Charter Spectrum Review
Charter Spectrum has our cable TV service for our city. I have no issues with any of the people who came to our house to troubleshoot issues. I do despise this utility for their corporate business plan for the following reasons:
- They refuse to finish fiber optic cables to the homes. They do have fiber optics runs within a quarter of a mile. To finish fiber optic runs to the homes would cost them a lot of money.
- Their TV packages are way too expensive. You are forced to pay for channels never used.
- They move their channels out of the channel range that most modern TV sets can automatically find. In this way, the utility can charge a rental on their tuners. The few TV channels that a television set can pick up are quite awful. One might expect that all the local TV channels should be picked up without a cable box so that low income people could better afford the service.
- I find their Internet speeds to fluctuate during the day. When the schools are out and the children get home it seems that our Internet speeds drop. I watch television on my laptop using Spectrum TV application which is pretty wonderful when it works. Problem is that the visual and audio stops for significant periods of time. (Note: I have two wireless access points in my home. The main access, Apple Time Capsule, shows 12 devices connected. The second access point, Apple Airport Express, only had one device connected. I found that by connecting to the second device, the access speed was faster and way less buffering.)
- From time to time, this utility has major service interruptions. I expect this. What is not normal is to loose computer servers so you can not log into their Internet TV service. This happened during the World Cup Soccer game June 26, 2018. I am a blogger and spend a lot of time watching news on my laptop using Spectrum TV web site which is quite good. Problem for me is the frequent “Buffering” incidents when the visual and audio stop for long periods of time.
- When the company was Time Warner and I went to their local branch offices to talk over an issue, I frequently came away with a special deal or package that I did not know about. The people in the office seemed to have the attitude of wanting to help. When they changed to Spectrum, the store location changed and the whole operation became cold and impersonal.
- I occasionally like to view news and sports away from my home. My cell phone provider is T-Mobile. I pay for unlimited data. The Comcast Spectrum cell phone application is near perfect in how it functions but, in my opinion, flawed for it’s offerings and this is my complaint. I expect that I should be provided important channels away from my home but NO. Let me show the deficiencies:News category
Weather Channel (I am ok with that)
Fox “News” (Right wing propaganda, I despise Fox)
CSPAN (OK but boring)
Fox “News” (Administration propaganda)
Fox Business (Why all these FOX channels?)
BBC (I am ok with that)
Weather Channel
CSPAN. (Why two CSPAN channels?)Sports category during the FIFA World Cup utterly failed to offer coverage in English.Broadcasters category offered no stations at all. Our local channel that offered FIFA World Cup, was a Fox station, which if turned on, would be perfect for viewing.If a local important news event or disaster takes place, I should be able to view all local broadcaster stations to get more information. So why not?The cell phone message that shows at the bottom of my screen is “Connect to In-home WiFi for More” which is a rather lame attempt to explain why so many important channels can not be viewed away from WiFi. But, why the alleged flawed and awful channels that are offered?
It seems that Comcast favors right wing US politics with only Fox “news” channels.
It seems that Comcast has no clue that they might have a responsibility to serve their customers more completely and for this failed business model and apparent lack of ethics, I despise them for their long list of alleged deficiencies.
I strongly recommend that our city try to get rid of Spectrum, if they can, and provide TV and Internet service as a city utility.