I've heard a lot of negative things about Charter, but I'm sure it's still better than Comcast. When I went to the Outer Banks in 2003, they had Charter.
Charter is good but cheap. My god the OBX situation is horrible. Most of the cable lines are buried in the sand and are corroding because Charter was too cheap to use proper cable and equipment. Outages are nearly every other day (long ones as well) Considering the situation though they have to deal with a lot of things there so ill give them some credit.
On the XL issue I will say that Charter is more probable to have an XL then other providers. However the only reason I have seen that Charter has not upgraded those XLs to an IS is due to the fact that its not worth it. The XL that I am familiar with in the Outer Banks serves about a 6- 12 mile area. Not worth upgrading to an IS for the area but its not worth loosing that XL because its on the edge of the "coverage area" of the nearest IS.
Funny though how they skimp on the necessities but are bankrupt