Best ISPs in Charleston, SC

What is the best ISP in Charleston?

CNET recommends AT&T Fiber as the best ISP in Charleston. If AT&T Fiber isn’t available in your area, don’t worry—Charleston residents have plenty of solid alternatives. Options range from fiber plans offered by local provider Home Telecom to cable connections from Xfinity and Spectrum. For those interested in wireless options, T-Mobile Home Internet and Verizon 5G Home Internet provide reliable 5G service.

Broadband in Charleston is impressive. According to Federal Communications Commissionevery household in the city has access to broadband speeds of at least 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload, while 98% can choose plans offering speeds of up to 250Mbps. That’s significantly better than in Columbia, South Carolina’s capital, where only 91 percent of households have access to such high-speed plans — enough to easily handle streaming, remote work and online gaming for a family of four, by standards. of the FCC.

My visits to Charleston tend to focus more on its sandy beaches and iconic cuisine than internet speed, but it’s good to know that a fast and reliable connection is available no matter where you go in the Holy City.

Source: CNET analysis of vendor data.

Other available Internet providers for Charleston residents

Charleston has more ISPs than many other cities in the US, providing a pretty extraordinary range of options. Here are some other providers worth considering.

• Home telecom: This company covers about 8% of Charleston, with availability mostly in the Daniel Island area. Its fiber plans offer 300Mbps, 500Mbps, 1 gigabyte, or 2 gigabytes for $70, $80, $100, or $130 a month—which is slightly more expensive than AT&T’s Fiber plans. But it’s local equipment, the equipment is included, and there are no data or contract limits.
• Satellite internet: We recommend avoiding satellite Internet in Charleston, given that cheaper and faster options are widely available. Satellite Internet is best suited for rural areas where cable and fiber optic cables do not reach. If you live there, Hughesnet and Viasat are the most popular providers, although each requires a two-year contract. Elon Musk’s Starlink offers faster download speeds and lower latency, though it charges $499 for a standard install, up from $349 currently, not including the $120 per month monthly rate.
• Internet spectrum: Charter Communications home Internet service is available to about 5% of the area, mostly north of the city in Ladson and Summerville. There are two plans for cable internet: 500Mbps for $50 per month and a gigabit offering for $70 per month. There are no data limits or contracts. Prices increase by $30 per month after the first year.
• Verizon 5G Home Internet: Like T-Mobile, Verizon uses its cellular network to provide wireless home broadband connections. But it’s only available to about 26 percent of Charleston households.

Information about the cost of home Internet service in Charleston

The average starting price for internet in Charleston is about $46 per month – on par with other cities, including Austin, Dallas and Philadelphia.

Source: CNET analysis of vendor data.

Charleston broadband speeds

According to the FCC, 100% of Charleston residents have access to broadband Internet and, even more impressively, more than 47% qualify for high-speed connections (940-1000Mbps) from AT&T Fiber, Home Telecom, Spectrum or Xfinity. AT&T also offers multi-gigabit plans up to 5 gigabit (5000 Mbps).

Source: CNET analysis of vendor data.

How CNET picked the best ISPs in Charleston

Internet service providers are numerous and regional. Unlike the latest ones smartphone, laptop, router or kitchen toolit is not practical to personally test every ISP in a given city. What is our approach? For starters, we tap into a proprietary database of pricing, availability, and speed information that draws from our own historical ISP data, partner data, and FCC.gov mapping information. We also cross-check speeds with Ookla’s Speedtest.net. (Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

This guide uses an in-house artificial intelligence tool called RAMP, which is trained on our own writing and uses our database to generate ISP-specific content that our writers can use in determining and presenting our choices for given guidance. Check it out CNET’s AI policy for more information on how our teams use (and don’t use) AI tools.

Since our database is not exhaustive, we go to the FCC website to check the primary data for ourselves and make sure we are considering every ISP that provides service in an area. Plans and prices also vary by location, so we enter local addresses on provider websites to find the specific options available to residents. We look at sources including the American Customer Satisfaction Index and JD Power to gauge how satisfied customers are with an ISP’s service. ISP plans and prices are subject to frequent change; all information provided is accurate to our fact checking prior to publication.

Once we have this localized information, we ask three main questions:

1. Does the provider offer access to relatively fast internet speeds?
2. Are customers getting decent value for what they pay?
3. Are customers satisfied with their service?

The answer to these questions is often layered and complex, but the vendors that come closest to saying yes to all three are the ones we recommend. To explore our process in more depth, visit our page at how we test ISPs.

What’s the Bottom Line of Charleston ISPs?

Charleston residents have a variety of options when it comes to choosing a broadband provider. Xfinity covers almost every address in the city, and some households can get faster upload speeds through fiber connections from AT&T and local provider Home Telecom. If you’re looking for cheap internet, look no further than WOW – they have some of the lowest introductory prices you’ll find anywhere in the US that don’t go up after 1-2 years of use.

ISPs in Charleston Frequently Asked Questions