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Cant wait to try and price Fios Followup comments:
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As it is, once Verison VIOS becomes available, I will switch - not for bandwidth or price - because of the service. Once again - spent a whole day with no Comcast e-mail. See from posting - it was national. Comcast began with an agreement to provide multiple IP for multiple computers for home use. They changed the agreement with out notice. Comcast has high bandwidth, but there often seems to be a "lag" to get the connection (latency). They can't seem to understand why it is an issue. Watching Comcast HD cable, it often blanks out for half a second a dozen times an hour. Don't know if this is related. They don't seem to know either. Comcast service for homes with multiple PC - they don't support basics - change IP with out notice and want additional money to put in a router. Comcast Web Mail: The worst of the worst, It is hard to actually list jus how bad it is. If you really depend on e-mail, you really need to pay for a non-comcast service or set up another real web mail service account. They changed services with out notice. Lost my e-mail addresses (over 250 people). Comcast suggest using MS Mail services - well, that is not helpful if you need web mail services. Set up a secondary mail on a MS Mail service. Get this, if even one Comcast mail account is wrong... the entire BCC group is rejected... a minute later shows up in the waiting to send folder. No other notice is given. The support is just a bunch of cut/past "how to set up a e-mail account", nobody seems to be able to actually read a service request. Comcast (after many service mail request) admitted that their e-mail has a problem forwarding in-line images. To maintain coorespondence, I have a Hotmail, G-mail, Yahoo, and other mail accounts. When users send an e-mail with a logo or photo (in-line not as an attachment), only Comcast web mail can not forward the image. The persons receiving the e-mail just get blanks, Comcast senders get no notice. I had a backup of my users and e-mails and spent endless hours trying to load them back into the new Comcast web mail account. They gave me instructions that they later admit just don't work. Bottom line, they can't provide what they offer. Comcast Web Mail showed that they got some award for the new web format. But, the photos they listed along with the "features" were absolutely fraudlent. I sent screen shots of the "advertisement", the "award", and the "actual" to the board members for the award to complain. Comcast clearly showed that you can manage all primary and secondary e-mail accounts from one screen (like they use to before the upgrade). For example: in Hotmail, I can log into my primary acount, then use a list box to switch to my secondary accounts. With the new Comcast web mail, you must log out and back into account!!! When I called (and e-mailed) Comcast Support, they sent instruction on how to do what they advertised. After a couple of weeks of going around in circles,, calling them on it every other day... they finally admitted that this feature is non-existent. Comcast e-mail - something I am paying for, loads a ton of graphical advertisement *before* refreshing the mail list. A paid subscriber has no way to turn this off. A web-mail session is delayed from this. So, it defeats the "high-speed" feature since it can be 10 seconds for all the advertisement to load first. It looks very unprofessional. Loading a good SPAM - Phishing blocking tool on my computer, it stopped many of the Comcast advertisers from loading during a web e-mail session. Since the advertisements are first, this blocked my e-mail from listing. Comcast PLAXO and Web Page services are about as useless features that can be found. My PLAXO service user name - password link was broken during yet another upgrade. I have wasted hours with support and Comcast can't get it together. Today, my only other choice is QWest. Here in Denver, they don't have a good reputation for support, billing, or bandwidth. When Verison shows up (no thanks to the local Thiefdoms known as city regulators) I will drop Comcast in a heartbeat. In a two block area, I feel that about 8 other neighbors will do the same. We are all voting for Verison (a.k.a. just any other choice...). Followup comments:
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Thinking of upgrading to Digital and Phone since uptime and connection has been great 11/08 I finally upgraded to digital TV and CDV. Have had both for a month now and not had any problems except when adding a second digital box, had bad splitter that Comcast replaced. 10/09 Reaching one year since upgrade to digital and phone and besides a couple of short outages (probably due to D3 upgrades), system has worked as advertised. Followup comments:
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Internet is 6.6Mb down, 384K up which is very consistent. Up time has been great, don't remember when it was last down. Another neat thing I discovered during a 3 hour power outage....I could continue on the internet and email the whole time. I have battery backup on my equipment. Apparently, comcast has a different power source for their amplifiers than the local grid in my neighborhood because it continued to work. This is good to know if you want VOIP during power outages. But price is too high. I even have limited basic cable. I don't need cable tv, just need internet. DSL not available at the moment. 05/2007....Tried to get tech support for a failure of a comcast server accessing my modem. complete run around. no real support since they shutdown the local suscom support center. 