Cheapest NYC Broadband ISPs?

[justinmaurer]

Hey Guys -

Just moved into the city and was wondering if anyone knew what the
cheapest broadband internet service provider was.

I've checked out RCN and Road Runner, but wasn't sure if there was a
better option out there that I wasn't aware of.

I'm willing to check out some non traditional methods as well, as long
as I have my own ISP and will not be using someone elses.

Thanks!

[justin alcon]

I have had the best luck with Verizon DSL with a plan as low as 20$ and 7M down for only 40$.  I have heard good things about FiOS as well if it is available in your location.  I felt that time warner was overpriced especially for the effective speeds delivered.  These are for residential services, not business.

JustinA

[c f]

FWIW, I'm in astoria and have timewarner cable 'net, and I think I pay $40/mo for 10 mbit/down (and can reasonably actually get this).

[Matt Joyce]

Across the board FIOS is awesome, but it's really only seeing deployment in suburban areas like staten island, and brand new buildings.  Odds are you won't have FIOS as an option.

RCN is a strange fish.  They apparently wired up a bunch of buildings for their cable service back before the dotcom boom and still have a random smattering of availability across nyc.

Road runner depends on your Borough.  In manhattan you don't want road runner.  DSL might be faster regardless of RoadRunner's claims.  Road Runner in manhattan is barely functional and at peak utilization bandwidth availability in your neighborhood will likely drop to traditional telco modem level speeds.  When I had RR in manhattan they straight up shut off my internet for a week for no apparent reason and their support team parroted repeatedly, this is absolutely normal there's nothing to be concerned about ( oh the stories I have concerning roadrunner support... I once got a sales rep to call their level 3 support retarded. )  So in Manhattan Avoid roadrunner like the plague. 

I've used both Cablevision and Roadrunner in the outer boroughs.  Both are fine, but I really loved optimum boost.  You pay extra for it, but since I don't have a tv I don't care that much.  It's a great service and worth the extra cash.  Roadrunner has a higher tier of pricing for their service but they generally don't actually deliver anything worth money, and generally roadrunner is inept and a pain to talk to.

DSL, speakeasy is well known for being awesome with their support and not giving hackers shit about doing crazy shit and making absurd requests.  They'll sell you ip blocks and setup fully qualified domains for you.  BUT like all DSL they run over a larger data providers pipes and over Verizon owned lines.  At the end of the day if verizon gets involved in your dsl problems you are in for a serious headache.  Assuming they ever show up, and / or decide to choose to be responsible for the problem... they MIGHT fix it.

Some folks are happy with 3G cards.  I mean for the person with no tv / big display at home living in a studio and spending their time in coffee shops / bars / parks / what have you it's a great broadband solution and is generally useful as hell.  If you aren't the gamer / torrent lover this may be the solution for you.  I know several people nerds included that have really loved this approach.

The more esoteric...

Beyond that you can look into T1 service... expensive but somewhat guarunteed service.  More and more a dying data line type due to the lack of speed though.

Some buildings a long while back were wired for fiber and there were some upper tier ISPs willing to do some last mile connectivity WITHIN the building to provide relatively affordable 100M lines.... but unless you live in an office building converted to residential... don't expect it.

There's also trying to setup a microwave link to a better provider or laser links... There was a story about some MIT students who were sharing their internal MIT connection via a series of laser links and microwave links deep into cambridge.  So you can always get really creative with your connectivity if you can find a wealth of bandwidth cheap.

-Matt

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:19 AM, justin alcon <justin...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Justin Day]

Agreed on RR, they are the devil, even in BK.  I had them in cobble hill and went a full month without service before they came out.  Then I had to fight for several months to get the month refunded on my bill.

I’m happy with Verizon DSL. It’s cheap and it works and you can generally do self install.  The transfers rates are mediocre, but I don’t do a lot of downloading so it works for me.

[Jon Goldberg]

As a sidenote for folks with no TV, no landline:

Verizon will sell you "bare" DSL these days without an additional charge.  Time Warner will not.  Last I checked, $40/month service was $60/month without cable TV.

 

However, as a result of some FCC wrangling about ten years ago, if TWC is your cable TV provider, you should have a choice of cable modem ISP.  I believe your current choices are NYCT (nyct.net) and Earthlink, both of whom charge $40/month and don't care if you have cable TV service.  I only know one person with NYCT, but she's happy with them.  I had Earthlink for a while, and they're Earthlink, for better and worse.

 

Unfortunately, if RCN or Cablevision is your provider, you have to take what they give you, and last I heard, they both charged a premium to folks who didn't buy cable TV.

 

Jon

---

From: nycresistormi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:nycresistormi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Justin Day
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 11:33 AM
To: nycresistormi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [NYCR:Microcontrollers] Re: Cheapest NYC Broadband ISPs?

[Nasir Barday]

I'm on RCN now. They have a cheap package at $19/month (1MB down), and 5MB down is $29. Upstream speeds are horrendous, ranging from 384k to 768k depending on service level, and the down pipe chokes if you max out the upstream speed.

