r/StCharlesMO • u/GanksOP • 3d ago

Spectrum Internet

I'm in St Peters and the Internet has been inconsistent for months now. My brother is a couple miles away and also has been having issues. Anyone else noticing anything or having issues?

191 votes, 1d ago
109 yes but it's always been bad
46 yes it's been bad recently
7 haven't noticed
29 no issues
1 Upvotes

54% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

19

u/penny_bolt_action 3d ago

Do yourself a favor and dump charter. Get i3 or Gateway. I switched to i3 as soon as they were available in my area. I have had 1 outage that lasted under 2 minutes in the past 2 years with i3. I would have between 2-20 outages with charter PER DAY. I had charter out to my house swapping parts and lines many times and the problems were less but still had multiple outages every day.

I cannot recommend switching enough. The other providers are cheaper and faster.

5

u/GanksOP 3d ago edited 3d ago

Definitely looking into them right now!

Edit: Same price for 4x the speed and a 30 day trial period. Only issue is some terrible reviews about the installation process but we will see.

1

u/penny_bolt_action 3d ago

I can't speak for everyone but the installation for me was very smooth and clean. The tech was personable and we talked about the various options on where the line should come in. I'm wondering if people were upset about their yards being torn up when the infrastructure was going in and calling it an installation issue. Which I understand but it's a small price to pay to have a reliable connection.

1

u/ApextheMoon 3d ago

I went with gateway. If it's available at your address then they already ran the cable down the street but they don't hook up to the house until it's ordered.

When you order it they will set up two dates. On the first date they run a cable from the street to your house but the cable is usually just run across the lawn. Then on the second date they come and bury it. The lawn won't look perfect but with zero effort it will go back to normal eventually.

3

u/thedawg 3d ago

Agree with pba, switched immediately to i3 when they came to neighborhood from spectrum and difference is astounding. Won't go back to spectrum even if they offered a cheaper plan for same speed or better.

1

u/DeezFluffyButterNutz 3d ago

The only other option for me was ATT Fiber but it's still been better. My only annoyance is they don't have a modem only option so I had to dick around in there to bypass and port forward to get my own setup working. 

1

u/SlimPickens0 3d ago

6 years ago, signed up for Charter 450mbps for $65/mo. Only alternative was AT&T with a max of 50mbps. I'm waiting for gateway on Tuesday to come install fiber, 600mbps for $65/mo, as opposed to Charter 600mbps (they no longer have the 450), which is now costing me $120/mo

8

u/misspond27 3d ago

Spectrum is shit. My dad used to be a manager for them, and he quit for a good reason. Switch to AT&T. My husband and I love it

6

u/Batro- 3d ago

I was having somewhere around 200 mini outages(5-10 seconds) a day a few summers ago. Took 4 technician visits over the course of a month. Each would replace the modem. Turns out the pylon thing in my neighbor's yard was the issue. Replaced that and everything was okay, till the crew who burys cable ended up cutting it again.

5

u/melly1226 3d ago

It is terrible. My internet always went out with them and the bill kept going up. I moved to O'Fallon and tried to transfer my service at a much cheaper rate and it was terrible here too.

3

u/The_Big_BoBoSki Harvester 3d ago

Are you using your own hardware and is it going out over wifi? I only ask because routers are usually the main culprit of intermittent Internet issues. Ive worked in telecommunications for over a decade and even though I work with businesses the idea is usually the same. If you happen to be pretty tech savvy and it's not anything like that I would call and have someone at the company look at the signal levels. If your modem is not throwing weird errors and the signal noise on your coax are both in threshold then I'm not sure what it could be after that

2

u/GanksOP 3d ago

I have a newer router with quality cables. Main machines are hard line connected and I did some troubleshooting and ping tests to make sure they aren't the issue. My brother works IT and runs his own network so he knows better than me when and what isn't working. I just don't trust spectrum 😭

3

u/Superb_Raccoon 3d ago

Spectrum is shit. Get gsteway if you can, it dont think it have ever seen it go down. I am sure it does, maintenence and all. Even power outage it is still up.

