William Shaw

I'm moving to Westport Ct in July and wandered if anyone can give me some guidance on the best providers of Cable TV/Broadband/Telephone.

Is it relatively cheap and a good service? Is Wireless Broadband easily available? There is information on-line, but it is not easy to get to the facts about the true quality of the service.

jumping doris

I'm in PA so things will be different. We have cable and internet with Comcast; we have wireless broadband. Our phone is with Vonage.

Duncan Roberts

It's going to depend on what providers are available in that area. For me I only get a choice of 1 cable company and 1 phone company. It's not cheap but the cable tv and internet is pretty reliable. The DSL people have in my city seems to be dodgy at best and from what I can tell, only available from the phone company.

jumping doris

At the moment we have only one cable company but that will change later this year when Verizon start doing cable. Or you can have a dish but they are not very reliable here.

I think cable is expensive by the time all the taxes and pay per view is added on and I think we pay $39.99 per month for internet. Can't remember what the cable is.
Vonage ..we pay about $30 per month inc taxes. We use the phone a lot for calls to UK and France.

Jerseygirl

Very much depends on the area. Where we live we do not have a choice of phone or cable providers.

Bob

Comcast/Verizon/Direct TV will probably be the big one's, but it depends on where you live.

I can't get FIOS broadband, but a bit up the road you can.

RCN is another cable/internet/phone service.

Quality and cost all depends on what packages you get, more you get with one company, the better the deal is, but for all three in a bundle, probably looking at $100-150 a month.

TouristTrap

Verizon FIOS rocks

frrussre

Cheaper, but all eggs in one basket.
In NYC, we used Time Warner for cable TV & AT&T for DSL, worked out fine. Moved to FL, now have Comcast cable for both TV & Internet. Biggest problem, when cable goes out we usually lose both, at some point in the future, we will go back to separate companies.
Reg. Frank R.

jumping doris

Yes, as soon as they offer cable TV we are moving back to Verizon for that and the internet.

Jerseygirl

We use Verizon for our phones and internet and Patriot Media for cable for precisely that very reason.

snowbunny

Verizon very curtly informed me that they have no plans to make Austin a "local service area" -- eg no FIOS -- any time soon. We have no real alternatives to cable/broadband and the pricing on bundles tends to keep one locked in. I hate Time Warner with a passion and yet have no alternatives for either broadband or cable.

From what I have seen the choices in the UK are far superior. Americans demand "all-you-can-consume" packages but in the end what they get is shite compared to the more metered Brits.

frrussre

Before I left NYC, contacted AT&T & they assured me, they had DSL service in my new area of FL. Moved to Florida, after 1 week of wasting my time, "Whoops sorry, we do not have coverage". Thats how I ended up with all the eggs in one basket "Comcast". Could of gone over to Bellsouth (Now New AT&T), will wait to we finally move, then switcheroo.
Reg. Frank R.

TouristTrap

I bet it has more to do with the city than with Verizon. We switched our cable with Brighthouse off and got FIOS the moment we could, figuring we could hold out on tv for a few months. A few months turned to a year as the city and Verizon fought over taxation. They resolved the problem eventually, but frankly by then, we'd gotten so used to not having the box around, we just left it. But I'll have to fire it up again - RWC and the hubby is addicted to the weather channel during hurricane season, god knows only why, it is our tenth one here

penguinsix

Take a look here to start:

http://www.dslreports.com/main This will rundown the offerings in your area, and you can get some technical information on the nearest central office to your location as to what is possible.

Generally US communications policy has been pushing to competition between two different technologies, Cable and DSL. The goal services available to most people, but as the US is a huge place, there are always gaps in coverage where one (or both) are not available.

FTTP (Fiber to the Premises) is currently being pushed by Verizon, which is primarily an East Coast local carrier (but growing nationwide). FIOS is fiber to the home that delivers phone, data, and cable.

As many towns have monopoly arrangements with the local cable companies, it requires a town-by-town change in the law to allow FIOS to operate (in many cases). FIOS is also EXTREMELY expensive for Verizon to install (like $500-$1000 per house) so the initial rollout has been limited (there are some Verizon shareholders who hate the whole project).

(One downside of Verizon's FIOS is that they 'cut the copper' which, while being technological advancement, technically (in the eyes of the phone competition law) limits your options for switching phone carriers (you are supposed to be able to pick any local carrier though few actually do) as once the copper is gone, there is pretty much no other option.

Comcast is currently offering about 6mb downstream at their high-end package in many areas. If you want a static IP that costs extra. Both the cable and telcom companies have good and bad customer horror stories. If you really need dedicated access, you can buy a T1 line (which has much more stringent requirements for uptime and customer support) which is about 1.5, or a bonded T1 which can be upped in speed to different levels ($300-$2000 a month).