish to do more streaming through the house, or data transfers between other computers, you might find that 100Mbps Ethernet is creating too much network latency. A gigabit router won't help your Internet speeds, however, only LAN.