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So far, so good. On the 22/5 tier still. Speeds with PowerBoost get in excess of 35 Mbps down and 8 Mbps up, though this is only for the first several seconds of a download. Still, it's nice. This is with signals that are on the hot side (+11 for download). Still bonding four channels, and have never experienced a slowdown due to node congestion. For the current price ($55ish with modem rental) this is great. I'll re-evaluate when my promo pricing expires, since then I'll be paying nearly $80 per month for internet service. However I think I'll have a hard time giving up my current download and upload speeds. Qwest still is ADSL (no 2+, no VDSL2) in my area, and will be for at least the next few months. If it was available I'd probably switch to 20/5 VDSL if Comcast's current pricing for me expired and I couldn't get them to budge giving me a promo rate. As it stands though the fastest speed I can get on Qwest is in reality 4.2 Mbps down and 700 kbps up for $35. No thanks. 9-3-09 DOCSIS 3 is now in my area and Ive had the service for about two weeks. Half of that time I've been on Ultra (22/5), the other half on Extreme (50/10). I need to reboot my modem (Ambit model, works surprisingly well in spite of this) to make sure I'm locked back into Ultra; 50/10 is spendy. I'm currently enjoying a $22.96 monthly discount, so my monthly fee for Ultra + modem is about $55. When the discount goes away I'll be returning the modem and downgrading to Performance (now 12 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up) to keep the price the same...unless of course Comcast makes me a deal or Qwest gets 12/5 VDSL2 out to my place (highly unlikely). I still have a few months before the promotion expires though, so I'm enjoying 22/5 speeds while time permits. PowerBoost appears to be capped now in my area, albeit rather liberally on the upload side. I'm still seeing as much as 11.5 Mbps on the lower-end plans, and 50/10 is more like 60/20 with PowerBoost. On downloads, you'll get about 5% more than the "up to with PB" speed advertised by Comcast. So for example my 22/5 tier gets 31.5 Mbps down with PowerBoost, despite bonding a whopping four cable channels on the downlink and one on the uplink. I had some issues with Comcast on upgrading to 50/10; first they didn't apply the upgrade entirely. Then (a day later when I asked about the upgrade) theyl kicked my modem into "Walled Garden" mode that took maybe an hour of working with support to get out of. FYI, Comcast calls their 50/10 "Extreme" tier "Wideband Blast" in their billing system and their Ambit modem configuration file. I also had a tech come out to make sure my line quality was optimal after the DOCSIS 3 upgrade. The signal actually was coming in too hot (plant changes for the DOCSIS upgrades plus being a HSI-only customer) so the tech added a three-way splitter at my outlet. There was significant cable loss due to a messed-up connector (again at my outlet; I have no "inside wiring" in my apartment) and she fixed that as well. The tech was late to the (rescheduled via their phone system because the second half of the first appointment would've been during class) appointment but I'm pretty sure the phone rep told me I'd get a discount for the work order backlog. With the upload upgrade I haven't had any network slowness issues; it helps when you have 5 Mbps of upload...harder to monopolize the whole thing. Seems like upload PowerBoost makes a connection more "shaky" than just a straight upload speed, but I'll live with that in exchange for double my rated upload speed for the first few seconds of an upload. Speaking of uploads, I think I pushed over 250GB through my connection in the last week or so, uploading to Backblaze (InterNAP = maxed out upload pipe). I haven't heard from Comcast, thus reinforcing the fact that their cap is a soft cap. All in all, Comcast provides the best internet connection available in my area, no question (at least on a residential grade system at a price below $200 per month). While I would rather have a symmetric connection running at 10-35 Mbps (depending on what that would cost me) there isn't any real competition here and I'm not paying $40 extra per month for 10 Mbps of upload speed vs. 5 Mbps with the same soft cap. Qwest still hasn't done anything with their infrastructure here (ADSL only) so Comcast is really the only option for internet power users within their footprint. I can live with that, though as a result of the lack of competition non-promotional pricing is a tad (like $15 per month) too high. 12-1-08 The Zoom modem has been humming along with no problem, though I'm on my second WRT310N (first one bricked after I tried to repair a performance issue). Not terribly happy about the caps... Then the letter came...