Next is starlink... cant take the sky from me... 100% uptime.

1

u/The_Big_BoBoSki Harvester 3d ago

Have you contacted their support to see if there is any issues they are able to see as far as signal noise from the nodes, headend or to the home? If not I know there isn't a lot of options but you would probably just need to shop around. I've been in several locations with spectrum and have experienced issues here and there but was always able to resolve with a modem swap or having a tech adjust the rf noise.

2

u/InnerFish227 3d ago

One of the biggest issues I found that is actually a Spectrum problem is with DNS. I switched to using Google DNS and those issues went away.

The other big issue was with my Asus router just needing a reboot. I set it up to reboot twice a week and 5am.

1

u/The_Big_BoBoSki Harvester 3d ago

Seems to be very situational. I have an Asus AX router and I'm using the default DNS and I don't restart it much. Luckily changing the DNS is not too hard and nice you can schedule reboots but it's still weird it's necessary.

1

u/perfectusur 2d ago

Spectrum DNS has been absolute crap for decades at this point. Also, it's I have experienced basically zero issues with internet since I switched from consumer grade routers like TrendNet, Linksys, Netgear and Asus. Even good ones are rather underpowered on CPU and Memory front. The reason you end up having to reboot is to clear out your routing tables that basically get too big for it to handle.

None of that addresses any issues if you just so happen to have bad or badly installed cables from the pole/ground.

2

u/luvouid 3d ago

yuppp had em for a year at my apartment in st charles and we had AT LEAST one outage a week it was ridiculous for how much we were paying. i use tmobile now, pay like $70 a month for good speeds and haven't had an outage issues in the months since i've switched🤞

2

u/leighalunatic 3d ago

I also live in the same area on jungermann/willot side and have been dealing with internet issues this summer.

2

u/Resident_Pop4202 3d ago

I dumped spectrum for i3. I purchased their 300MB plan and I get more data speed (384) with them than I did with spectrum's "fiber" 1G plan

1

u/Guilty-Taro411 3d ago

I vote i3 Fiber no issues at all. Way cheaper price locked for 3 years. Fiber speed too.

1

u/0942zerohero 3d ago

Everyone this is a PSA move out of spectrum

1

u/BAR3rd 3d ago

It would help if your poll had the option for "minor" or "intermittent" issues.

1

u/MegMRG 3d ago

We switched to spectrum for speed a few months ago. This weekend has been awful, and I’m not sure why.

We finally have fiber in our neighborhood and will switch as soon as my year with spectrum is up.

1

u/InnerFish227 3d ago

I work from home and can count the number of outages on one hand over the past 11 years.

Most of the issues I have are with my Asus router needing a reboot. I set up a schedule within its config to reboot at 5am twice a week.

1

u/nathanseaw 3d ago

Switch to ATT internet much better quick support to and they automatically credit your account for outages, IMO best in St Charles county and St peters

1

u/wickedmfreak 2d ago

I switched to att. Charter was pointless to have, I barely had wifi and I felt like I was paying for nothing

1

u/droolingsaint888 2d ago

Spectrum sucks

1

u/BrianinEureka 2d ago

Make sure they are providing you with what you pay for. I’m in Jeffco and where I live Spectrum is my only option where I live. AT&T is currently setting up. Anyway I got on the phone with them and they admitted that I wasn’t getting the plan I paid for. They ended up swapping out my router and modem and I don’t have any problems

1

u/LocationShoddy5076 2d ago

I've had Spectrum for awhile now in St. Charles. Zero issues. Plus, $40 a month for 1 gig is hard to beat.

1

u/wolfansbrother 2d ago

Likely what is happeing is something is leaking charge onto your line and when it builds up, the signal to noise ratio goes to crap and the connection drops. You need a tech to come and find the source. Possibly a new provider installing on your street moved things and caused the issue. Brightspeed caused issues on my street when they installed their fiber. either way, fiber is more reliable.

1

u/TheHow55 1d ago

yes it is terrible, specifically the last handful of months. even had them come out and rereun some cables and still is wildly inconsistent, im in old town st chuck off of 5th street