Internet provider recommendations?
 

I've been paying $55/mo. to Xfinity for internet/WiFi service, and looking for a better deal when my 2 year contract ends next month. Any suggestions?

Do you have the Xfinity Mobile cell phone service? If not, it is a great deal, but you need Xfinity Internet. If you have Xfinity Mobile, I think you will lose it by cancelling the Xfinity Internet.

You can keep your Xfinity Mobile cell phone service if you cancel everything else.

So by not telling us where you live, we can't give you any suggestions.

But at the end of the day, if you can get fiber internet from Quantum or Centric, that's the best and for $50/month you can ge 500Mbs, both upload and download speed, dedicated connecton and not shared like cable, all equipment included, no tax, no fees, no promotion.

If you can't get fiber then another alternative to cable is fixed wireless from Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile. Depending on where you live will depend on if this is a viable option for you.

Xfintiy and Spectrum are about the same.

Doing fine..................stay.

:pepper2:

I just remembered, you can get Xfinity NOW. It's their slowest most basic 100Mbs internet service for $30/month. You will need to return your existing equipment and get their refurbushed equipment for this specific service and install it. If you ever decide to go to another service you don't need to return any of this equipment. Reviews say for those who only want basic internet service, this works well.

Your $55 is a good price, but will go up when your contract expires. If you're happy with your service, call Xfinity and see if they will extend your rate for another year. It would help if you had the rates of other providers. Then you can tell Xfinity that you'll be changing providers if they can't continue your rate.

For $55 a month you are probably getting 300Mb speeds. I’ve been paying $39.99 a month for 1Gb (1000Mb) speeds from spectrum for almost 2 years. I like spectrum over xfinity. If you can get fiber for anywhere close to $50-$60 month, I would do that over any copper network service like spectrum/xfinity.

We are in the Northern end of the Villages in Woodbury. We switched to T-Mobile for internet and phones. Its now $35.00 per month. It's worth the look if you have good cell signal in your local.

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Internet
 

Xfinity has a 1 year commitment (no contract) for $41 per month or 5 years for I believe is $55 per month. I took the 1 year.
Quantum Fiber is 50 or 55 per month for life.

Correct, but your Xfinity Mobile bill will increase by $25 per month, and you will lose access to Xfinity wifi hotspots. Currently, I only pay $23 per month for unlimited talk and text and 1GB of mobile data, which I have never exceeded. I especially like that calls are handled by the Verizon network.

Just curious what the 'commitment' means. If you move or change to another provider before the 1 year is up, are you still responsible for the payments? If so, that's a 'contract'. If not, there's no commitment.

That is not what I was told. I hope that has changed, no xfinity internet, no phone,

See Post No. 12.

I live in the South, Monarch Grove. Fiber not available.

At what cost?

Xfinity/Comcast
Spectrum
Verizon
T-Mobile
Quantum

All those are providers in various parts of the Villages. On most (all?) their websites will be a page for you to enter your address to see whether they have service in your area and if so, what plans are available.

Both Xfinity and T-Mobile worked well for me. While some will try to sell you on gigabit service, unless you have very special needs 100Mbps will be sufficient.

“Price for life” seems to be for the life of the offer and can actually increase. Still, it’s better than an introductory price that is almost guaranteed to increase when the contract ends.

YMMV,
We went with a 2 year deal - no contract but guaranteed price $50 - with Xfinity when we moved in mid ‘22 in Marsh Bend - 300MB?. At the end of the 2 years I talked to them and got, IIRC, 100MB service for $30 for a year. Approaching renewal this past June they sent me an email saying my current plan was extended, nothing for me to do. My bill now runs about $31 as a fee/tax was adjusted upward. I have never had an outage lasting longer than a few minutes and I’m still on my (their) original modem/router. It was suggested to me I should consider swapping out the router due to its in service age. We’ll see. Not sure I want to jump through the hoops of that just because. Speed test moments ago on WiFi in lanai : 40ms, 477 Mbps, 33.2 Mbps.

