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Review by nokiatech 
UPDATED: 161 days ago
member for 9.1 years, 2340 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Stuart,Martin,FL
 $42 per month
 about 2 days
 "Fast speed, pretty reliable."
 "Dealing with any large company is a PITA"
 "Still the best option here"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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06/19/09 Update- Still very few problems. Customer service is still by FAR the weakest area. I'm on the 8/2 profile now and consistently see 10/2 sustained speeds with powerboost into the 20/4 range. Gave ATT DSL a shot here just for giggles but we had line issues that I just wasn't interested in tackling when our cable modem works so well. Had 1 overnight outage that I know of in the last year. We use the internet for all of our TV needs to so services like hulu are constantly being streamed without issue.
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10/13/08 Update - We haven't had a single service interruption at our new place even when a tropical storm dumped 2 feet of water all over the area. Speeds are consistently very fast. Can't really complain about anything. Haven't had to call once about the ISP side of the house. Cable TV is another story all together but this isn't the place.
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Update- We've moved since the original review into a condo. We have 3 main options for broadband here and I stuck with comcast over the other 2. I had forgotten to call them before our move date so literally the night before they were able to schedule me for the day after. The installer was again a contractor who again simply needed to remove a trap. There was some type of issue with transferring my personally owned modem from the old account to the new account that he spent about an hour on hold for and no he didn't fall asleep. 
Service is till lightning fast. I'm on the 6meg tier. Powerboost usually bumps into the 24mb range for the first 100mb or so. We were first activated with an oddball ip subnet for this area which spiked my latency. A few restarts later and we got the proper ip range and my latency recovered nicely.
Tech support is still pretty worthless. They didn't seem to even understand what a subnet was or the problem I was describing to them. They stop listening after they see you're online.
The service is priced the same as ATT DSL 6meg service but we get powerboost, higher sustained speeds and none of the dsl quirkiness. It was and is still the best option for internet access in this area for the home.
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I live in an area that is well served by both DSL and cable. I've been told our DSL loop lengths are very short to a nearby remote terminal just to keep the comparison fair.
Both services have been very reliable here for the most part. Our DSL line went through a phase about 2 mos ago where any heavy rain would knock both it and our phone service out. I found out later that it wasn't just us this was happening to but that really didn't make me feel any better. The cable modem has it's minor outages here and there but they seem to be mostly in the middle of the day when I'm not there to see them anyway.
Comcast tech support is the standard "we 3 scripts" waste of time that most large companies offer. The field personnel seem pretty well versed though and will actually listen to the information you are providing. Our installer was a contractor who was 2 hours late. I had done most of the prework for him and just needed him to remove the trap at the pole. He seemed grateful to have an easy install at the end of the day and as such tried to get me online as fast as possible without the "I must install this CD" garbage you usually get.
Our area is powerboost enabled for both down and upstream. It's actually pretty handy as mosts things I download are less then 20MB and the powerboost feature makes those downloads really quick. I can also upload large attachments with email and such very quickly. I do not use their mail or dns services so I can't rate those. I have my own domain and hosted services and use opendns. I am using my own Motorola SB5100 which has served me well for several years and continues to happily chug along today.
The order process was painless online. I was able to choose from several days and time for the install. Got an email order confirmation almost immediately. I did get charged twice for the install but was promptly credited when I pointed out the mistake.
The price is fair. Both my wife and I have heavily discounted cellular plans and as such we have no real need for a landline phone. Maybe when my daughter is a little older When you take that cost out the cable modem is quite a bit cheaper then the comparable DSL service. Yes I know we *should* be paying about 60 bucks for the service without cable tv but the online ordering system happily excepted the order at the quoted 42.95 price. My bill is exactly 42.95 every month, no hidden fees. I don't know if there aren't any taxes or if they are included. We both do a lot of online gaming and such so 42.95 a month for a reliable and quick internet connection is a great value to us. I VPN into work occasionally and have no problems. Port 25 is not blocked for us.
Followup comments:  bmclee
Premium
join:2006-02-26
Jacksonville, FL | Comcast "power boost" I see the advertising for "power boost" -- but have no idea if it actually makes a difference to us. Can you tell me how to determine if it's actually "enabled"?? | |
| | nokiatech
join:2000-10-18
Stuart, FL | Re: Comcast "power boost" www.speedtest.net
If the tested download speed is much higher then your rated speed you are seeing powerboost. | |
| | | bmclee
Premium
join:2006-02-26
Jacksonville, FL
 ·Comcast
| Re: Comcast "power boost" Do you know if "power boost" is dependent on using the COMCAST supplied browser?
My measured speed RARELY even equals the "rated speed", much less exceeds it.
I'm presuming that "power boost" is actually a streaming compression algorithm. I don't see how that could reside in the Motorola 5100 cable modem. | |
| | | | nokiatech
join:2000-10-18
Stuart, FL
·Comcast
| Re: Comcast "power boost" It has nothing to do with your browser or your computer. For powerboost they literally crank the speed up for the first few seconds of the download. It not compression, it's a faster link speed for that short period of time.
If you aren't getting your rated line speed make sure you've done the "tweaks" on this site. If you're on XP they can make a huge difference. On vista there really isn't much to tweak. If you still have issues check out the comcast forum here. There is also an official comcast forum here where actual comcast techs can help you. | |
| | | | | bmclee
Premium
join:2006-02-26
Jacksonville, FL
·Comcast
| Re: Comcast "power boost" I appreciate your help. Actually, we have both an XP machine and a VISTA laptop -- results are roughly similar with both computers. What leads me to believe it's more a "Comcast" problem than a hardware problem is the variation with time of day and day of the week.
I have virtually no confidence in Comcast as a corporation. They've adopted the 'cheesy' model that was the hallmark of the first "community antenna" projects back in the 1960's.....the notion that they're a legitimate communications company with the kind of strength and dependability of a "public utility" is largely a myth.
The AT&T of today is merely a shell of it's former self. However, buried within their corporate history - and probably their culture - is a sense of urgency as regards reliability and performance.
Soon as I get the chance, Comcast gets fired and AT&T gets hired.
And, in fact, I just might switch to Clearwire in the interim. My observations are that Clearwire's 1.5 mb service actually delivers service that isn't much different from Comcast (so-called) 6 mb service.
Mike | |
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