While it should come as no surprise to anyone, marketing departments usually aren’t very technical. Today I was reading an article about slow Internet performance and it sparked me to test my connection. I’m getting about 15-20 Mbps down and about 1 Mbps up. Unfortunately I have no idea what I pay for as the plan I’m on is so old, it isn’t listed on Time Warner’s website. I did, however, goto their website to see the current offerings and saw this table.
Obviously they want you to purchase the Ultimate Internet experience and getting 50 Mbps would be nice, but is it really true that with up to 10 Mbps you can’t watch streaming movies, video conference, or use multiple devices in your house? Netflix recommends 5 Mbps for HD streaming. We watch Netflix all the time, have a ton of devices connected, do video conferencing and do VOIP over our connection. According to Time Warner’s marketing department, we should have one of the top two tiers of service.
I’d love to get a faster connection, but is it worth the money? If I were in Kansas City, I’d sign up for Google’s gigabit service in a heartbeat, but going from about 20 Mbps to 30 or 50, would I be able to justify the cost? Time Warner won’t tell you on their website the exact cost, but if you build a bundle, the Standard Internet (10 Mbps) is $40/month and the Turbo Internet (20 Mbps) is $53/month. Currently I pay $50/month for my service.