FWIW, my immediate neighbors are somewhat often dealing with Spectrum outages.

In your case since there is no Fiber, the cheapest is going to be Xfinity Now, 30/month. Super slow but the cheapest and you won't get a increase after a year unless they increase the cost of that service which I doubt will happen.

Yeah that would highly depend on location. I live south of 44 but fiber was skipped in my area and they went straight to the new new areas. So I’m stuck with Spectrum

See Post No. 12.

I just switched to Spectrum 400GB for $30 a month, I have tested the strength of the signal via wifi and it is constantly around 500GB!

I suspect the $39.99 price is a 2-year promotional price. Up north I've had Spectrum for many years (no options except satellite). My rate is $90/mo internet only! T-Mobile gives priority to cell calls, business users, etc. and your speeds can plumet. I have Centric in TV, $68/mo 1G, all equipment included/installed, although my home was built with it pre-installed and running, which I think is standard in the new areas.

Quantum. Go to their website site and follow directions. It will tell you if fiber optics available in your area. Their installation is free and any needed equipment is free. Great service!!

We switched to Now from the regular Xfinity and have been very happy with it.

We just switched over from Xfinity to Spectrum; WiFi / Internet is $30/mo. for 500 Mbps

Have Quantum fiber here in Fenney. $35/month for life. Was so tired of calling xfinity to negotiate every year. The last time they refused to budge off $75/ month even with the cell service. I fired them and now have mint mobile and quantum. Couldn’t be happier.

Very happy w Spectrum $40

I think, internet service here in the Villages is going to cost you anywhere from $30-$50/month. The cheaper prices except for Xfinity Now are going to be promotions that will expire. You also have to include any taxes, fees and equipment charges. Some plans include it and some don't. In retrospect, this is extreemly cheap compared to the rest of the country.

As I've mentioned many times, Fiber, if you can get it is the best solution. I can tell you up in Liberty Park, Bonita and those surrounding areas were Quantum is putting in new fiber, people are signing up like crazy. Installation trucks everywhere and the techs tell me they are working a lot of overtime. So, competition and choice are good. Those sections South of 44 that had no fiber installed, no one knows if they will ever install fiber there but I haven't heard anything about it. Right now, Quantum is installing fiber where they have the "right of way" where previous CentryLink lines were installed North of 44. The cable companies are in trouble because they didn't anticipate the rate of "cord cutting" and these fiber deployments are hurting even more because once on fiber, prople don't switch for $5-$10/month promotional savings.

I forgot to mention, If you decide to get fixed wireless from Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile, be aware of the following. I was at a Villager's house yesterday helping straighten-out her network and they have Verizon fixed wireless. The problem is you need to put the wireless device in a location where it gets the strongest wireless signal which might be on one end of the house near a window. Although the service gives you pretty good speeds, if you have a large home, the wifi routermay not give you a good signal on the other end of the house because it's too far away. So, If you have no choice and feel the fixed wireless solution is best for you and you have a larger home, getting a mesh wifi system will be the solution for full wifi coverage.

Spectrum is avilable by you. You can get 500Mbps for $30 or 1 gig for $50/month. Call their local sales rep Lysander. 352.239.3538. I signed up about 6 months from Xfinity. He came to my home and helped to make sure everything was working properly.

All isp plans are contracts, it doesn’t matter if they are 2,3,5 year contracts, they are contracts with expiration dates.
I was paying $80 a month for xfinity for 1G and I knew they were going to raise it by $50 after my contract expired so I went with spectrum. Plus, xfinity charges for their modem/router $25 a month which is on top of the monthly charge, not sure if they do this with the slower speed contracts. Spectrum doesn’t charge for their modem and I use my own routers.

WiFi thru the air is hit and miss but mostly miss because of the weak signal into the house. You have to place the wifi router in a certain spot to get a decent signal and then if you only use 1 router in your house, all the other rooms will get terrible wifi because the signal has to go thru walls. If you have an Ethernet port next to where you place the wifi router, then you can setup a wired bridged or mesh network with other routers in the other rooms in your house.

