Spectrum, or as my friends call it, Rectum always sort of annoyed me…and it seems to be getting worse. What’s with a cable provider preaching liberal B.S.? Anyway, are there any better alternatives for me in S.E. Wisconsin? Maybe I should forget cable, and just get internet with streaming apps.! Any ideas?
-Thanks

Unless you're lucky enough to live in an area with fiber optics, nothing is going to beat Spectrum's cable Internet performance.

Well that’s a bummer…but good to know!

I’m in pleasant prairie, no real other options here either. Not even att. No leverage when they hike the rates, I’m still hopeful

Streaming isnt much better getting away from the liberal bullshit and outright lies ads. They get a shit ton more space on pretty much every streaming outlet than any conservative ad. Hell every time theres an ad spot on youtube it always has at least 1 ad for that fat fuck running for WI Supreme Court calling Kelly an extremist or something.

I don't know if you're looking for cable, internet or both.  We have been using a local co. for the interweb, Solaris, out of Wi. Rapids and have had good service for the past 15 years.  For TV, we use Dish, as we take it with us when we head to FL for the winter.  Other cable companies don't offer moveable service.  If I had my way, I'd dump Dish as well - Prices steadily increase, hundreds of shit channels we never watch (Arab, Gay, Socialist BS, 100 sports channels, porn channels, etc., etc.).  I could put up an antenna and get the local stuff for free, and that's all I need.  Problem is, in FL, an antenna can't reach many channels from where we are.  That, and my wife would be a hard sell to can Dish.  I might be able to get it to fly if I found a decent streaming channel on the web.  We use Roko and that's not too bad but its the local channels in FL that are the snag.

Yep, Spectum is run like a monopoly that doesn’t give a rip…with lots of liberal shit that really pisses me off!

We get weekly Spectrum BS in the mail hawking their service.  Into the recycle bin before I get into the house.

I ditched Uverse last month and have Vidgo streaming now. Vidgo has OAN and Newsmax. I’m happy with it and it’s less than 1/2 the price I was paying before.

Wish I thought of "Rectum"  

We switch to TDS fiber.  Costs about the same.  Rectum has service so bad they only exist because they are a monopoly, or think they are.

Old farts like me will remember Rowen and Martin's laugh In.  Lily Tomlin, as "Ernestine" the telephone operator,

"We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company"

Tony

Solarus (and some of their partners) are actually pretty decent. I live in the middle of nowhere, and had 2mb DSL when I bought the place. Now I have 100+mb fiber.

We used to have Frontier for internet/landline phone, and Direct TV. Frontier internet was soooo bad, we could not stream internet TV. How bad was it? Less than ONE full mbps bad. A 2 minute video on Youtube took me 10 minutes to watch with all the "buffering". Spectrum was available for 7 years now, but I heard so much bad stuff about them on forums like this, I never switched.

We got all that stuff in the mail from Spectrum too. Then 4 years ago, Spectrum guy came to the door, and offered us internet through a program called "internet assist" for seniors. 32mbps for $19.99 per month for life and landline phone for $12.99 (in writing). The catch was we had to bundle TV too. No "contract", but if we quit the TV we lost the bundle & "special" price on internet & landline. Direct TV was no bargain, and antenna TV up north is ONE channel where I live, since TV went digital, even with an antenna on a 40' tower. So I bit the bullet and switched to Spectrum.

Almost 4 years later, internet is still $19.99 per month, landline is still $12.99 per month (Frontier was $89 per month for their crappy 1 mbps DSL & phone 4 years ago). TV has gone up, about $50 in those 4 years. But... I have the same TV channels as I had with Direct TV, 3 cable boxes all with DVR - just like with Direct TV - for less per month right now after the increases over 4 years, than Direct TV was 4 years ago when I dropped them. Since switching to Spectrum, I've saved roughly $150 per month, every month, for 4 years. And the service has been great. TV has not gone down once, and internet has been out twice (both times were from cables being cut by others, in road contruction...no fault of Spectrum, and both times the outage was only hours). And we now have a Roku and can stream all we want also.

