Jackson Heights Life

For what it's worth, a couple years ago I tried Verizon's DSL. It was significantly slower than the promised speed (by about 50%) In part it depends on how far you are from the DSL "hub" or something like that. I was living in another neighborhood at the time with roommates, and one of them really needed high speed internet to upload files from home to work. So it was bye bye Verizon hello again Time Warner.

I'm very happy with Netflix and a digital antenna.

Same here. I stream netflix from my phone to the TV using the netflix app for iOS.

I buy some Amazon Prime series, too. I can't stream those from the phone, so I hook up a laptop to the TV for that.

It's not a "smart" TV. I use ordinary HDMI cables.

I think TWC gets whatever they can from whomever they can--at least in my case, there is no one price for each unit in a certain building. It's every man for himself. When we moved here four years ago, we got the TWC "Signature Service" with phone (we need it for work), cable TV with HBO/Showtime,and of course internet. Our bill has been creeping up towards $300 a month! I called and they claimed that the lowest I could pay for internet that would be able to handle a good amount of streaming would be $170 a month just for internet! We are currently paying $180 a month for their "highest" speed internet. They claimed that the $54 internet would not be good enough for streaming and I really needed the highest speed for minimum $170 a month.

They are obviously just messing with me, judging by what I am reading here. I am planning to tell them I want the $54 a month internet and if it doesn't stream well enough, so be it, and just see what happens. We would get rid of cable as well, but for work reasons we need access to lots of new stations, and it seems it would be hard to get MSNBC live any way other than a cable TV package. Sling TV has CNN but not MSNBC. So I think we are stuck with a traditional cable package. Was thinking about Dish as an alternative, of which there aren't very many, that's for sure. We feel stuck with TWC because we can't get FIOS and the regular Verizon service seems to have a crummy reputation--though some people here say it's just fine. Feels risky to switch since we work at home and need reliable and fast internet. But the TWC bills are outrageous.

I've never had a problem streaming with the $45 TWC internet plan.I'm pretty sure you can an even lower rate for genuinely slow internet service, but unless you're streaming on a bunch of different devices, I think Time Warner is blowing smoke up your you know where. Have you tested your current upload speeds and compared them to the $45/plan? I work from home and also stream TWC on Demand on my mobile devices and also use Amazon Prime Video, and while I won't say there's never an issue with buffering, it's not a big problem. I also used Hulu back before the premium service was introduced in the midst of the last recession to eliminate my cable bill, and I did okay on the $45 plan.