10.27.2009 5:21 pm
Charter boosts download speeds for some customers
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Charter Communications says it has increased download speeds for customers using its upper-tier Internet connections.
The so-called PowerBoost, which launched today, provides an extra boost during downloads for customers using the company’s Express, Plus or Max services. Only those customers with the basic Internet Lite plan seem to be excluded.
You can read more about it in the company’s release. It’s unclear exactly how much faster your download speeds might be. The company says various factors come into play when determining the impact on any individual user.
But I guess any increase in speed is a good thing, especially if you don’t have to pay anything for it.
Tim has covered a wide range of topics, including tourism, crime, aviation and gambling, since becoming a reporter in 1990. The Oklahoma native joined the Post-Dispatch in 2007 after spending nine years in Orlando. In his spare time, he's often exploring one virtual world or another. He can be reached at tbarker@post-dispatch.com. 
This is a joke, right? Every time it rains, our Charter “high-speed” becomes Charter mediocre-speed. It’s been raining a lot lately, which means our surfing has been on very small waves.
I keep checking AT&T for U-Verse in our neighborhood. The day it’s available is the day I order it. I’m getting tired of suggestions that I disconnect our cable for five minutes to reset it.
Cannot see the Forrest for the trees, U-Verse is at&t’s way to hide their old slow unreliable DSL. Anyone who has U-Verse will find out the hard way just how slow it is. Charter can say high speed because they have it and it makes DSL look like dial up. Remember those days. Charter, a home town company with a real desire to make customer’s experience better, imagine that? High Speed is not 1.5 mg High Speed is 5mg, 10mg, and if you can handle it, 60mg. Beat that at&t.
I’ve had consistently great service and reliability from AT&T DSL. Speedtests consistently show my download speed at around 4.6 Mbps, more than enough to stream HD TV shows. I do subscribe to the Elite package but Pro should be more than enough for most people.
I’m paying for that 10 MB high-speed Charter, but on a good day get 6 according to speedtest.net
Today it’s more like 4.
And we live in a newer (<2 year old) subdivision, not an older area.
Unreliable DSL? - that’s not what our friends with DSL call it. I think I’d trust AT&T’s 12 or 18 MB claim for service, and yes, I remember when Charter was a local company and not a behemoth in bankruptcy with billions of dollars of debt.
AT&T DSL is great, I’ve never had an issue or complaint with it.
Hello Forrest,
My name is Eric Ketzer, and I am a Manager with Charter Communications. I am very sorry to hear you are unhappy with the speeds you are receiving, but we can definitely get that resolved for you. Please send me an e-mail to Umatter2Charter@chartercom.com with a brief description of the problem, as well as the name, address, and phone number on the account? As soon as we have that information, we can review the signal levels and determine the best course of action to get your Internet working optimally.
Thanks for your time, Eric
Thanks Eric and the Charter tech that showed up this evening and checked things out.
My surfing speeds are up to where they should be.
I have had charter internet for 10 years, I always get 20 MB down 2 MB up on speedtest.net. I recently dropped my speed back down to 10MB and 1 up (cut costs)
With this announcement, I just re-ran my tests last night and got 24.9 MB down and 2 MB up.
I work as a Citrix engineer in the area and can tell on average that Charter has less latency than AT&T. The biggest issue with ATT is that 2 wire can only carry a max of 25 MB total! This does not compare to coax at all.
Hi guy’s,
Speedtests consistently show my download speed at around 4.6 Mbps, more than enough to stream HD TV shows. I do subscribe to the Elite package but Pro should be more than enough for most people.