Getting a Spectrum cable modem internet connection in NYC in 2026 is so deeply humiliating.

Dealing with the ridiculously limited upload speed, the outages, the locked router. The 40 minutes it takes on the phone to get it disconnected. Their constant attempts at upselling you cell phone plans and other terrible tech you’d never consider.

Truly, Fios is the most bare minimum. And there are much better options if you can pay commercial rates (stealth.net! Pilot!).

Truly embarrassing and sad.

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lxgr 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you call FIOS the "bare minimum", what is an acceptable connection to you? In my experience, it's one of the best ISPs I've ever had.

Installation alone was phenomenal. This is probably largely downstream of NYC allowing a sprawl of overhead wiring in many neighborhoods, but I was deeply impressed by an installation team building out an entirely new fiber line to our apartment within less than 48 hours of putting in the order, for free, climbing through backyards and drilling exterior walls and everything.

They did physically cut the existing Spectrum cable to the apartment for absolutely no reason, so maybe playing fair competitively isn't quite there yet, but all in all, the dynamic between the two providers seems to create very good outcomes for end users there.

Of course, if your landlord does not allow any of that (common if you live in a larger building in NYC) and you're stuck with a monopoly, your experience can be miserable, so this probably really only works as a strategy if you enforce access and accept overbuild as an outcome.

	▲	jmalicki 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> If you call FIOS the "bare minimum", what is an acceptable connection to you? Sonic in the Bay Area. An old mom-and-pop ISP that just never sold out but kept growing organically, that now has a large share of the Bay Area fiber-to-the-home market. Now you can get 10Gbps fiber in some of their rollouts.
	▲	CarVac 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		At my past place Fios was excellent but I've had mixed results recently, with ping spikes and a lot of suspected traffic shaping of things like Youtube. Service is pretty good though.
	▲	4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
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initramfs 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm guessing you saw this SNL sketch? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5DeDLI8_IM

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breznev 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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vlovich123 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No one is forcing you to use their modem or router.

Out on the west coast I’ve generally been fine with spectrum modulo the upload speed although they’ve did a recent upgrade to 100mbit/s+ due to new DOCSIS standards. I finally got Fiber in SF so I switched but Spectrum was finally kind of good enough for the most part.

	▲	saghm 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At the apartment I lived at until last year, Spectrum only offered up to half a gig down unless you used their modem (which of course meant an extra $15 per month on top of the plan for a full gig already being more expensive). Of course, neither of these were symmetric, with the connection listed as "mixed" between copper and fiber. I stuck with the half gig since it was the best option without paying them for the "privilege" of using their equipment. At my house now we get 2 gigs up and down with fiber from Optimum for cheaper than the plan we had from Spectrum. We've had maybe two hours of downtime total from outages in 16-17 months, compared to probably 4-5x as much in the same period on average from Spectrum. Some providers really do just suck.