[ale] All you Comcast fanboys...

Fri Jan 2 14:17:41 EST 2015

I'm also a Comcast user.  I use Tivos and Uverse won't support them, as they won't offer cable cards.

I went with my own modem a few years ago figuring out that after a few months I'd save money over renting.  I called in to switch from the old (their) to the new (mine) modem and was shocked at how easy it was.  As an added bonus I get to determine the wifi equipment used in the house behind the modem, and I wouldn't go back to using a Comcast provided box.

By and large I have two recurring problems with Comcast:

1) About every 6-12 months they hork around with the signal on our street which means I have to add or subtract an amp from our setup.  For the first couple of years, I'd have to call a tech, but after observing a few of the calls, I figured out what to look for and can now manage it myself.

2) Once a year they corrupt our CableCard records so that one or more of them stop working.  But they've made it so that CSRs on the phone can verify the configs and settings on the cards, so generally it's 30 minutes on the phone and everything is working again.

I do have one more large bone to pick with them and that's not peering more connections with online content providers.  They 'fixed' this with Netflix by Netflix paying them some money and setting up a CDN in one of the Comcast Datacenters, but now I'm having similar problems with Amazon.  My personal thought is that I pay for 20Mb/s of download bandwidth and if I'm not able to get that, not because the other end isn't able to support it, but because the volume of your (Comcast) users are exceeding the amount of bandwidth you have peered with Amazon's ISP, it's not a me problem and it's not an Amazon problem.  It's a Comcast problem, which as a customer, I'm paying for a service you're not delivering and you better address it.  Unfortunately, Comcast doesn't see it that way and instead wants to extort money from Amazon to "access the Comcast user base."  Net Neutrality :-(

By the way, my European friends laugh at my "high-speed" 20Mb/s connection as 100Mb/s is the standard there with speeds up to gig-e available to home users in many countries.

-Scott

> On Jan 2, 2015, at 1:45 PM, Pete Hardie <pete.hardie at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
> I'm not a fan of the forced donation of power for hotspots either, but so far for me Comcast has been less of a liar than AT&T, whose DSL offering maxed out at 1.5M, and who was willing to keep telling me to reset my equipment when a simple check of their equipment would clear out the problem....
> 
>> On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 1:19 PM, Michael H. Warfield <mhw at wittsend.com> wrote:
>> [Disclaimer]
>> 
>> I gave up on Comcast years ago.  Even if they offered me twice the
>> bandwidth they do now at half the price they do now, I would refuse.  I
>> got tired of all the lies they told me (multiple documented occasions)
>> years ago.  I can tolerate incompetence or ignorance but malice
>> aforethought will not stand.  I have plenty of bitching points with ATT
>> Uverse but, at least, willful lies are not one of them...
>> 
>> That all being said...
>> 
>> [/Disclaimer]
>> 
>> The saga of Comcast using your premises and your electricity to promote
>> THEIR wifi services is well documented.  I saw this first hand just this
>> last month where the clutter of Xfiniti public access points (on all
>> possible channels) were drowning out (beaconing) the legitimate services
>> in a residential neighborhood, making non-xfiniti services unreliable
>> even within a single home where we were staying.
>> 
>> The horror stories of their so called "customer support" is also well
>> documented...  Safe advice is now to ALWAYS record any support call with
>> Comcast...  Latest in that saga...
>> 
>> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141231/01553029553/yet-another-horrible-comcast-customer-service-experience-goes-viral.shtml
>> 
>> Now, they are increasing your "rental fees" by 25% for the privilege of
>> providing their "service" to their customers using your facilities.  The
>> rental fee on "their" cable modem is going up...
>> 
>> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/31/on-comcast-buy-your-own-modem/
>> 
>> I still have a couple of my old DOCSIS 2 modems from the last time I was
>> wasting my time with Comicalcast.  But now, at $120 a year to rent their
>> "we advertise our own open service from your property" modems, why is
>> anyone still renting their modems?  Morotola DOCSIS 3 cable modems are
>> starting around $70 on Amazon?  That's what?  7 MONTHS return on
>> investment?!?!  And you are not providing them with free electricity and
>> facilities for their network or cluttering the air with their access
>> point beacons.  How do they continue to get away with this???
>> 
>> Mike
>> --
>> Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 978-7061 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
>>    /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
>>    NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
>>  PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pete Hardie
> --------
> Better Living Through Bitmaps
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