It may be that you need a new router. I was surprised how much faster things were when I did two things. Moved the router to where my computer was then had to replace it after a lightening strike.

Cox goes up nearly every 2 months.

See if you have any local options.

can you get cable?

"I currently have AT&T and it's pretty slow."

AT&T has slower packages and faster packages. What package are you paying for? Maybe you could just upgrade to a faster package?

It all depends on what is available in your area. What I have may not be available there etc. So first find out all options for where you are and then you might be able to ask opinions on those.

I have Comcast xfinity and I am very happy with it. It's not cheap for the faster speeds but my price hasn't changed. I personally don't like att here. For those who have att fiber it could be a different situation, it's much faster than other att options.

I have the basic plan. Xfinity isn't available here. When I did a search, Spectrum popped up without me doing any kind of search for it specifically.

You might either visit their site or call them to see if they have anything faster available at your address.

I just visited their site to see how my plan was labeled. I have "Internet 75" meaning 75 megs down.

But while there, noticed they have "Internet 100" available for the exact same price I'm paying.

So of course, I put in a service order.

$60/month for Internet 75 or $60/month for Internet 100, seems like a no brainer to me. :)

There are a few different search engines that can find what's available in your zip code.

https://www.highspeedinternet.com/view-plans2

White fence was one I have used.

Google internet providers in my zip code

For more search engines.

I have Comcast xfinity and a fairly new router which did increase my speed a lot. Comcast will up the price every chance they get, but my daughter called and got me locked in to a lower price, at least for a while, plus I went with just the basic television which is awful, but since my television is broken, it doesn't matter now. IF I were to drop television, my bill would go up because I wouldn't have the "bundle" of television, phone and internet. It's crazy. So I'm paying for something I can't even use.

What companies offer WiFi to your area? Is your WiFi part of your cable package?

I don't use cable. I just talked to AT&T and the basic internet is the only thing available here. Going to check out Spectrum. Maddielee, Spectrum, AT&T, Earthlink and Hughesnet

Don't bother with Hughesnet. It is AWFUL. I don't have highspeed or cable available here either.. I tried Hughesnet, but it's worthless and they lock you into a 2 year plan, if I recall. Truly. I have DSL and it's not highspeed. It's almost impossible to get enough bandwidth to play video games for my grandson. I cannot imagine how you will pull off getting enough for 4 people gaming/watching videos and you using it for whatever you do. And my grandson only plays Minecraft and Roblox, nothing too fancy or high tech. Youtube videos even buffer and buffer sometimes.

He'd get so frustrated that he couldn't get on games with his friends sometimes (during periods of high use it slowed down even further) that I finally resorted to a cell phone hotspot. I increased my service to unlimited data which gives you more time, but games and videos eat right through it and it's expensive. Unlimited doesn't really mean unlimited - there's a cap and then they slow down your speed until it resets the next month or you buy more data. Your new household members might have to use their hotspots.

Please post what you decide to get. I've toyed with looking at 5g cell service, but cannot figure out if that lets you get faster hotspot or how it all works. I hate this kind of stuff. Anyone who complains about cable doesn't know what it's like to not be able to have it.

Oh, and we don't have fiber optic lines here, either, so anything that requires fiber for faster speeds won't work. That might be true where you are, too, if all they are offering you is basic internet. There are lots more options if your lines have been upgraded to fiber optic.

The satellite internet is not a good option. It is for the people who have no other service options.

In other than remote locations, there are usually just two options - either DSL or fiberoptic from the phone company, or cable from the cable company. DSL is distance dependent (farther distance, slower speed) where the other two are not.

Cable companies have various exclusive territories and there are a number of them. What anyone has in one place may not be what someone else has in another. I'm not sure why but in areas served by a mainstream wire based service (whether cable or telco), the satellite companies stay away. Cable companies mostly uses the same technology from place to place and with up to date equipment can provide similar service in any given region as elsewhere and greater bandwidth over a wider area than DSL.

