Fastest Reasonable Internet Service

Winky

So, I'm moving into an apartment with my friends next month. As it is they have really shitty AT&T internet service that they're looking to get rid of. I offered up the possibility that I would be willing to pay the difference between what they have now and a superior service (realistically I would be using the bandwidth up the most by far).

What's, in your guys' opinions, the fatest, most reliable internet service I can get for something that's still fairly reasonable? I'm willing to pay a deal more in order to get whatever the most souped-up connection happens to be nowadays, so long as it's something that makes sense for a non-commercial entity.

RadicalTurnip

A lot of this is dependent on where you live, so where do you live. How much internet are you planning on using? My wife and I got Uverse about six months ago because it was on special for $30 a month for a year, and it was 12 MB/s, but now you're limited to 250 gigs a month. I'm fairly certain that the wife and I came close last month (we didn't go over) so we're wondering if we need to change policies. We probably won't until we go over in a month, but I'm almost certain we use more than 200 gigs most months, what with no TV service, just netflix (and we stream video, a lot), and I use steam to buy a fair amount of games, and she's running a photography business from home.

Anyway, I would say find a good deal for a year and then after the year is up, you can maybe find another good deal.

Edit: Also, Their guidelines for what speeds you need are way off-base. If you want to know what sort of connection you need to do something, don't ask your ISP, ask the service. AT&T, for example, says you need 18MB/s to stream movies. I have no idea what movie's *they're* streaming, but Netflix only needs around 1MB/s. You can do almost anything you want at 3, if you want it to be really fast, 10 will be more than you will likely use unless you literally have five devices doing internet-intensive things at the same time.

At least, that's been my experience. YMMV.

Winky

For reference, I live in the city of Chicago, specifically the Pilsen area (relatively close to the loop).

schuss

easy - get a trial of each type. Most of them will let you try it for free for a period.

MushroomStick

If you can get Uverse, they've been been the best for me. Their 18MB connection has been able to keep up with multiple people using netflix/hulu/PS3s/etc. simultaneously pretty well. Failing that, I would go for Wide Open West next if its available, and then Comcast would be my last resort.