 Review by newview 
UPDATED: 2.2 years ago
member for 6.8 years, 3945 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Parsonsburg,Wicomico,MD
 $57 per month
 about 10 days
 "Established company - probably NOT a good thing"
 "Poor speeds compared to @home, POOR NEWSGROUPS, AT$T merger, unreliable email due to Comast servers blacklisted"
 "If other alternatives are available in your area, you may get more for your money than what Comcast offers"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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As a recent subscriber to @home in September 2001, I experienced what broadband was supposed to be like . . . and then I was caught up in the @home bankruptcy and transitioned to Comcast. I immediately experienced a speed reduction of over 50% of what I was used to. If that wasn't bad enough I was REALLY taken back with the realization that Comcast does not have a newsgroup server. I lost fully half my speed and half my internet experience in that conversion! I couldn't believe that a well established company like Comcast, who is supposed to be experienced in broadband access, wouldn't realize how important newsgroups are to cable modem users.
To make matters even worse, as of this writing, there is no mention on their newly formed web site for comcast.net subscribers, any mention of plans for or against usenet access. We are left in limbo wondering what is going on. Emails to their "Customer Care" for members have gone unanswered, except for form mail pointing to now-defunct @home irrelevant FAQ's. Telephone calls to tech support, while answered quickly at Level 1, degrade rapidly once bumped to Level 2, with long hold times. I finally hung up after an hour on hold.
It also appears that I also cannot reach certain web sites. I suspect that an entire portion of net space is unavailable to me. Unavailable are 2wire.com, speedguide.net, firehouse.com and anonymizer.com. These sites are available with my backup dialup connection so I know that it's Comcast's problem. All these sites hang off of Verio.net . . . what's up with that?
I cannot presently recommend Comcast as a broadband provider until their level of customer service is at an acceptable level, and their offered services are up to par, since all are presently lacking.
1/1/2002 - It's been two weeks since the "transition" to Comcast's network, and it's still broke. Email is spotty, often down. And, apparently Comcast is using a transparent proxy server which is preventing access to a significant number of web sites and entire networks. It also appears that Comcast intends to use this proxy to monitor web activity in order to send spam or otherwise market your surfing habits.
»Comcast isn't getting rid of the transparent proxy
Newsgroup access is now available due to Comcast aliasing to @home news servers, but there was NO indication or contact about this from Comcast. Only through the efforts of people on this board did this information come to light.
»Comcast Usenet Servers Here
»NEWS SERVER news.mi.comcastwork.com
1/4/2002 - In media reports in which Comcast "spin doctors" and sock puppets have been interviewed, they are indicating no major problems and a smooth transition. Don't you believe it. Major problems are surfacing with every area they transition. Many of these problems are of Comcast's own making.
7/13/02 - Recent postings on dslreports.com in the Comcast forum have indicated that Comcast has raised the download cap to 1800kbps from 1500kbps, probably in order to justify advertised claims of a true 1500kbps speed, which was NOT attainable due to latency, routing problems, hop counts, etc. The upload cap has NOT been raised . . . raising issues with transmit times of email with large attachments for one, and gaming for another. Comcast does appear to be trying to address customer concerns, but is still close-mouthed about problems . . . for instance nowhere on their web site(s) is raising the upload cap mentioned. Webmail is a memory . . . it's been down, what . . . six months now? Newsgroup access is a joke . . . provided by a third-party, Giganews, and limited to 1gb a month . . . a ridiculous amount if you're doing ANY downloading other than text-based newsgroups. VPN access is STILL only offered with the PRO service . . . at double the price of residential service. Comcast obviously sees this as a forced upgrade and a cash cow for them.
12/01/02 - Recent news reports and discussions in the Comcast forum indicate that Comcast is considering download caps to thwart "bandwidth hogs" using P2P applications. I believe this is a "politically correct" reason that Comcast is espousing to cover their agenda of reducing operating costs in the wake of the AT&T merger at the expense of their subscribers, who have already seen many service reductions since the @home transition. The day that Comcast imposes download caps will be the day I cancel my service . . . .both Internet & Cable TV.