There are some areas where a form of microwave service is available, where visual line of sight RF transmission is possible. My friend was able to switch from expensive, bandwidth limited Sat internet service at a vacation home to a microwave service that transmits from a select number of telephone poles. Line of sight only but greater bandwidth at lower cost and without the use restrictions of Sat connections. It's not cheap but it works well and is the best alternative for the location.

I have AT&T's Internet24 marketed as Uverse. Before I had DSL by AT&T. Mu DSL service wasn't great but was sufficient and then their salesman convinced us to changed to Uverse. He claimed that the company was installing fiber optic nodes and pointed up the street. Yes, there was a crew there on the other side of the railroad tracks, so I bit. It turns out that they never installed any nodes on my side of the track. I was being charged a much higher price without any gain in speed. A year goes by and my speed went up when the upgraded equipment in the exchange house. (My service was running over about 3/4 mile of copper wire.)

This year, the street was rebuilt in front of my house and fiber optic conduit was laid. I now have a node at the corner of my lot. (AT&T's Uverse is fiber optic to the node and conventional copper phone wire from the node to the house. With this system, they can supply higher speed and use the existing phone wire in the house. This will never come up to speeds over cable, but when its working, the actual speed should be 4 to 10 mbs download and 2 to 4 MBS upload. I saw those speeds some of the time this summer and then the system went to pot after school began. I think their system is overloaded with distance learning classes and Zoom sessions. They are charging me for service that I am not getting. Earlier this week, the system bogged down so much that we experienced drop outs. Apparently, that problem has been fixed, but slow speed is still with us at times. I've run speed tests at various time of day and found not only is the speed subpar, the ratio between download and upload is fouled up. Normally, the down load speed is set at about twice the upload speed. During low speed periods, the upload speed is equal or greater than the download. That's a bad ratio for best service. I am not happy, but for the past 2 days, our service has been fast enough to support 2 Zoom sessions running at the sale time.

AT&T's Uverse (internet 24) does not use a stand-alone router; It uses a gateway which is a combination router plus a connector between the house and the phone system. The phones in the house are over this same system. When the gateway fails (or the internet is down), the house phones are out also. Consider this if you are depending on your house phone for emergencies such as 911 calls. We find that our house phone is now not as reliable as it once was when its connection was copper wire all the way to the exchange. We make sure there is at least one operational cell phone in the house.

Last week when our service had gone really bad, I rebooted the gateway and that did help. It stopped the drop-outs and the speed was slightly improved. The service has been adequate for the past 2 days. Apparently, the service is poor when they are installing new equipment in the exchange building. Hopefully, they have gotten their act together.

If Specturm is available in your neighborhood, take a look at their offering before deciding. I believe their service is over cable. If you have never had cable TV in your house, that may need to be installed. Talk to others who have Spectrum in your neighborhood. Find out if they are satisfied with the speed and reliability. Don't believe what the sales brochure promises.

Jemdandy, I think the same thing happened to me. I have Uverse too. They installed it a few years ago.

The woman I spoke to said they were working on getting Internet 100 in my area and to check back. I think what I have may be a little better than the old DSL but am not sure. I do noticed it slows way down when my son would come home with his massive gaming computer.

Will talk to Spectrum next week and also ask how everyone likes Spectrum on Nextdoor, if they have it.

I have AT&T and it zooms!!!!! Must be location? Spectrum here is slower and

the TV programs are lacking if you want to bundle. Hope you find something

that speeds things up for you! My phone service is separate..so can't vouch

for any of that. We do have a large AT&T Service Center in town, so maybe

that has something to do with it. Just don't know.

AT&T are crooks and satellite TV is terrible, from what I've heard. I have Spectrum, 100 Mbps download speed for $ 69.99 a month. I just did a speed test and it said my download speed is 115.5 Mbps. I rarely have an outage, so it seems to be a reliable alternative to most internet providers. We had AT&T when we first moved here and it was terrible - frequent outages and some lasted 10-12 hours, or even longer. Good luck with whatever you choose.