Works well if you're not planning on hosting a server (I just use a shared hosting plan).

- N

[Jackson Bloomston]

RR in Queens was pretty good actually. It took a week or more to get
them to come out for the install, but the DL speeds were good (approx
10mb usable). Unfortunately the UL was around 40KB. I concur that RR
is expensive without TV (60/mo) -- but this is common across most
cable providers. Like others said though, you can choose an alternate
ISP, which will give you a lower price point.

FIOS is an incredible option, if you're lucky enough to be in an area
where they're servicing. Their internet is second to none for
residential and most business services. Even their television is
great. Their DVR's are excellent -- as well as their on-demand
programming (free and premium).

Historically I've stayed away from DSL, after running an ISP that used
it in FL for six years. However, these days newer flavors of DSL are
much faster (albeit at very short distances -- which is probably OK in
Manhattan). As a consultant, I've seen decent performance from
Verizon DSL in Manhattan (at various client locations). However, with
DSL, each end-user experience can be different than the next, in that
it's so susceptible to disturbers (anything from internal wiring to
power lines to radio signals to dampness can dramatically affect the
SNR. I had one client with horrendous Verizon DSL performance issues,
which lasted months. I read the the line stats to their customer
service, initiated a line test which showed horrible line conditions
-- and literally begged them to switch them to another pair -- but
Verizon did nothing but send a new modem (which of course didn't fix
the problem). Eventually the client moved to another location, side-
stepping the problem altogether.

It would be nice to see NYC ISP provider availability plotted onto a
map of the boroughs. Maybe even with qos/customer-satisfaction/speed-
metrics as well. If we could get the data, it would be easy to plot
in google maps.

Good luck on your quest.

[Jesse Lingeman]

The only thing offered in my neighborhood in Brooklyn (Williamsburg) is Time Warner, but the pipes around me are so choked that from 5pm to about 1am the internet is as good as useless except for SSH, email, and image-light webpages.  However, I don't really have a choice (unless I missed something and someone knows?  Please, I would LOVE to cancel my service with them).  Pings to Google have about a 700ms round trip time around 8pm on most nights.

I hear wonderful things about FiOS though, if you are lucky enough to be served by them.
--
Jesse Lingeman
jml...@nyu.edu

[Alpay kasal]

Cablevision’s Optimum Online is amazing service. Dedicated bandwidth, never shared. 15mbps down, 2mbps up (I have the optimum boost package giving me 30mbps/5mbps).  $30 monthly is the introductory price, It jumps to $40 but I don’t remember if that’s after 6 months or a year. It stays at $30 if you get the triple play which is net/voice/tv.

 

When I had to do my homework on this, the speeds and price were better than Fios. Some of my buddy’s have fios and have complaints, but still swear by it, I dunno how they got the brand loyalty that exists.

 

Here’s a nice little success story – I have a client in tribeca who cannot get cable or satellite into their offices. I have been stream sd video and stereo audio via Slingbox to their 4 plasma video wall for over a year now with very little hiccups. My roommate is often hosing the connection with bit torrent while watching hulu and the slingbox stream holds up… I’m not doing any QOS packet prioritizing at all, it just works because I have plenty of bandwidth to spare.

 

 

Alpay Kasal

Engineer

http://blog.LitStudios.com

 

 

From: nycresistormi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:nycresistormi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jesse Lingeman
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 7:14 PM
To: nycresistormi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [NYCR:Microcontrollers] Re: Cheapest NYC Broadband ISPs?

 

The only thing offered in my neighborhood in Brooklyn (Williamsburg) is Time Warner, but the pipes around me are so choked that from 5pm to about 1am the internet is as good as useless except for SSH, email, and image-light webpages.  However, I don't really have a choice (unless I missed something and someone knows?  Please, I would LOVE to cancel my service with them).  Pings to Google have about a 700ms round trip time around 8pm on most nights.

[Kip Voytek]

Nasir!

I didn't know you dug the whole physcomp, arduino, solder on weekend, microprocessor thing!

kip

[William Ward]

Alpay, how do they managed dedicated bandwidth on the cable plant?  That's interesting.  My apartment provider is Time Warner, but I'm not sure how these companies have divided the city.

For the record, I'm using Speakeasy.  It's not cheap, but it's ideologically compatible and their staff are top notch.

Bill

[Matt Joyce]

Will you are upper west odds are you are in the same grid I was.  It is horrendous there.  One of the worst areas for RR

[Matt Joyce]

Well more mid west than upper I guess.

[William Ward]

Yes, I am just a few blocks from the TW Deathstar.

[justinmaurer]

Thanks everyone for such great, in depth responses! I am actually
living in the upper east side because my girlfriend gets subsidized
housing there for school. We were considering road runner initially.
In Ohio (where I'm originally from), it's not that bad, but I had no
idea they were this horrible in the city. Thanks again all for your
fantastic quick input!