Sorry all you Spectrum haters, but we could not be happier. I went from a Spectrum skeptic to a Spectrum fanboy. I have TV for 25% less than Direct TV, internet that's 32X faster at 1/4 the the price.... and they always work. No snow covered dish or thunderstorm outages. My only complaint is they closed their Rhinelander customer service center during covid, and never reopened it. I was only there once, for a new remote when I stepped on one and broke it  (there was no charge for a replacement). Nearest one is now Wausau.

eta: my latest Spectrum bill, for TV with "Gold" package (movie channels), 3 boxes - all DVR, 32mbps internet, landline phone w/ no long distance fees, is $260 (all taxes included). My last bill from Frontier for phone and ONE mbps DSL was $89. Last Direct Tv bill was $235... both were the May 2019 bills. Total for crappy internet/phone/TV with sporatic weather outages, in May 2019, was $324. Who knows what it would be today, 4 years later. My guess is $400+ ?    

Have SPectrum also. We;ve had cable non-stop in the house since 1976 (From back when Total TV had 16 channels then, then it sold to Jones Intercable, then to Marcus, then to Charter and then Charters' rename to Spectrum). We have just internet and TV silver pkg and 2 boxes. Was about $175 3 yrs ago. Now its $250. We used to have Cinemax on the silver pkg but they took that away and didnt lower the price. Lost so many channels over the years its silly. Most new channels are ones no one watches here. Internet here is an underground drop and we do have some issues with it when the temps change drastically. Today I got a text around 9am that theres an outage and should be up around 1pm. Still at work so no biggie, just cant check my security cams and dog cam. Just after 1 I got another text saying now wont be back until 5pm 5pm rolls around, nada. 6pm, nada. Head out to Best Buy to get an antenna and checked my cams, nada. Around 7:45 I checked my cams and poof they are on so internet at least is back. Got home and the tv is now on. SO its been down for near 12 hrs today.


We've had some other issues with Charter, one I literally threw their tech out of the house. Asshat put his fucking feet up on my computer desk bitching about the last tech that was there while he fiddled with some test equipment. Told me theres nothing wrong with the internet. I told him it cuts out about every 10 min and he started arguing. Was a wonderful conversation with the local Charter office after he went out the door.

I just pulled up my last bill online. Our Tv package is the gold, at $134.99. We've got HBO, Showtime, TMC, and Starz, all from the start but we never had Cinemax. We have the $5 "sports pack". 3 DVR capable boxes (10.99 ea = 32.97), DVR service is 19.99. Our current TV total is $192.95. Started out at about $125 in June 2019. Nothing has changed as far as our programming AFAIK... no channels lost, a few were gained. If I lost any, I don't miss them... those I gained, I don't watch them. Total bill with TV, internet, phone, taxes, "other charges", is $262.09. "Other charges" is local stuff... TV channels from Rhinelander (NBC) and Fox, ABC, CBS, PBS out of Wausau. My wife has to have her "American Idol' and "The Voice". I only use them for local news and sports (football, nascar, hockey).

As for outages, TV has never been down, not once, except when cables were cut accidentally and we lost all services. That's happened twice. Both times was due to road construction crews cutting buried cables. Once was only a few miles away, was a local outage and was down for about 4 hours.  The other was 20 miles away, and the entire county was out. That time it was down for about 16 hours. I was notified by texts from Spectrum as to exactly what happened. Those outages cannot be put on Spectrum, and they were quick to respond to get it back up. The online TV program guide has quit working a few times, for an hour or so at a time. Every once in awhile, one of my boxes "restarts" itself, and is down about 5 minutes. Other than that, it's been very reliable. My electricity from WPS and AT&T cell phones are much less reliable than Spectrum has been. And I must admit, this does surprise me. Maybe we've just been lucky.