$2 increase per month on the cost of internet service. For any of you unfamiliar with the term to use to describe this practice, the correct phraseology is "nickel and diming to death". Seriously, they're making enough money and gaiing customers... Then again, what can I say? Comcast delivers 100% of advertised speeds 24/7 where I am, Qwest doesn't...Qwest feels more like a "shared system" where it counts than Comcast, who by the way is still rocking like it's 2005 with DOCSIS 1.1. The alternative to paying $65 for Comcast's service is waiting patiently for files to download over a connection that at best barely breaks 4 Mbps on Qwest. The telco would have to put in FTTN to compete with Comcast here, and even then speeds are iffy from what I hear. Bottom line: where areyou gona go? It's a lesser-of-two-evils thing. 10-5-08 Yesterday I called Comcast to switch over service from their provided cable modem to one that came in the mail (Comcast->FRGP router->school but still 20-30ms "first hop" when doing a traceroute inside the VPN is impressive. On the other hand, I'm literally a stone's throw from the network room of the school, but not close enough to use their WiFi :/ 8-19-08 OTHER OPTIONS 1. Cellular broadband (all of the "big three" have high speed data here, but that's expensive and slower than terrestrial broadband...and Millenicom is the only one with no caps) 2. Wireless from Wispertel, but they don't seem to have good deals and I'm very mistrustful of wireless operations, with their high setup fees and generally subpar performance. Plus, they top out at 5 Mbps down. 3. Qwest (see my other review) has DSL service here, however their highest speed ($47 a month for dry-line) is a mere 5120/896 connection, provisioned as such. So performance is much lower in real life and latency is high due to interleaving. No FTTN = no higher speeds. PACKAGE OREDERED Renting a modem right now for $3 a month on top of their higher tier of internet, which is 8/2 w\PowerBoost here. As can be seen, it's a heckuva lot faster than Qwest's highest-end offering here. The price is rather high though, still trying to work it out: $53 a month (plus modem rental) for the first six months, then $63 a month thereafter. I could care less about added features, I just want the highest speed possible, especially with uploads, hence the choice here. ORDER\/INSTALL PROCESS Order process over the phone wasn't too bad, though I'm not happy about paying a $50 installation fee. Wait, there's little to no competition. Guess that's standard are. Anyhow, I scheduled the installation for 8-10 am this morning (this was two weeks ago when I ordered). The tech arrived at a minute or two before 9 a.m., and due to wasps in the cable box took about 25 minutes to get everything set up outside. Another 25 minutes inside and I was up and running. I messed up my wireless router a few times so it took awhile to get that up, but that was my fault (this was done after the tech left). The guy was nice enough, but wanted to keep his hands off of as many things as possible, and seemed hurried to get to the next appointment. But hey, he knew enough of what he was doing that the service got set up in a timely manner. It's just annoying how Comcast had to do a professional install" whereas Qwest, with no previous DSL service, allowed for a $10 self-install. EQUIPMENT I provided my own router (Linksys WRT54G v8 w\DD-WRT). Comcast is renting me a Scientific Atlanta WebStar DPC2100R2. Seems to be decent at internet performance, but is totally locked down as to setup stuff (only one screen, status, accessible) and it looks like it's gonna run hot. Speaking of equipment and installation, Rx/Tx power levels are 11.2/35 at the moment, with Rx hovering between about 10.6 and 11.4, maybe less variance than that but within spec. The tech mentioned it being on one end of the spec but it works fine so I'm not coplaining. FINAL COMMENTS/SPEED TESTS I'll update this review when I get more information about the service through use. Traceroutes reveal a strong Comcast backbone in the area (then again Denver is an internet hub so of course). Pings to Google are pretty (but not completely) consistent at 60ms or so. My school, whose OC-3 connection goes into an aggregate connection that includes a large Comcast pipe, has ping times that vary from 9-21ms, mostly in the 9-12ms range. Perfect for VPN; that's less than first-hop latency on Qwest. Download speeds look to be about 13.5 Mbps with PowerBoost, tapering down to around 9.8 Mbps when you average download speed over a 100 MB file, which isn't too bad, though ads say PowerBoost runs up to 16 Mbps. Though the website wants to say something different. Uploads look to be solidly at 2.2 Mbps, though Mozy as of yet doesn't seem to like the connection so I don't know how the speeds will be when PowerBoost wears off, or peak time rolls around. Maybe I'll try a different modem...$3 a month renting a modem that's 20ish on eBay is a ripoff. One thing's for sure: VoIP works great. No packet loss, minimal jitter...though TCP Forced Idle looks like the connection could go a fair bit faster than what it is right now. Guess that's it for now, will update when new info comes in. Followup comments:
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After the install, I was showed briefly how to use on-demand and where the help sections were to answer any additional questions I might have thought of. Then, the installers said goodbye, and left. After they left, I found that my welcome kit included a coupon for a free pay-movie on on-demand. Overall, installation of VOIP, cable, and Internet was rather painless, above expectations, and the Voice Quality is unbelievably good! Also, love all of the value-adds that Comcast throws in like caller-id, call waiting, all of of the stuff VZ wanted my my right arm per month for. Followup comments:
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Scheduling the install date was no problem. Online Chat to confirm details was nice. ServiceTech was on time and thorough. Big surprise: the Motorola Digital cable boxes are smaller than the voice modem! I'm a little disappointed in the low number of HD channels available in my market, and it's an additional $8 a month for a non-DVR HD box. Nov 2009- I just renewed my soon-to-be expiring triple-play bundle to a new one including no recurring monthly service charges for a HD-DVR upgrade, a 16-2 Ultra HSI upgrade, and an all-inclusive 200 channel video/sports/movie package, plus phone for $159. I picked up my new HD-DVR and D-3 modem at my local Comcast Store, came home and hooked everything up. No internet. I had to call in to have the new modem provisioned, and that took less than 5 minutes. Painless. 31/9 Mbps. The HD-DVR had also had to be authorized and that automatic setup took about 20 minutes. Everything works great. The number of HD channels is steadily improving. I usually try to lower costs where possible, but the benefits here outweighed the slight increase. Had I done nothing and my existing bundle "expired" it would have meant a $72 per month jump, up to the regular cost for the services I was already getting, minus a HD_DVR and Ultra and full sports pack. Attachments:  Followup comments:
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@Home came out and installed the cable modem within 14 days of me calling and setting up the appointment. The install tech was courteous and the service worked without a problem. The first couple months, the service was flaky to say the least. I was down on average 1 week out of the month for the first 3 months. After that, the line was stable and the speeds were top notch. I moved into my new home a year later, and since then I have been using ATT@Home. My line went down maybe once in a three month span. I always got blazing fast downloads. Needless to say, I was happy. The main selling point of this technology in my opinion has to be the reliability of the connection. The speed is up there, but being able to get on all the time is simply a huge plus for me. Now, I am on Comcast after the move from ATTBI and @Home. I am still not disappointed with the service. I am looking forward to the tiered pricing that Comcast is going to introduce sometime this year. 8/11/02 Update - Connection is still rock solid and speeds are very nice. Highly recommended! 11/05/02 Update - Still as solid as a rock. Fast speeds and virtually no downtime. 3/14/03 Update - Getting some sparse outages on occassion where rebooting my router will fix the problem. Otherwise, top notch speeds! Comcast is doing work in my area which could be part of the problem. 3/26/03 Update - Found out my router was the problem. Replaced the router and no downtime so far. Will report back later next week. 5/31/03 Update - Only downtime I had was due to a power outage in my area that lasted for 3 days. Otherwise, life has been good.  6/16/03 Update - Still rock solid. Nexland fixed the Comcast issue in a firmware update. Going to put the Nexland back in place and start it back up in the next week or so. Otherwise, I am just glad the packet dropping and other issues were router related and NOT ISP related. 7/14/03 Update - Still going with no downtime! 10/01/03 Update - Comcast is still rocking and rolling for me. If you can, prepay for a year of service to save even more money. Instead of paying $42.95, I pay $467.45 for a year and I get a free month. If you leave anytime during that time, you get your money back. A good deal to say the least. 11/10/03 - Still working. No downtime. Fast connection. Nuff said! 1/12/04 - This connection is still totally rock solid. However, Comcast has caught up to me. Since I went with Directv about four months ago, I found out that prepaying for a year of service will keep my internet the same price and I could ditch cable TV. This has now changed. Now, I have to keep at least basic cable TV which is $13.50 plus taxes. Either that or my internet goes up to $61. Let me see...