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US Internet providers - suggestions needed

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Carol Haynes:
I have a friend in Gaithersburg, Maryland. She is really fed up with her ISP (Comcast I think) as the speed goes up and down like a yo-yo to the point where Skype won't work properly.

As I am in the UK I know little about American providers.

Anyone any suggestions for a reliable ISP she can move to?

mouser:
comcast is an evil internet provider when it comes to cost, but your friend may have a very hard time finding a better performing provider in her area.  AT+T is another common provider but it would surprise me if they were any better performance wise.
her list of options is going to be very small and completely dependent on her local neighborhood -- i don't think anyone else not living in her immediate proximity is going to be able to offer much advice.

Deozaan:
I believe that ISPs in the US tend to have (essentially) local monopolies. There's very little competition, and out of what little competition exists, usually only the cable companies (of which there is only one in any given area) have the infrastructure to provide semi-reliable broadband speeds. The alternatives are often really crappy/slow/unreliable wireless/satellite companies. The only exception I'm aware of to this is in a few metropolitan areas or where Google Fiber is available.

Carol Haynes:
Thanks - trouble is in theory Comcast looks good - but speed is varying from good to non-existent and they seem to have outages a lot.

I will pass on the comments.

mouse53:
Where we are its Spectrum,  but we are getting 100mbps for about 30-40 a month no contract now.  AT&T gets about 6mbps and suck,  so yes Charter/Spectrum have a monopoly on the internet,  but so does our local utility for garbage, electric, water, waste water for everything else and they love to gouge.  They know you are stuck.  I hate it when mean people do mean stuff just because they can.

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