Should I dump my ISP?

[SherryT]

I have Astound/Wave internet.  The service is just okay, but when it is down, I can use my Visible hotspot to connect to the internet.  We mostly just surf the web, send and receive email, and attend occasional Zoom meetings.  I also occasionally watch TV shows on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.  We have DirecTV for cable.

This morning I connected my TV to my Visible hotspot and successfully watched an episode of a TV show on Apple TV without experiencing any buffering.

Astound/Wave is notorious for their awful billing practices.  Last month I spent an hour on the phone with Customer Service because my bill doubled from the previous month without any warning.  Turns out my "contract" had expired and I needed to renegotiate my rate.  Got this taken care of (I thought) until my bill came today and it's another $5/month over last month.  I also don't get the promised 400mbps speeds - not even close.

My question for the community is:  Have you used your Visible hotspot to stream TV shows/movies?  I'd love to tell Astound/Wave to take a hike and will do so if my hotspot will work for this.  Thanks in advance for any feedback!

[WoodyWoodPecker]

That is the main reason that I am at Visible , to dump my ISP. The unlimited hot spot lets me do that. I have not tried to stream TV and movies yet but that can vary from area to area and can depend on the times that you want to do it. I have had no problem so far with video's. So far I am satisfied with the service for the price and I sent AT&T packing with their high priced service that was slower than Visible most of the time. Maybe try it for a week or 2 before you cancel.

[rjniles]

May or may not be important to you. You can only connect 1 device at a time to  Visible hotspot.

[Anonymous]

I guess I haven't used mine for TV because I still have a home phone with internet and that streams my TV at standard def. I do use my hotspot for my laptop and stream YouTube and do all my web surfing on it. There is a drawback though, when there is heavy usage, usually mid morning to evening, the speeds slow down a lot for me sometimes to the point if I go in and check connection speed it is less than 1mbps at times. Late night, say after 10PM I can get speed of up to 25mbps which doesn't sound fast but for me it is fast considering my home phone(DSL) only runs at 1.5mbps. If you are in an area with a lot of towers usage or congestion might not be as big of an issue. I live in a rural part of the state in a small town and towers are few and far between and I only have one tower to get my signal from.

One thing to note is that I read the new lower priced plan is going to restrict the hotspot to one device and cap the hotspot at 5mbps which should be enough for high def. Not sure if the plus plan has restrictions on hotspot devices but with that plan you have premium data which doesn't deprioritize you when traffic is high but only for the first 50GB of data so your speeds shouldn't slow down until you use that up.

Hopefully this helps with your decision. I haven't been able to bring myself to get rid of my home phone because if the cell phone goes out or I lose service on it the home phone would be my only source of communication. I might talk myself into getting rid of it once I get changed over to the new plan.