|
Home | Reviews | Speed Test | Tools | News | Forums | Info | About | Join |
When Grand Rapids first got ATT@Home, I was excited to be one of the first to get it in my new apartment. My wife and I just got married, and having fast internet access was a must for both of us. She was taking college courses online and I am a techie that likes to use the internet heavily. @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. 12/09/09 - The install went as expected. I had my own modem and Comcast wanted to charge me for installation. I got that charge removed though. Still, billing should know when they see a "self install kit" on the billing information that a "install technician" should not be billed. Ah well, at least the line was installed and working quickly. I got introductory pricing at $19.95 per month for six months with no cable TV, phone, or additional costs. My Comcast line is up and running at 8000/1000 and working great. No problems to report at all. My line monitoring service has not detected any issues with the line or quality so I am pretty happy. I am also gaming on my comcast line with zero problems. 11/21/10 - Comcast cable internet is awesome here. I currently have the blast internet along with digital cable service. The extra speed is nice. With Directv, I was spending $85 a month. Now, with cable internet and TV, I am spending only $99 a month which is much better than then $85 + $43 I was paying before on the basic package. I know that my price will go up later, but I will call to renegotiate. The key here is that I have good service. 4/14/11 - Comcast service continues to be rock solid. I did have a couple issues about a month ago where my internet service would stop working and I would see a "No Ranging Response Received" in my modem. Rebooting my modem and resetting it to defaults both did not fix the problem. I used the Comcast Direct forum here and put my trouble ticket in. With help from the techs there, the problem has been fixed and life is good again. I also updated the price I was paying to the full TV + HSI package I am paying for. 11/30/11 - Comcast service continues to be solid. I had a couple issues a few months ago with some service issues. My modem would say that there was a timeout of some kind but the service would never drop off the cable modem. Comcast looked into it and sent a tech out to look at the problem. The tech checked my signal levels, did some tweaking, and I haven't had any issues since. Awesome job Comcast Direct and Comcast! 6/11/12 - Comcast continues to set the bar high. The service is solid with virtually no downtime. We had a power outage in our area about 4 months ago, and our comcast internet service was still running while we were on the generator. I can't see any reason to move away from them. 12/24/12 - Another 6 months of solid service. No downtime. My blast speeds are incredible. I am very happy! 10/3/13 - It has been about 10 months since I updated this review, but things are still very good for me on my Comcast connection. I enjoy the 50/10 blast connection very much, and my internet is rock solid. I had an instance of downtime on a Saturday about a month ago and that was because someone hit one of the comcast boxes in my area with his car. Within 5 hours, the connection was restored and all is good. I get about 55/14 on my connection when I test it, and that is great for me. TV is still very good as well. I have no plans to move on. 4/9/15 - Solid as a rock. That is the best way I can describe my cable modem service. It is always up. I always get the max amount of speed available. Now I have upgraded Blast service with 100/20 speeds and it always tests out to the max. Gaming on this connection isn't a problem because the latency is very low. I don't get lag spikes or missed pings on any of my games which is a great thing. I did have to buy a nice ASUS RT-N66U router in order to get those speeds though as my older router wasn't cutting it. I have had a couple instances of downtime, but in every instance, when I check online it tells me that there is a problem in my area and gives me an accurate ETA on it being repaired. Do I spend a little more for this connection? Absolutely. At the same time though, I have no plans to move away from it and go with Uverse just to save a couple bucks. I don't mind paying a little more for something I know is going to work. 6/10/15 - My price jumped up to $140 a month today. I called Comcast right away and asked to speak to retention. After a pleasant conversation with my agent, I told him the issue with the price. I can get Uverse in my area for $80, and after discussing that with him, we agreed on a great double play package. Digital Preferred with Performance internet at 50/10 for $90 a month for 2 years. 12/11/15 - Another 6 month update on my service. It just works. I never have to call to get something fixed. I get my full speeds that I pay for. My internet is never down unless there is a serious problem in my area. I love this service! 11/1/16 - Ok, a yearly update this time. The service is still solid. I have constant uptime and the speeds are incredibly fast. I am currently paying $100 a month for TV and internet right now. I feel that is a very fair price to pay for the Blast internet and preferred cable TV package. member for 22.6 years, 7519 visits, last login: 289 days ago updated 7.3 years ago
|