By this time tomorrow I’ll basking in the high speed glow of Google Fiber. My loft will be wired with the service and Time Warner Cable will be a fast fading memory. After 9 months of waiting the Fiber will be wired in and running tomorrow morning and frankly I can’t wait. If you read my blog you probably know that Time Warner has been a nightmare with horrible hardware, software, and performance issues. At times I was lucky to have an internet connection faster than dial up, especially at the house on Lloyd in KCK. So anything, and I mean anything is better than Time Warner Cable running on Scientific Atlanta hardware, featuring the worst UI and menuing system on the face of the planet.

Yesterday when I called Time Warner to cancel service, their customer service reps through everything at me to get me to stay. First it was a gift card to Best Buy. I haven’t shopped at a Best Buy in years, and based on everything I read about them these days, neither has anyone else. Next it was the free bundle upgrade for a year. I could have gotten, a Time Warner phone upgrade (people under the age of 70 still have land lines?), or I could have received the premium channel upgrade with free HBO for a year. Apparently Time Warner doesn’t realize that a large group of people watch HBO and like programming through online services, or through HBO’s dedicated apps for iOS and Android. I was on the phone with two very nice women that literally didn’t want to take no for an answer and would do anything to keep me, including dissing Google Fiber customer service, pricing structure, Internet performance, and channel line up. Is Time Warner worried about Google Fiber eating their lunch? It sure felt like it to me.

Here’s the deal, Time Warner for years has had a monopoly on the local cable service. They have also had a bit of a strangle hold on internet service. Case in point, Time Warner was my only option at my old house on Lloyd, and for the first 5 years in Union HIll. During the last 4 years, Time Warner has continued to take my money and provided a sub-standard product. The hardware feels like something from the Stone Age with a user interface and overall user experience that is absolutely abismal. Even the simplest things like searching for a program are painful, feeling like sending a text message on a cell phone a decade ago. I know I am not the only person that feels this way.

If you search online, you will find thousands of rants about Time Warner Cable. Most of the people complaining are griping about the same issues I was. Slow connection speeds during peak hours, antiquated hardware, having to schedule half a day off from work while you wait for a service tech to show up at your house, service being out on a regular basis and not being compensated for the down time, mediocre customer service reps, etc. These are the kinds of ongoing issues that have people looking for any excuse to Drop Time Warner in favor of anything else. Now I’m not saying Google Fiber is going to be perfect. No technology is, but it is going to be a million times better than what I have been dealing with for the last 4 years guaranteed.