As the home of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville’s internet offerings must meet the needs of scholars and permanent residents alike. All need a reliable internet connection for work, school, streaming and staying connected with friends and family nearby or far away.
CNET recommends Xfinity as the best internet service provider in Charlottesville owing to its plan selection and extensive coverage throughout the area. However, local fiber provider Ting is an excellent choice if you’re looking for gig internet. For a low-cost internet alternative, you may consider T-Mobile’s 5G home internet service, which covers much of Charlottesville with max speeds ranging from 72 to 245Mbps.
Our methodology
Xfinity
Best internet provider in Charlottesville
Product details
Ting Internet
Best fiber provider in Charlottesville
Product details
Price range $50 per month ($30 for eligible mobile customers) Speed range 72 – 245Mbps Connection Fixed wireless Key Info Unlimited data, equipment included, no contracts, no additional fees
T-Mobile Home Internet offers fast, fixed-wireless internet in Charlottesville. With the highest approval rating of any nonfiber provider in the country according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, T-Mobile is a top choice for home internet in Charlottesville.
Availability: T-Mobile Home Internet is available to more than two-thirds of Charlottesville residences. Serviceability is greatest just outside the city center in the surrounding communities of Belmont and Woolen Hills.
Plans and pricing: T-Mobile offers a single home internet plan for a monthly price of $50 for download speeds ranging from 72 to 245Mbps. By bundling with an eligible T-Mobile mobile plan, customers can save an additional $20 off the monthly rate. Your price is locked in for as long as you remain a customer.
Fees and service details: There are no equipment fees, data caps or contracts.
All available Charlottesville internet providers
The providers listed above may not be your only internet options in Charlottesville. They’re just the ones we’d recommend most and consider first if moving to the area. Brightspeed is another possible choice for fiber internet in Charlottesville, and satellite internet may best serve residents of surrounding rural areas where other connection types are unavailable.
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Source: CNET analysis of provider data
Brightspeed: Brightspeed recently took over operations from CenturyLink in the Charlottesville area. Its services are available to about 5% of Charlottesville households, with its slower and less desirable DSL offering making up most of that and its fiber service covering the rest.
Fiber internet starts at $59 per month, lower than Ting, so it’s worth checking to see if your address is serviceable. Locations where fiber is unavailable may still be serviceable for Brightspeed’s DSL service, which starts at $50 per month for the fastest speeds available, up to 100Mbps.
Satellite internet: HughesNet, Viasat and satellite internet newcomer Starlink are available throughout Charlottesville and surrounding areas. However, other faster and more budget-friendly options should be considered before turning to satellite internet.
Charlottesville broadband at a glance
All Charlottesville residents can access broadband speeds of 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up and higher. Faster speeds, up to 250Mbps down and 25Mbps up, are also available to nearly every Charlottesville household. Many will also have access to gigabit speeds, with providers such as Brightspeed, Xfinity and Ting offering speeds up to 1,000Mbps or higher.
Charlottesville internet pricing
Xfinity offers the cheapest internet service, starting at $25 per month for speeds up to 200Mbps, followed by T-Mobile Home Internet, which starts at $50 per month (or $30 per month if you use the mobile bundle discount). Brightspeed has the best deal on gigabit service, featuring symmetrical download and upload speeds for $79 per month, but again, availability is highly limited in Charlottesville.
Cheapest internet plans in Charlottesville
Source: CNET analysis of provider data
How CNET chose the best internet providers in Charlottesville
Internet service providers are numerous and regional. Unlike the latest smartphone, laptop, router or kitchen tool, it’s impractical to personally test every internet service provider in a given city. So what’s 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 mapping information from the Federal Communications Commission at FCC.gov.
This guide leverages an in-house artificial intelligence tool called RAMP, which is trained on our own writing and uses our database to generate content about specific internet service providers that our writers can use in determining and presenting our picks for a given guide. Check CNET’s AI policy for more information about how our teams use (and don’t use) AI tools.
Because our database is not exhaustive, we go to the FCC’s website to check the primary data for ourselves and make sure we’re considering every ISP that provides service in an area. Plans and prices also vary by location, so we input local addresses on provider websites to find the specific options available to residents. We look at sources, including the American Customer Satisfaction Index and J.D. Power, to evaluate how happy customers are with an ISP’s service. ISP plans and prices are subject to frequent changes; all information provided is accurate as of the time of our pre-publication fact-check.
Once we have this localized information, we ask three main questions:
- Does the provider offer access to reasonably fast internet speeds?
- Do customers get decent value for what they’re paying?
- Are customers happy with their service?
While the answer to those questions is often layered and complex, the providers who come closest to “yes” on all three are the ones we recommend. To explore our process in more depth, you can visit our How we test ISPs page.
Internet in Charlottesville recap
Many Charlottesville residents will find Xfinity to be the area’s best ISP in terms of availability and plan selection. The provider’s cable service can’t quite deliver the upload speed of a fiber-optic connection, however, which is where regional providers Ting and Brightspeed may have an advantage. Those looking to “cut the cord” for a possibly cheaper internet connection with fewer hassles and fees should check to see if T-Mobile Home Internet is available.
Internet providers in Charlottesville FAQs
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