No isp will setup your private wifi network correctly. NOBODY! You will always have to change the wifi ssid’s on all your phones/tablets/computers/ecobee’s/garage door openers/etc.. instead of just using the last ssid you used with the other provider.

Still incorrect that a single router cannot cover an entire villa or designer home. Some routers and some home designs may require additional equipment but certainly not all.

When the Xfinity installer came to my home five years ago he set the ssid to match my equipment, not the other way around as you claim. When I switched to T-Mobile the installer (me) set the ssid to match the equipment rather than the other way around. It may not happen all the time but it is untrue to say that no isp will set it correctly.

ok 1 out of a thousand installs the technician configured the router to correct way by changing the ssid to your existing ssid. Most do not and the people that called me in to redo their network, they all had the dual ssid’s and they had to change every device to their new ssid.

But I am right about WiFi speeds. Every wall in your house impacts the speed of your wifi signal, and not for the better, I don’t care if it’s a 1 bedroom or 5 bedroom. Why do 5G isp want you to place their router in a certain location in your house for better signal capture? I have friends that cameras in their garage didn’t work because the xfinity router was in a room almost the furthest from the garage. My outside grill wouldn’t connect to the wifi because of the weak signal.
Only a mesh network 6e or above can handle signals between walls because of their proprietary high speed backhaul. But the best way to connect to the internet is hard wired, from your computer, from any device, and even between any router.

...

I have never had anything but a single router. My last house in Virginia had 5 bedrooms on 3 levels, and I only had a single router, but I got a good wifi signal in every room.

I’ve posted my speed test results before - the same 300Mvps results standing next to the router as I get standing in the corner of my garage two walls away.

Frequency makes a difference. That’s why the 2.4GHz WiFi band is not as affected by walls as the 5GHz band is. 5G cell signals exist in a band particularly affected by structural materials so putting the modem close to a window helps. Once the 5G cell signal is converted to 2.4GHz WiFi the walls don’t matter as much.

[QUOTE=MrLonzo;2463450]I've been paying $55/mo. to Xfinity for internet/WiFi service, and looking for a better deal when my 2 year contract ends next month. Any suggestions?[/QUOT


No better deals unless you don't care how fast your internet is. Cheaper is slow and hit and miss.

A couple of comments:
1) From my experience either with new installs or helping fix installs that I'm not involved with, most techs will try and place the wifi device in the most central location as possible such as above the Kitchen cabinets or Living room and will set the network name and password to the existing one and try and get all the customers devices on-line. But the tech has only a certain amount of time to spend on the install so usually, when a customer has a lot of devices such as cameras, door bell, streamers, printers, etc, if any don't come back on-line, it's up to the customer to get that done. Some cameras and doorbells or smart switches will need to be re-installed even if you use the same network credentials and most techs will not have enough time to do all that work on your install. Forget about if the customer has multiple networks or some sort of complicated set-up. With every provider, Xfinity, Spectru, Quantum, etc., there will always be that "lazy" tech that will install the wifi device in the easiest location and hopes for a wifi signal all over the house. I can say with Quantum, I have not run across any "lazy" techs and they are reqired and do a wifi network survey after the installation to make sure you are getting "adequate" speeds all over your home or they can't close out the job.
2) I agree with a single wifi device it's difficult to get good coverage throughout your house. But if the wifi device is placed properly, I've seen very few houses here in the Villages where you couldn't get a good signal all over the home. This year I've helped 45 Villagers with their Quantum install and have a 100% sucess in getting a good wifi signal all over the home by placing the Quantum main wifi pod in the best location. I know that's not a large sample but it's large enough to make the point.
3) There is no way to get full speed wifi all over your home with a single device. Granted, if you have 100Mbs or 300Mbs, yes you can see that speed everywhere on a smaller home but you won't have that same result with 500Mbs or 1Gbs, or other faster speeds, especially with the upload speed. If you want full speed wifi all over your home you are going to have to need a mesh wifi or other equivalent system.