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Review by g0nepostal See Profile

  • Location: Burlingame, San Mateo, CA, USA
  • Cost: $60 per month (24 month contract)
  • Install: about 4 days
Phemonenal speed, reliable service
Service is now capped, screw that noise. I'm bailing!
Happy with the service, far more than I was with U-Verse
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)

11/26/2017 UPDATE:

Took a while, but I finally ditched Comcast for Wave Broadband two months ago. Wave had a special on its 1Gbps down / 10 Mbps up service at $69.99/month for the first year, $99.99/month thereafter, unbundled, with NO MONTHLY USAGE CAPS. I jumped at the change to sign up, had the service changed, and left Comcast.

To his credit, the Comcast employee who took my cancellation notice was quite nice, not like the ones in the infamous recorded cancellation calls a while back. He did ask me why I was leaving Comcast, so I made sure to tell him that I would now getting up to 20x the speed with no usage caps, so it was no contest at all.

So long Comcast, you weren't that bad but your caps royally suck. Wave Broadband has them too, but not at the Gigabit service tier. Considering the price difference was nominal, it really was no contest to leave.

SEE YA!

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10/07/2016 UPDATE:

My 2 years with Comcast are now up, and not a moment too soon. I just received that ever-so-nice sounding e-mail from Comcast advising me that they'll now be enforcing a 1TB monthly data cap here in the Peninsula. This e-mail also notes that my average use for the last 3 months has been around 249GB, but that'll only go up once 4K streaming becomes more ubiquitous and once I ditch Dish for Playstation Vue. So it's time to go.

I am now looking at DSL Extreme, whom I previously had for DSL in Concord and was OK with except for a rather nasty billing dispute I had with them at the end of my contract. DSLX has uncapped service, works over the ATT U-Verse footprint, and has 50% greater speed for only $3 more a month than what I've been paying Comcast. I previously had U-Verse, so I know DSLX should work. There is also no way I'm going to switch from one capped provider to another. Plus I don't want any bundles.

I also don't want to give Comcast any more of my money, which (even if indirectly) probably goes to pay the salaries of overpriced, crappy Hollywood actors and crappy NBC shows.

So long, Comcast! I'll be canceling you as soon as I can!

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12/15/2014 UPDATE: After logging into my account through Comcast's customer service website, I found out that Comcast's monthly cap is 250GB, but apparently it is currently NOT being enforced. YMMV. Also, as noted, you CAN call Comcast tech support to request that your cable modem be placed in Bridge mode, but from what I've read this takes a bit of persistence, not to mention patience. I'd rather stick to using a DMZ.

4.5/5. I'm still happy with the service, 2 months in.

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Cut the cord from ATT U-Verse to go with Comcast for HSI and Dish for TV. Signed up for 50 down / 5 up HSI service for $39.99 a month for 12 months, with no contract (regular rate is $69/month). Ordered online and the technician came to install the service 4 days later.

Since our house already had a prior Comcast cable drop, all the tech had to do was run new coax from the old drop connection to our den where the cable modem was going to be set up. I had already purchased my own modem, so all that was required was for him to activate the modem and make sure that we had good signal. Once that was done the install was complete and we were online.

Been online now for about 2 months and haven't had a single service outage. Unfortunately Comcast does not appear to allow cable modems to work in bridge mode, so to get around this I set up a DMZ and assigned our edge router to it. Also, apparently Comcast wants to turn all of the WiFI capable modems on its network to free hotspots for its customers (there is a lot of information on this here on DSLR), but this apparently will only apply to rented modems, not customer-owned equipment. Hence I would recommend buying your own modem and saving yourself both having to share the connection with strangers and having to pay Comcast a modem rental fee (I bought a refurbished Motorola SBG6580 on Amazon for $90. Much better than leasing.).

Other than the above, Comcast HSI has been excellent. I am happy with the service and the price is not bad at all. So far I haven't hit any sort of download cap, even with all of the video streaming my wife and I do; I am presuming that the monthly invisible DL cap is somewhere around 250-300GB, which is actually not bad.

I haven't had to use tech support yet (it helps that I know what I am doing), so I can't really rate it. That said, since the install coordination was excellent and since the tech knew what he was doing while setting up the connection I am going to rate tech support a 5.

Comcast HSI gets a 4.5/5 in my book. The 0.5 point deduction is due to the famed invisible DL cap and for forcing users to run a DMZed edge router to get around not being able to bridge the connection. Otherwise, I'm quite happy.

gp

member for 23 years, 2262 visits, last login: 6.3 years ago
updated 6.3 years ago


Jim721
join:2014-07-31
Belleville, MI

Jim721

Member

Bridge mode is allowed.

Comcast does allow customers to place there gateways in bridge mode. Some can be done from the user interface others require a call or chat to a comcast rep and they can place it in bridge mode from there end.

g0nepostal
I Am The One Her Mom Warned Her About
join:2001-03-23
Burlingame, CA
ARRIS SB6141
Netgear R7000
Asus RT-N16

g0nepostal

Member

Re: Bridge mode is allowed.

So I've read, but you apparently have to go through the gauntlet of Tier I and Tier II tech support to reach someone who can send the command down the wire to your modem to enable bridge mode, if you can't turn bridge mode on yourself using the modem's configuration pages. No thanks. DMZing the edge router is much easier.