"satellite TV is terrible, from what I've heard."

I'll let you hear a different view from my own personal experiences.

I had DISH TV service for about 10 years. I switched to DISH initially because my local cable company at the time was having problems in its negotiations with local governments and had suspended equipment upgrades as a negotiating ploy, to the detriment of service. At no time during those 10 years was my DISH service other than excellent. A consistently clear signal and features at the time that were superior to what was otherwise available.

I switched to streaming services at the beginning of this year because I realized we are watching less and less TV and one streaming service can provide an excellent TV connection to our two different homes, even at the same time. One less expensive service instead of paying for two more expensive ones. But for these factors, I'd still be a happy DISH customer.

I do think the streaming services in their various forms - the ones that provide broadcast and other cable stations (too many to mention), plus the ones that provide sports and/or movie content (ditto), plus the ones that provide movie and proprietary content (like Netflix and Prime), are the future. Fiberoptic connections and the services offered do tempt users with blazing speeds (that most people can't make use of) and superior bandwidth -such services will remain attractive to some.

Satellite tv has problems with particles in the air be those particles dust, rain, snow etc. If you are lucky to live in an area where those do not happen frequently you will be fine. The signal can go through some of the above and it helps if the dish is angled enough that those things will fall out. Just saying Ice Storms will cause problems when the ice builds up on the receiver.

maifleur, what Sat TV service did you have that had these problems?

We have rain, sometimes hard rain. I never experienced any signal problems at such times.

Ice storms, very regional in nature and not experienced in much of the country, often take out electricity service too. Having some ice on the antenna at such times wouldn't be the cause of not being able to watch TV because with no power, no provider's signal can be received or viewed. Other than using a smartphone.

I think you could say that Sat TV antennae can be blown off their mountings by tornadoes too but that similarly wouldn't be relevant to most people.

I tried Satellite ages ago in Ohio. TV, not Internet. It was good until a weather system moved into the southern sky. But that was then. Dishes, amplifier, error correction, satellite signal strength might have improved by now.

I said above that when I went to ATT's site I saw they had faster Internet for the same price I was paying, so I upgraded. They modified my modem's software last night and I'm getting higher speeds. The higher download speed is good, the double or so higher upload speed is great since I upload a lot of unlisted vlog stuff to Youtube. So, higher speeds, and it seems I'm getting $10/month off the first year so... actually less money. Personally, I'm happy with ATT. My only minor complaint would be, if they had a higher speed available to me at the same cost, why not just go ahead and give it to me instead of making me have to accidentally run across it and ask for it? :)

I just checked Spectrum for my home and it's not available here...I suspect because we don't have fiber optic cable. Bummer!

I've had satellite tv in the past and when it worked it was fine, but I live in a ruralish area with lots of trees. When there was a lot of wind it would disrupt the signal; It wouldn't work at all when there was snow, either snowing or if snow or ice built up on it. I considered it when trying to find faster internet for my grandson, but they have pretty severe limits on how much data you can use.

Spectrum is a company, not a service type. Spectrum is the cable service provider at my secondary home. It's standard cable internet service. Which is nothing to sneeze at, a modern cable internet signal can be much faster than what a telco can provide other than over fiber.

Clouding the picture for consumers is that there are companies called CLECs. For a parallel, think of the cell phone market and providers like Consumer Cellular, Straight Talk, Tracfone, that have" network brands" but have no networks of their own and actually use the networks of the bigger companies to carry their signals. It's the same for internet service - CLECS are companies that use the infrastructure of usually the phone company to provide an internet signal but using the telco's wires. In both cases, the sponsoring network is paid for usage. But it can make it appear that there are more than two ways for a given address to get service which could be but the 4 ways are just using a total of only two different hardware paths.