05/2007....My signal level is worsening, 55db on uplink. Figured I would go the documented route and use help chat to get a tech scheduled to look at the signal. Got a ticket # and confirmation in the chat and kept the transcript. After they were several hours late, I went into chat again and they claim to have no record of the ticket. So it was sorry, want to schedule again? Now got another ticket # and again kept the chat transcript even tho that's apparently worthless. Guess this is the level of service after the switch to comcast is complete. At least you could get to real techs before the switch. 05/2007....This time the tech showed and was experienced. Changed all the crimp connectors from the house to the box out in the neighbor's yard. Also changed the filter for limited basic tv. That got me to 53.75dB. Then he replaced the 26db connection block with a 23db block out in the neighbor's yard. That boosted my signal to 50.5dB. So, now I have some extra room for noise again. Seems like the local folks are good, but when you get into the national pool for comcast, it's all bad. 10/2009....randomly lose connection. Especially annoying since I use VOIP. I will often stop hearing on a call and look over at the modem and see it blinking to connect. Or go to the log and see an entry corresponding a pause in the conversation. Had tech out, he cut off all the ends and improved my upstream from 52.5db to 52db. The tech did see some data errors on his scanner a few times, but when it stopped for a short time, said it was fixed. Tech said he would have the line techs check the tap block to see if 23db block is ok or if it can be lowered. HAVE NOT HEARD BACK ON THIS IN SEVERAL WEEKS. Still having interruptions being logged. I think the buried cable in the neighborhood that is over 25 years old might be part of the trouble. I downgraded to the economy Tier since the cable in the neighborhood could not provide even 4.5M service. See comment/responses below about ping loss throughout the comcast infrastructure. This is a serious problem, verifyable against a competing provider. 10/2009 .... STILL HAVE INTERMITTENT CONNECTION!!!! This is after a high level tech worked on it. This tech did not see any noise issues when he was here and made changes to boost my signal strength. Signal strength running about 48dbmV up and 11db down. I do have limited basic service and wonder if the extra filter in the line hurts the signal. Several times per day modem re-syncs interrupting voip phone calls or browsing. DSLR smoke ping test to my IP and several gateway nodes upstream with in comcast shows comcast has network trouble. There is ping loss at the gateways, and loss increases as the ping gets closer to me. As a comparison point, I included an epix.net local IP address to ping. The epix modem has no loss....I think proving comcast has a problem. Perhaps this is more of comcast's selective filtering policy?? Not sure what is next to find a solution. Followup comments:
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Anyhow, I was on various DSL providers that were struggling and some apparently went under but their service was ok. I signed up for Comcast and was a customer for about 10-15 years. I had limited basic TV service ($11/month) which they don't tell subscribers about which includes things like Disney, CNN, etc. about 15-20 channels total and the comcast internet via cable modem. I bought my own cable modem and after about 3-4 months of them bumbling around saying it was my modem all the time I had them install their own modem which of course they'd rent me for another fee. They replaced this modem 3 times and finally added attenuators to the back of it and then removed the attenuators after about 3-4 techs came out one came out found a problem in the neighborhood and fixed everything but they never suggested I got back to my own modem. I then had good speeds for awhile off and on when they didn't go down or their DNS wasn't offline. I finally built my own DNS server so I didn't have to rely on theirs. So, overall not too bad when they're online. I then signed up for Comcast Triple Play on 5/1/09 for 129 + a speed boost $10 plus other fees etc. Their sales person lied to me and said I could have the same features as my Verizon Call Intercept (which is amazing btw) when I switched my phone service as well as have the ability to filter out unwanted area codes from calling me and filter out unwanted phone numbers from even being able to call my house, I thought amazing! I could actually relax at home with good service, sign me up! Anyhow, when the install tech showed up I asked him if he understood impedence matching before he touched my 65" HDTV when he looked at me and asked what's that I knew I was in trouble. I made him lookup the impedence of his device first and insisted on plugging it into my Digital TV component inputs myself. When the tech finished the install the services were not all working there was something wrong with the phone (which I didn't know at the time) and the CallerID wasn't working on my TV (which to be honest was the only reason I was upgrading). Anyhow, I called in the next day and the next and the next - over the course of 18 days I got one answer different than the next answer. I had opened several tickets would come home to find a voicemail that said everything checked out and the ticket was closed. I had 2 engineers at my house at the same time shaking their heads and the one guy had taken the batteries out of my modem and wondered why nothing worked and said I'd have to wait from friday to monday and I refused to let him go and told him he blew up my internet and phone when the original problem was my TV CID. The second guy got the modem reset and programmed thank goodness. I kept telling them the cable box had the option to turn on Caller ID but they didn't listen and would keep sending techs out who would show up and say the problem was with programming at the server/datacenter end. (who would have thought a programmer made a mistake? no way right? lol) Anyhow after 18 days I get a message saying some programmer fixed the problem remotely with their server or my account on that end. Then I turn on my TV and notice I