Just to clarify. It's not really a bump. If you are an existing Internet only customer, you must switch to the new service plan. No obligations and the new service lowered my cost about $2 monthly. To get 100 meg speed, you need to use Charter's modem which they supply for free. I did a test with my old modem after they upgraded the service and went from 15 meg to 60 meg. I've been waiting for the Charter modem to show up and it got here today.
Looks like easy upgrade. Unplug the old one, plug in the new one and reboot your router if you use one. Modem is a Cisco. They then tell you to go to an Internet site to activate the modem. Didn't work for me and I had to call support. The tech noted that sometimes they have to manually activate. He did and I then did a speed test and got 60 meg. Same as with my old modem. Tech said oh by the way, we don't guarantee you will get 100 meg if you use a router. To test I connected the modem directly to my Mac and tested. I got 100 meg. So bottom line be aware that if you use a router, you may not do any better with the Charter supplied modem. My router is an Apple AirPort Extreme with a 1 gig interface. I'm connected to the Cisco modem with a cat 6e cable but the tech couldn't tell me the speed of the Cisco interface.
So I saved $3 a month and went from 15 meg to 60. Upstream we went from 3 to 4 meg. My old modem is now my backup so that's not bad either. I got a documentation CD with the Cisco modem so I may find some adjustable settings that may allow a better interface with the router.
So realize, Charter's claim of 100 meg speed is only guaranteed with their modem and a modem to PC direct connect. Adding a router will void that guarantee.
Jack
It might depend on what plan you originally had. I had the 30Mbps plan and wasn't even aware your 15Mbps plan existed. I did not have to switch my plan at all to get the bump to 60Mbps. All I had to do was unplug my modem to reset it and plug it back in. Once it booted back up my internet was coming through at 60Mbps instead of my old 30Mbps. I am an internet only customer.
I doubt they guarantee 100Mbps when connected directly to a modem either. From what I have seen all internet companies advertise speeds "up to xxMbps." I have never seen guaranteed speeds outside of expensive business connections. You will likely see speeds a little lower when connected to your router through WiFi but I get my full 60Mbps+ when connected to my router by ethernet cable.
Edit: The free upgrade to 100Mbps is only available in the St. Louis area for now. Other areas might have 100Mbps service available but it would be an upgraded, more expensive service. If you aren't in St. Louis your 100Mbps bill will probably be higher than your old plan once the promos wear off.
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Just to clarify. It's not really a bump. If you are an existing Internet only customer, you must switch to the new service plan. No obligations and the new service lowered my cost about $2 monthly. To get 100 meg speed, you need to use Charter's modem which they supply for free. I did a test with my old modem after they upgraded the service and went from 15 meg to 60 meg. I've been waiting for the Charter modem to show up and it got here today.
My experience with Charter was pretty good, for about 10 months, then we suddenly began have streaming interruption problems. While in the middle of a streaming program, like Murdock Mysteries (Acorn TV). Same problem occurred on Hist Channel & Netflix movies too, so obviously couldn't be blamed on any one channel source.
Each time the interruption occurred, it would stop and then try to reload, which most of the time did not work. We had to unplug ROKU and wait some minutes. Sometimes that would fix it and could go back to resume watching, but other times we would have to wait for at least a half hour, before streaming would work again.
I finally had Charter send out a tech and he kept claiming that the problem was with my router. He determined that by plugging in directly to the Charter modem and he always got a good, high speed indication. So, I purchased a new, much more (allegedly) powerful router, but that did not stop the continued problems of streaming failures, usually very late at night.
So called him out again. He came up with the same result, using the same method. So, the problems with streaming continued, without Charter finding and fixing the problem.
What was unknown to me, was that they charged me $45 for each "service" call. But, they did not inform me of those charges, nor did they send any bills, itemizing such. I only found out about those charges when I got a "pay or we disconnect" notice, this time sent via snail mail. Even that disconnect notice did not itemize the charges. It only said I owed a specific amount and they would disconnect, if I did not pay.
So, I got on the phone and discussed and that is how I found out they had charged me for those "service" calls that did not find any problem with their signal strength.
Since the service guy claimed there was nothing wrong with the cable service, I did my own investigation. Each time I got a failure in streaming, I noted the exact time it happened. I then went to
http://testmy.net/download
and checked the latest recorded history of Charter's Internet signal strength.
Each time I found that when I plotted the exact time of my streaming failure, it coincided with a low-level Charter signal strength that was less than 10 Mbps and in most cases, closer to zero Mbps than to 10Mbps. That finding was 100% consistent, i.e., EVERY TIME I had a streaming failure, the Charter signal strength just happened to be at their lowest Mbps outputs.
Too much of a coincidence to be caused by my router or any other reason, beyond extremely weak signal strength from Charter. I live in Northern Nevada, BTW, East of Reno.
Just to set the record straight, many routers do support 100 Mbps and higher. I suggest folks go to smallnetbuilder.com to get WAN to LAN throughput figures for most routers. LAN to WAN figures are available too but are not usually an issue with Charter's low uplink speeds. I use a WD My Net N900 router and according to smallnetbuilder.com its WAN to LAN throughput is 708 Mbps and LAN to WAN is 728 Mbps. This router will definitely not throttle 100 Mbps rates. My speed tests with Charter usually are 110/4.5 with their standard tier (not Ultra) through the router using a Moto SB6141 modem.Just to clarify. It's not really a bump. If you are an existing Internet only customer, you must switch to the new service plan. No obligations and the new service lowered my cost about $2 monthly. To get 100 meg speed, you need to use Charter's modem which they supply for free. I did a test with my old modem after they upgraded the service and went from 15 meg to 60 meg. I've been waiting for the Charter modem to show up and it got here today.
Looks like easy upgrade. Unplug the old one, plug in the new one and reboot your router if you use one. Modem is a Cisco. They then tell you to go to an Internet site to activate the modem. Didn't work for me and I had to call support. The tech noted that sometimes they have to manually activate. He did and I then did a speed test and got 60 meg. Same as with my old modem. Tech said oh by the way, we don't guarantee you will get 100 meg if you use a router. To test I connected the modem directly to my Mac and tested. I got 100 meg. So bottom line be aware that if you use a router, you may not do any better with the Charter supplied modem. My router is an Apple AirPort Extreme with a 1 gig interface. I'm connected to the Cisco modem with a cat 6e cable but the tech couldn't tell me the speed of the Cisco interface.
So I saved $3 a month and went from 15 meg to 60. Upstream we went from 3 to 4 meg. My old modem is now my backup so that's not bad either. I got a documentation CD with the Cisco modem so I may find some adjustable settings that may allow a better interface with the router.
So realize, Charter's claim of 100 meg speed is only guaranteed with their modem and a modem to PC direct connect. Adding a router will void that guarantee.
Jack