$61 or $56 a month. I still prepay a year in advance which saves me a little money, so it brings the cost down to $53 a month as the total price per month. I have decided to try out SBC DSL this month sometime. I will go for the $37 package which includes 1500 down and 256 up. If it works out well, and it may since I am less than 7,000 feet from the CO, it will lower my internet cost by $16 a month. Don't get me wrong, I love Comcast cable internet. If SBC DSL sucks, you can bet I will spend a little more and keep the Cable internet. My hope is the DSL service rules! I have already gotten input on DSL in this area and it does look promising. I will report back on this review later. 2/17/04 - I called and canceled Comcast cable internet about one week ago. I am up and running on SBC DSL. Comcast was excellent in my area, and if not for the price increase for non-cable TV subscribers, I would have stayed. The $26.95 price tag is all I could qualify for, but I am getting 1500/256 which is excellent speeds for the price. Reliability so far is equal to Comcast cable internet. Latency is the same, which is excellent. I get nice steady pings in the 30-40 range which is excellent. This is my final review on Comcast, but it was a very positive experience for me. If you can get it in your area, give it a try. 6/28/06 - I finally budgeted out to get dual broadband lines in my house. Since I have SBC DSL for $15 a month, I decided to take the plunge and get Comcast again. I had a very favorable review of Comcast in my area so I was hoping nothing had changed. I found a offer online for Comcast HSI for $20 a month for 6 months with a $100 cash back offer. In order to get that lower price, I had to pay $13 for basic cable TV which sucks, but there isn't much I can do about that but complain. I placed the order on 6/22. Install was set up for Saturday 6/24. I opted for the basic install since I had all the equipment. Saturday came and went with no installer coming out to the house. I called Comcast and they explained that the installer was running very late on a few other installs and they would need to reschedule. They even gave me free installation to make up for the trouble. The new install date was 6/27 and it went through without a hitch. Modem came right up and internet speeds were top notch at 6000/384. I put both lines in my dual WAN router and just stressed the heck out of them both last night. So far, 1 day later, connection is as solid as it was when I left Comcast a few years ago. Aside from the installation reschedule and the fact I have to pay $13 a month for basic cable TV, I am very happy. 1/5/07 - Running Comcast HSI and SBC DSL on my dual wan router and it is a match made in heaven. I love the redundancy, but not that I have had to have it. I use both lines of upload bandwidth quite heavily, which is very nice. Service is solid. 10/25/07 - Service is still solid. No outages at all to report. The service just works and I love it. Still have both SBC and Comcast on my dual WAN router and both services work great. 1/28/08 - After a few years of running with a dual WAN connection, I have dropped Comcast once again. My DSL service is $25 a month while Comcast is much more expensive since I don't get their cable TV. Its a shame actually cause their service here rocks. Maybe I will pick it up again later. Right now though, I am happy with DSL and to save the money over a dual wan connection. 11/21/09 - After about a 2 year hiatus, I have returned to Comcast. My DSL connection was tapped out at 4000/768 and after some flaky connection issues, I decided to give Comcast another go. I am proud to say that Comcast is still great in this area. I will be monitoring the connection to see how it goes. Followup comments:
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All has been working great. Price went up a little bit but all in all, it is working great. --- Update 08/10/06 --- Got a cable modem from a friend who went to dsl. Comcast wouldn't let me use the modem because it was still associated with his account. They verified that the other account was inactive. They needed him to call anyways. After disconnecting my line, they fixed that problem. But all was not clear. I returned the modem and they wanted to charge me $100 for the modem anyways. Even after 10 phone calls to open 3 support tickets (2 of which disapeared), a return trip to the local office, and a fax, they disconnected my line. Most of the support people were very nice, except for the person who hung up on me. There is just so much red tape that no one could do anything. I was very annoyed by the "I'll raise the priority on this ticket." How many times do you need to hear this before it becomes a joke? ------- original I moved to a new house that did not qualify for DSL. Already had DirecTV and phone service but went with Comcast Internet/Cable. Setup: $50 to get the lines to my house. I wired up inside the house. Each month: $11 basic cable + $43 computer + $3 modem [Motorola SB5120] . Promotion: first 6 months at $11+20+3/month. The sales force were lacking in the personality, and seemed to provide minimal information. When comparison shopping I