When I went to Spectrum to cancel, they gave me to a guy who tried really hard to keep up. With the service issues we had been having, losing Internet one day for 17 hours and another for 12, and several other times for 3-5 hours (all in the past nine months), he couldn't win. He threw in 1 Gb Internet, reduced the cost to match the competitor, then offered free cable for a year. I told him we work from home and his service really hurts us with that. I added they sent texts saying the service would only be down for an hour or two—but resent every hour or two. The whole area was down, so our phone hotspots had no throughput, because everyone was using their hotspots at the same time.
Most bizarre, he pushed back on me, saying I never bothered to put in a request for onsite service, any of these times. I said I called in every time and was told the area was out, so it made no sense to have anyone show up to my house when my half or all of the city was out—the technician wouldn't have been able to fix anything. This stupid man kept telling me that I couldn't know that he couldn't help me, if I never bothered to have him come. After he said this maybe four times, I told him that I know he has to save accounts, but that by saying a tech can fix something that originates outside of the city by coming to someone's house is something he should never again use on a customer, because it flat out makes you lose all credibility. He said he believed what he said.
We would have gone to a local coffee shop with WiFi, if they had been honest about the problems.
Spectrum was pretty reliable until the past year, though.
Thankfully, we don't have any other needs but Internet.
Oh, and the fiber is wonderful. Another provider is now trenching fiber to compete with the first one.
Competition is good.
I had the same issue with Spectrum this summer where they were the only high-speed player in the area. Multiple phone calls, they kept saying it was my equipment even though the internet would go down like clockwork around 1 pm each day M-F. So as soon as AT&T put fiber in, I jumped on it for their 2GB service, and have had zero issues so far.
In my rural area Spectrum is pretty much it, though I admit I haven’t checked what ISP’s are currently available. I recently was offered 2 year $19.99 per month + cellphone free for 1 year. Did not take the cellphone deal but signed on for the internet. Worried about going from 300mb to 100mb, but so far few issues(occasional lagging youtube, that could be weather/adblocker related), considering I have quite a few devices up 24/7. Also sent me a new modem and router at no charge...which actually has improved stability on certain wifi devices which occasionally would lose connection before(spectrum modem/third party router) requiring reset. No issues in that regard since updating equipment.