Need advice from smart people. Cableone vs AT&T

[Cerlis]

I live in the mid southwest (west texas) USA

We've had cable one for along time. As i REMINDED my roommate the streaming of Hulu and amazon on our Wii has always been bad. However there are many times when the internet suddenly cuts out, the customer service reps are unhelpful and several times a month it seems they suddenly cut off service for maintenance with no warning. Its at night so i'm sure they think they are not inconveniencing people.

We just switched to AT&T which has only wireless modem. Or rather the probem is it comes from a phone connection, not a cable connection. And there is one in our bedroom and one in the kitchen....not really able to physically connect to our wii (or anything in our living room). for the last 24 hours we've been lucky for Hulu and amazon to even load on the Wii. However its mostly been good on our labtop and i've had 0 problems with internet (ever) on my new desktop (except the time cable one just cut it off with no warning.)

Oh also in regards to customer service, supposedly they (AT&T)have some chinese speakers for customer support, but i have no first hand knowledge of that.

I just went to speedtest and did 3 tests each.(on my wireless labtop)
For AT&T i got
Ping:67,67,66
Download speed: 9.09, 10.65, 10.76
Upload speed: 1.31,1.44, 1.75

For Cable one i got
Ping: 42, 42, 43
Download speed: 17.27, 26.18, 26.31
Upload speed: 3.22 , 3.25, 3.23

so, if there is any legitimacy to speedtest.....is cable one just better with horrible customer service? Is there anything i'm missing.

I've said again and again that if the programs work fine (or...ok) on the labtop but not on the Wii then its the system and not the connection....but then again when you do something (Like load something with one) and then switch and the other provider just doesnt connect...that also seems to be a red flag.

So is there anything I'm missing? or does it look like i've already got my decision.

[Jimorian]

Yes, cable is generally faster, but that's not the only consideration. One of the factors that a plain speed test doesn't account for is packet loss, which can wreak havoc with streaming and also stuff that needs constant connections up and down like online gaming. Plus as you've encountered, times when the network is just plain down.

And everything depends on the actual wires, nodes and routers that exist outside your home between you and the backbone. In one neighborhood, the cable may be best, while a few blocks over, you'd be better off with DSL because they just replaced the infrastructure with new equipment, while the coax cable is barely hanging on due to years of corrosion. If you can, ask neighbors what they have and what their experience is. Even if they aren't technically inclined, if you hear "we can't get Netflix to work right" you'll at least have extra info to go on.

[Fan]

AT&T generally provides terrible service with their top tier packages being around 25 MB/s for Uverse.

Beating AT&T is not an accomplishment, the only thing it means is because AT&T is in the area that Verizon FiOS isn't, and that you're stuck with inferior options at higher cost thanks to that.

So, yes, Cabelone is just better than Uverse.