»Poll: If Comcast imposes download caps
1/28/03 - There now appears to be a problem on the Eastern Shore of Maryland with the service slowly degrading. My connection graphs of incoming pings from both the East Coast & West Coast DSLR monitoring servers indicate a marked increase in pings, with spikes exceeding 200ms. It's slowly getting worse. A once stable connection with 18ms pings to the FIRST HOP is now at almost 30ms to the FIRST HOP. This has occurred since I began monitoring in December '02. I set up a web site to document the problem and emailed ECAREONLINE with the URL, but they refused to read it, and instructed me to call their Tech Support number. I'm starting to get real fed up with Comcast. And, it's pretty bad when the customer has to go out of his way to fix THEIR network problems.
»Sometimes it pays to ask . . . pings cut in half
2/21/03 - Updated to reflect satellite penalty price increase
6/17/03 - Comcast has implented traffic shaping and it has considerably improved my download speeds. Comcast continues to receive media exposure on customer complaints about cableTV bundling & pricing as they convert areas in the country from ATTBI to Comcast.
»'Tried and True'
04/03/04 - While Comcast infrastucture has settled out to a somewhat accepable 3000/256, (but with still NO newsgroup access and VERY troubling bandwidth abuse suspensions with NO published limits), the MOST problematic problems of Comcast at the moment is their spam zombie problems.
Comcast is landing in more and more major blacklists due to their extremely inefficient handling of spam problems by their abuse department. They appear to be ignoring complaints sent through SpamCop, one of the most respected services of the anti-spam community, even though reports documenting tens of thousands of complaints are readily available.
Comcast's approach to the problem appears to be one of paying lip-service to their stated AUP/TOS by spin-doctoring through the media their strict policy of suspension, which appears to be few and far between. Instead, Comcast representatives at their email forums have indicated that they are contacting ISPs who are blocking Comcast through SORBS and other blacklists, and asking to have Comcast's mail servers whitelisted.
If you want reliable email service, don't subscribe to Comcast.
01/10/06 - Well, it's been a year-and-a-half since my last update to my Comcast experience and things are, by and large, better than they were. It's a fairly reliable connection, except when they upgrade or do maintenence, which seems to hose the connection for days or weeks at a time. My main gripe right now is the recent upgrade to 6000/384 last year left us subscribers who DO NOT subscribe to their cableTV out in the cold. You don't get the upgrade . . . period. So now, not only do you have to pay a $15.00 penalty if you don't subscribe to their cableTV, you are reminded that you are a second-class Comcast customer and don't deserve any consideration for what you DO pay for. I can't wait for ANY other broadband service to become available in my area. I'll drop Comcast like a hot rock.
04/23/06
Comcast refuses to terminate Zombie Subscriber
Comcast IP has been spamming since December 2005
»www.trustedsource.org/query.php?···.116.127
Spamcop has received and been sent 100's of complaints to Comcast since December 2005
Comcast confirmed knowledge of this spamming IP in a forum post by a moderator / says it's been resolved / IP continues to spam
»forums.comcast.net/thread.jspa?t···tstart=0
(must have a Comcast account to view)
Discussion on DSLR of Comcast's inaction in shutting down this Zombie IP
»[Spam] Picture of a Comcast Zombie
Followup comments:  
dude5654
@comcast.net | fix Flush your dns for the sites you can't connect to (go to command prompt type IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS Its obvious you have "bad routes" As far as your newsgroups, You get 2GB a month through gigagnews (with your service) and they don't count headers. | |
|
assmaster
@comcast.net
| you can get a cable "bundle" for less than $15 I got their "limited cable" for only $12.00. It's not great - and I wouldn't have gotten it except that I would have to pay them $15 anyway for having the internet alone. At first they told me that the cheapest cable is the basic cable....a lie of course.... | |
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