asked about the typical install wait times. "It depends when I click the button, could be less then a week, could be a few weeks" - annoying. Installer was on time, quick, nice, knowledgeable. He really could not have been nicer. I had a dish, so he ensured all systems would work well together. I signed up for cable to reduce my monthly expense, but did not intend on hooking up to a TV. He understood and did not press the whole setting up the TV thing. Also ran the cables so you could not seem them outside the house. Very impressed with him. Activation try 1 didn't work. Took me a while to find internet explorer for the macintosh but the thing hung. Activation sales call 1. The tech support on the phone was not helpful. End result: move my computer to the basement with the modem. Best part was him asking me to go to the "start menu" on my Macintosh. He paused and clearly his script did not have anything for the Mac. I couldn't help but laugh. Activation try 2 didn't work. I moved a windows box downstairs and tried to run setup from there only to have it fail in the same spot. Activation sales call 2 - Spoke with a very nice and knowledgeable guy this time. After 2 questions he changed gear to try and work better with my technical level and we were up and running in no time. Turns out their servers were having troubles and I didn't even need to setup the Windows box in the first place. Very annoyed with the first guy All in all it took me 1 week to get a new cable line run to the house and 3 hours to setup. Service is great, using a Motorola SB5100. Network is up and running. Followup comments:
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I've been using DSL since day 1, after all years with DSL I'm still OK with it since I went Fry's electronic I saw the sale reps ask me to using Comcast Cable Internet. At 1st, I don't believe it but I still try to order the performance package. After I pay for 25 dollars for installation. My services up running. Oh my God, Comcast cable internet make me so impressive and after run test for a week I have no downtime. That's great! I just ordered upgrade Ultra package, after filled out information, I've been chat with reps name Germaine.He/She so nice and helped until my service and order complete. I think Comcast is the best service in San Jose. Geramine, you so cool man ! Followup comments:
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Struggled with it for a year until the contract was up. Tech here this morning to swap modem. Slow now but at least it's up. Switching back to sbc dsl here very soon. Followup comments:
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The increases in speed have made the service more enjoyable and I'm happy about that. Looking at the trend in online entertainment and communications, this limit on full utilization of your "unlimited" connection will be a source of friction soon. The option would be to use the Comcast phone service (instead of a cheaper option) so you're not peanalized for the bandwidth there and get Cable TV instead of trying to enjoy services like Hulu or Netflix on a daily basis. Oh and don't over do it with all the online offering of gaming/entertainment with Wii, PS3, XBOX 360 or any other web enabled device in your home....wait this kills the whole reason for swallowing the price of a high speed, always on broadband connection and all the stuff it "could" allow you to do, doesn't it? For the "average Joe", myself included, Comast does the job with a few minor bumps along the way. I still have dreams of a fiber optic ISP in Northeast Florida and hope that they will offer a low price and get everyone connected as opposed to charging a second mortgage only a few can afford. Followup comments:
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The order process was a bit convoluted to say the least. The web portal for Comcast offers provided no link for submitting an order, it only provided an 'order confirmation number'. I called Comcast who then stated I had to order by chat session...the chat session helper then redirected me to a special offers line, where finally after three tries was I able to order my service. Install was good. . .with a Webstar DPC2100r2 modem connection in house, and a Netgear WNR2000 switch to complete the combo. One bad thing was the reconnect fee attached to my bill - I'm a new Comcast customer yet they're trying to charge me for a 'reconnect'. That's $32 I don't owe and will not pay. Please beware of reconnect fees if you are a clean install (new customer). All in all, service has been satisfactory and the special promotion was hard to pass up. Followup comments:
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Comcast
Golden,Jefferson,CO
$56 per month
about 14 days
"Relatively painless install, MUCH faster speeds than Qwest"
"High price, uploads could be faster"
"Could be worse, especially considering there is really no competition here..."
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