now got a DVR box instead of the HD box. I call up and am told they'll be charging me for an upgraded box. I say I didn't want nor sign up for DVR and refuse to pay it. They said fine they'll send someone out to put in a HD box that comes with Triple Play. They put in the box I turn it on and there's no CID option to turn on. I goto my Comcast email to see if voicemails are there or anything and what do I notice? An Upgrade to my email webpage which disables all my access to my wife and kids emails which I have to have comcast fix. Then I get into my email and I see they have added a nice sidebar to sell advertising space?!?!?!?! And... I got spam from comcast in my inbox??? I'm the paying customer I shouldn't be SPAMMED BY MY OWN ISP!!! Rediculous and greedy - I called up and cancled my services and will live with slower speeds but better support from people not trying harder to make a buck than to satisfy customers. I don't pay to get annoyed by my service provider! Also, the speed wasn't faster than when I had the basic $52 a month comcast infact it was slower for some reason which really annoyed me. Also, everytime comcast would go down they would say I was in a "walled garden". Followup comments:
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Thankfully, our service has finally been repaired. It took about three years of successive technician appointments and four Supervisor service calls to get someone up on the telephone pole to troubleshoot the problem. We had to call our local Escalated Customer Services Department (after scouring the comcast website to find an email address that went to HQ in Philly), and have those technicians come out about 4 times for repeat repairs/new problem discoveries. I'm now a pretty happy camper and I'd give our local technicians (the "SuperTechnicians" - the ones that were willing to climb up the telephone pole when everything checked out inside the house) very high scores for problem diagnosis skills, as well as the lengths that some of them went to to figure out what was wrong with our service. This was absolutely fantastic. The downside is that we couldn't find (get) these experienced repair techs (out to our home) sooner. Overall, while Comcast service is relatively good, they REALLY need to improve the way they deal with customers who have service problems. The last time we tried to get an issue escalated, it was horror on the telephone. They need some major work on that side of things. Otherwise, the service is solid. Followup comments:
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About the time I made that decision, I noticed Comcast had a massive promotion - free cable modem purchase (after rebates) $75 cash back on digital cable and $100 cash back on HSI. There was also a bundle package for $69. So, I filled out the online form and made the phone call to confirm the order and installation dates. What happened on the phone really began to sway my opinion of Comcast. The operator on the phone managed to cut the bundle price from $69 to $66, throw in 6 months of free Starz, slice the installation price from $79 to $9.95, and gave me an installation date in 3 days. My previous experience with cable HSI with Time-Warner, I had to wait several weeks for installation and then had to wait longer. These Comcast guys were on time, cordial and fast. They had to run a new dedicated line and replace the outlets in two rooms. This was done in about a half hour. I called Comcast about an issue with my digital STB, the operator was polite scheduled a technician the next morning and resolved the issue. However, since this is about broadband, I will stick to the internet aspect. I have had no problems whatsoever with this service. Customer Service returns calls, follows up on installation and technical issues and, today, customer service called to make sure everything was working ok. Yes, it was. The speed package I got with the bundle was 6 mbps down and 2 up. I have powerboost so my results on speed tests are a bit skewed, but they usually range from 5.5 mbps - 16 mbps down and I consistently get around 6.5 mbps up. My free modem (after rebates) is a motorola surfboard wireless modem. It works flawlessly but the initial setup was annoying. It seems all the basic setup was dumbed down too much while the setup for the wireless security settings were very counter-intuitive. The HSI service is great and I have no complaints. Overall, I do not like the television aspect. First, I have to pay a rental fee for the STB. Since I got the digital starter package, I do not get HD with my service. When my set top box initially started acting up, I bypassed the box and ran the connection straight to my tv. And, just as I suspected, I have HD. The box blocks the HD signal while by default, many digital stations are in high definition. I suppose that, in the end, the HD blocking STB will save me money in the long run. I now use it in another room for a regular, non-HD tv without paying for a second box. Sorry, comcast, you guys did that to yourselves. Why make us pay so you can block free service? Its called logic. Other than that and the one dead box, the service is good, support has been great and the pricing is good for now. I have 6 months before it reverts to its normal price and I may reconsider keeping everything as is. I would recommend Comcast, at least in this area. UPDATED: Service is still going strong. Customer support is still excellent, though I have not had any issues. I noticed a slight speed bump recently but over the past few days my speed seems very slow. It is nothing major yet. Followup comments:
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Comcast
Freehold,Monmouth,NJ
$170 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
"good up-time, ok speed"
"peak times network congestion, advertised speeds are for the "speed burst" only"
"ok service for the price, hoping for better!"
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