At my house, we have two options for wired internet. AT&T Uverse (copper wires DSL modem) “Internet 25” (their slowest option), or Spectrum Internet (via Cable modem). Unfortunately, AT&T Fiber is not an option at our location because the FCC does a poor job incentivizing competition.
AT&T Uverse (DSL) speedtest
The AT&T DSL modem option is the cheapest (even including their $10 a month DSL Modem / Wifi router rental charge, which you could avoid by buying your own). Notably, the upload Mbps is almost as good as Spectrum’s basic internet. 30 Mbps down obviously isn’t as good as 57 Mbps that I can get from Spectrum, but as we only stream to a single TV and don’t do a lot of downloading, it’s plenty. [Also, every year Spectrum raises their rates by $5 a month.]
Spectrum Cable Modem basic internet speedtest
Spectrum has the obvious technical (physical layer) lead here. Their download throughput is the clear winner, and they are slightly faster in the upload test as well. (the ping time to most parts of the internet is basically the same, the 11ms difference between the two to the closest speedtest sever isn’t really significant)
The only negatives to Spectrum are that they charge more (especially after the 1 year introductory rate) and that if there is a prolonged general power outage (such as after a hurricane) the Spectrum network will go down faster than the AT&T network. [AT&T has more uptime requirements for their POTS telephone system that shares the same copper and substations, so their substations have generators in addition to battery backups.] So if you have the capability to power your DSL Modem & Wifi router in a power outage, the AT&T network will keep working significantly longer (days) than the Spectrum cable modem system (hours).
And the real reason to change between the two every year or two…..they both offer discounted 1 year introductory rates to “new customers”. Spectrum will sometimes offer to match AT&T’s introductory rate if you threaten to cancel your service, but I figure it’s better to actually change over at least every two years, just to keep them both on notice and foster competition. (As US Broadband prices are just outrageous.)
