Review by kevinhutchin 
Posted: 4.7 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 28 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
 Bellingham,Whatcom,WA
 $49 per month
 "Always appears to operate at advertised speed (3Mbps/256kbps)"
 "signal loss is so frequent that it renders usability nearly impossible"
 "totally unable to enjoy streaming audio or network games because of frequent signal-drop"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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We were originally AT&T Broadband customers until Comcast took over. The service used to be 1.5Mbps down, 256kbps up, and it worked fine for the first two years (July 2002 thru August 2004). But then Comcast said they were "upgrading" our neighborhood, and their subcontractor (Prince Cable) came and replaced some lines in our building, supposedly to enable their Video-On-Demand services. They then bumped up our speed to 3.0Mbps down, 256kbps up.
The service *does* work at the advertised speeds, usually testing between 2.2 and 2.9 Mbps on most days. However, we have had a horrible problem ever since their "upgrade"... the signal is lost so frequently, it makes any usage incredibly frustrating. We can't listen to an audio stream for more than a few minutes without losing the transmission, we can't play a simple network game (like a card game on Yahoo) without having the signal lost (and thus activity frozen) every few minutes, and we can't download or upload any file bigger than a couple MB without having the transfer interrupted. Sometimes we're able to resume the transfer after a minute or two, sometimes we have to start over.
On any given day, the cable-modem will indicate a loss of signal dozens of times. Whenever we have complained to Comcast's service department, they always tell us that "tests performed on our line indicate everything is working properly"... this is apparently their way of saying "we're not interested in fixing your problems."
After six months of this ridiculous frustration, we decided to abandon this lousy cable company. We've ordered DSL service from their competitor, and will happily cancel our Comcast services as soon as the new provider is active.
And on a side note: the cable-television service from Comcast is also very poor. Some of the stations have audio-loss in one channel or another, some of the stations lose the SAP and/or MTS signal intermittently; and Comcast has rearranged the channel-lineup several times during the past year without notifying us, so we were surprised to find a few of our favorite broadcasts suddenly switched to a different spot on the dial.
Our total monthly price of HSI is approx $49US, TV is approx $40US, totals with tax and "multi-product bundle discount" ($4) comes to about $92 per month. Their pre-sales literature was not very helpful, but that was back when it was still AT&T Broadband; current advertisements and junk-mail which we receive from Comcast don't appear to be much better.
The original installation and subsequent "upgrade" service-visits were okay, but their technicians didn't even have the proper equipment. For example: we complained about a loss of MTS signal on a couple TV channels, and they came to our home with signal-testing meters which were MONO testers and didn't even have a STEREO testing capability.
The tech support seemed to be totally stupid when it came to helping us with our Apple iMac computers and Asante router. They didn't seem to understand anything that wasn't Windows-related. As far as they were concerned, Macintosh computers might as well have been from another planet.
The service people were friendly and responsive, but they failed to solve our problems.
The absolute worst feature of the service is the connection reliability. There is just no way to describe the frustration of signal-loss ten, twenty, thirty times per day.
The value for the money would have been excellent-- *if it stayed connected*. We did receive the advertised speed, which is quite fast... but speed is irrelevant when the connection is constantly crapping out every few minutes.
The package to which we subscribed came with a tremendous amount of e-mail storage and personal webspace, and we've not seen other ISPs offer anything close. However, no amount of good features or high-speed can make up for the totally unreliable connectivity.
We very much regret that Comcast has a total monopoly on cable service here in Bellingham, Washington, and it is very sad that the only competitor available to us is Qwest DSL. Nevertheless, Comcast is pretty much forcing us to switch to the competition. We'll post fresh reports here in a few weeks after we've had a chance to try the new Qwest service.
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