NYC Time Warner Cable Internet Speeds: what TWC says and what it is (Road Runner seems faster than advertised max)

I have the "Broadband Standard" internet plan from Time Warner Cable. On my bill this is noted as "Road Runner Online Svc". TWC has pretty terrible marketing and branding, they seem to use many names interchangeably for their internet service (Road Runner, Broadband, Time Warner Broadband, Road Runner Broadband, Time Warner Internet, Road Runner Online, Time Warner Online, EarthLink High Speed Internet). This makes it tougher to find information about the product and tough to talk to TWC customer support as it's challenging to describe to them the services to which you are subscribed!

The "Broadband Standard" service has these specifications:

Download:	Up to 10 Mbps
Upload:	Up to 512 Kbps
Email:	Accounts 10
Connect up to 6 devices with WiFi:	addtional service fee

Note: The typo above ('addtional') is from the TWC site, check it out.

In my prior post about TWC broadband internet performance in Manhattan using speedtest.net I observed download speeds above the TWC advertised rate of 'up to 10 Mbps'. I typically observe download speeds above 10 Mbps and occasionally above 20 Mbps. I also see download speeds under 10 Mbps, and occasionally significantly under. These periods of slowness happen frequently enough that it is bothersome, and getting any information from TWC as to what's going on and why is essentially impossible, which bothers me even more.

Upload speeds are nearly always just under the 512 Kbps mark per speedtest.net. I have never observed an upload higher than 512 Kbps. TWC clearly caps this at 512 Kbps. This is a low number if you ask me since my AT&T iPhone via 3G scores nearly twice the TWC upload speed. It's pretty lame that the upload for the TWC standard internet package isn't faster than a cell phone. You would have to upgrade all the way to the top TWC consumer internet plan, the Wideband Internet package, to finally get upload speeds (5 Mbps) that are higher than a mobile. No prices are readily listed for the Wideband Internet package, I'll talk about the pricing opaqueness at TWC later.

I don't use the Road Runner email accounts so this is not an issue for me.

That last item "Connect up to 6 devices with WiFi" requiring an "additional service fee" concerns me. Is TWC able to detect how many devices I have connected to my WiFi router? I have connected two laptops and two iPhones simultaneously to my WiFi network and never encountered issues.