Cable TV and Internet Providers in Your Area

Enter your zip code below to find cable TV and internet providers near you, at your house. Cable is a specific type of internet technology and might not be available in your area. Find and view all types of TV and Internet plans available near you here.

Why You Can Trust Our Data

Quality: Our data is taken from the FCC and converted to your city using a proprietary method mapping census areas to city boundaries. All this means for you is that our city data is more likely to be accurate than any other site. As you can see by clicking around, we're experts in big data and visualization, and showing you TV and internet providers by city is a comparatively simpler process than some of our more complex metrics. We add this data to Best Neighborhood not to manipulate, but to help you find the best neighborhood. Internet service providers and internet speeds are increasingly becoming an important consideration for home buyers.

Transparency: We also aren't influenced or owned by any specific cable, satellite, or other internet provider. Best Neighborhood is fully independent. Many sites you'll find on the internet are actually owned by call centers that partner with TV and internet providers. These call centers more money on some types of service than others. This is why you'll often see providers sorted by a factor not readily disclosed: their profit. Our sorting method is simple: we first sort by coverage, and then by speed. You don't need to read the small text to understand why we show a cable company first.

Visualization: We're known for our maps, and in this case we show you the areas with the fastest cable speeds and the greatest cable coverage by city. See, for example, our map of cable speeds in Houston, Texas.

Cable Speed Key

 

Cable Providers by Area

The largest cable TV companies are as follows:

• XFINITY is Comcast's brand of residential cable service. Service is distributed throughout the nation, especially on the US coasts and in the mountain west.
• Spectrum is a fairly new company, formed in a merger between Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable (spun off from the original media company), and Bright House Communications. Service areas are distributed all over the United States.
• Cox Communications has remained without major mergers and acquisitions so far, with service on the Atlantic coast, the Midwest, and select western cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.
• Optimum cable service often competes with fiber in speeds, and can be found in some northeastern cities.
• Many small providers continue to exist throughout the country, despite widespread mergers and acquisitions.

Enter your zip code above to see all the cable providers in your area.

Cable Coverage by State

Generally states with lower-income residents and states with more distributed populations and more rural areas have slower speeds and less coverage. Washington DC, for example, has a dense population and effectively 100% cable coverage with high average speeds. Montana, on the other had, is known for its big skies and low population density. It also comes in last place for internet coverage with speeds that are eighth from the last. Wyoming has the slowest speeds of all with a similarly-dispersed population.

The table below shows all states, sorted by the percentage of people who can get cable to their home.

 

What is Cable?

It's not as simple as you might think. There are two definitions that are used at the same time, so we've built our pages to allow you to see both.

• In common usage cable is any subscription TV service, especially one that allows users to get live TV. For example, most users would not say they get “cable through Netflix,” but they would say they get Cable through DISH or Comcast. People are generally closer to the technical definition when it comes to internet, and are often aware that cable, DSL, fiber, and fixed wireless internet are all different things. They may not know exactly why, but the quality of internet varies so much that people have taken note.
• Technically, cable means any service (TV or internet) delivered with a coaxial cable to your home. Cable TV service is generally only provided by companies known in the industry as “multiple service operators” or MSOs. The name is a holdover from a time past when only cable companies provided multiple services. Today, these companies compete with
• On Best Neighborhood we show you both. When you enter your zip code or city above to see cable TV and internet providers in your area, we'll show you the technical cable companies in your area. For your convenience, we also list satellite providers and links to get service.

Why Don't Most People Have Many Options?

In the United States, TV and internet services are not highly regulated industries. The wires that go in the ground and on power poles, however, are governed by a series of federal, state, and local laws and ordinances. Most cities don't want just anyone running wire over telephone poles and digging up streets to provide service. Not only would the appearance be less-than-ideal, but eventually infrastructure would be unable to support it. Utility poles may even collapse under the weight of too many lines; hundreds of feet of thick cable are heavier than you might think. Most cities only allow one set of service lines to be run to a home. Some contract with service providers like Comcast or Spectrum, and others simply allow service on a first-come-first-serve basis.

As a result, most people only have two options: one cable provider and one telecommunication company providing service to their home. Telecommunication companies sometimes don't have lines fast enough to provide competing TV service, leaving homeowners and renters with effectively one option for television service. Sometimes users can get a third-party fiber provider, but most often fiber is provided only by the two primary service companies. Satellite TV is always an option, giving most people a second or third choice for television service. When it comes to internet service, however, satellite internet is not a viable alternative due to frustrating latency delays. Cable internet is generally faster than DSL, so in non-fiber areas cable internet is the only viable option. It's not uncommon to see a home with XFINITY offering 987 Mbps while the “competing” DSL service maxes out at 3-12 Mbps: not nearly enough for people with lots of simultaneous device use.

Major Coverage Areas

Click below to see providers, speeds, and coverage in major US cities.

From these pages you will also be able to find fiber, satellite, or DSL service.