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What is the speed of your internet download connection?

What do you pay for it monthly?

How many broadband providers can you choose from?

We pay Spectrum $64.99/mo for internet alone. We stream all TV so no cable.  We are on a speed-boosted plan.

Benali, do you mean 6 mega BITS per second or BYTES? The figure in this graphic is bits per second (according to my reading MBPS given as a figure of merit by ISPs and network providers is millions of bits per second.)

Divide my figure by 8 or 9 (not certain if there are stop or parity bits in each byte) to get bytes per sec.

I get about 6 mega BITs per second and pay $60/month for it.  I believe this deal is bad ...

Yes, you're getting a terrible deal.

The price I quoted is what we pay for unbundled cable internet alone. We pay a bit more for 10x the speed you're getting (apparently.) The numbers were so disparate I wanted to make certain we were measuring by the same units.

We also have the option here of CenturyLink DSL which has a top speed of 10 MBPS, for about $50/mo. It's considered the super low quality option around me. When I had that DSL a few years ago our speed was 3 MBPS and our neighbor used a speed measuring URL I gave him and he reported a similar speed.

So, yeah, you're getting screwed.

I  think  you need to consult some dreaded social media like boards such as DSL Reports and see what others in you region do for cost-effective high speed internet. What you have I would consider adequate but not high speed, and pretty overpriced.

You might want to look around for alternative carriers. For instance, in my area, Earthlink is an alternative provider of cable internet using the Time Warner/now Spectrum backbone. They were a bit cheaper than TW when I checked. Basically I would call Earthlink and ask them to be my primary internet. In theory they would become the provider of the internet over exactly the same coax cable.

Maybe you have a WISP (WiFi type terrestrial internet) provider nearby.

I'm in ex-urban (semi rural) Cincinnati (I can hear cows braying in the morning here). The deal I get on cable internet is excellent and I have no bargaining position if they ever rethink it. Surely there are choices available in suburban Chicago that come close to what I'm getting.

Thanks for the good advice. Yep, I've checked DSL Reports and other sources.

You'd think a major metropolitan area would offer lots of choices. But actually it depends on what part of it you're in.

Earthlink and Verizon wifi are excellent examples. My friends can get them a couple suburbs away. I can't. Same for several other options. Different suburbs rate different services. Mine doesn't rate.

And then there's Clear -- recently bought out and crushed by one of the majors. IMHO, specifically to kill their competition. I really liked Clear.

There are a few other options that depend on unobstructed access to your antenna (not available if you've got large trees or if your local topology prevents it... that kills off a good wisp provider that's actually pretty nearby).

Of course, there are lots of cell providers you can use for regular internet access. But these are always priced high and have various data limits. Great for cellphones, not a good deal for home internet access.

Bottom line -- there are sections in our major cities that have broadband choices similar to what you'd expect living on a farm. I've got a friend living in the Dallas-FW area with the same problem.

The good news is that providers change pretty frequently, so I hope for better options eventually.  I re-check DSL reports and other sources every few months for to see if any new options pop up. Thanks for the feedback.

My mother has HughesNet. There is a terrible lag until the signal gets there from the bird and then things start flowing. Not sure of the actual speed however. I am thinking a few Megs a second at least.

I do not recommend HughesNet to anyone, unless you have absolutely no choice and no alternatives. It's expensive, slow and half a day of high-definition youtube will drain your monthly allocation.  It royally sucks.
I don't know if she can use a provider like Verizon to create a hotspot and then connect all the devices to it, for a speed advantage, not to mention financial advantage.

If you bump it to 100GB, that's the most expensive plan and  so not worth it and 100GB is still not all that much. They do have a window where you can have unlimited data, something like between 1AM and 5AM.

I think HughesNet is really good when you live on top of some mountain with no cell service within 100 miles. So it's a very niche product.

Now my mother upgraded from a dial-up modem.  It wasn't even getting 28.8 kbits. Very noisy line and dropped the connection all the time. To there point it was almost simpler to buy a newspaper if you wanted to read some news. Needless to say, that's like going from a broken ox cart to the first Ford automobile. A huge improvement, indeed.