 Review by jomama 
UPDATED: 146 days ago
member for 7 years, 793 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Iowa City,Johnson,IA
 $62 per month
 "additional nodes have alleviated a lot of jammed up router blades at the headend"
 "no discount for owning modem, leased data only modems not state of the art"
 "High employee turnover plus apathetic management means mediocre service."
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(ratings match consensus)
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Been online with Iowa City's cable modem service since it's inception. (1999)
TCI launched service shortly before selling out to AT&T.
Then along comes Mediacom. The nicest thing I can say about this company is that they did a good job of choosing which markets to get into based on lack of competition. Qwest isn't posing a formidle challenge with their slow expansion of DSL service area and aren't winning any customer service awards either so unless you are fortunate enough to live in a community with a robust telecommunications co-op, Mediacom is probably your only choice. If you aren't technically savvy enough to fully understand how your computer is connected to the internet and have to depend on Mediacom's customer service for info, good luck. If the long phone hold time doesn't burn you up, the heavy handed "upgrades" to things like DNS servers that don't go as planned will.
Yes the service is more consistent than the @Home days, although I suspect I miss an outage or two simpIy because I don't live online and don't use Mediacom for video service anymore due to nonstop price hikes, mediocre picture quality, channel selection and lack of a complete HDTV package (including the local affilitates) (which come in great and FREE with a properly installed antenna and HD tuner)UPDATE May 2007 Hey you get all the local HD channels now only a year or more after they were on the air and after the KGAN debacle that I believe all you video subscribers are now paying for congratulations.
New Motorola modem finally got me the speeds I was paying for. Only way I found that out is by reading this board. Don't count on Mediacom giving you any kind of heads up that changes made by them by render your equipment obsolete.
Biggest beef is that if you don't order video service with your data service you pay an extra $10 premium. Most companies work it the other way around, discounting prices as you order more services, not adding on to the base price if you order less. I'll be curious to see what happens as telephony service is launched, putting more traffic on the return path and sapping what little competent brain power Mediacom employs from the data side of the business. Wonder if they will use the customer as their status monitoring device for telephone the way they do for cable and data? Might be a bit difficult to call in and report an outage on that dead cable line Mediacom doesn't see fit to monitor with any of the SNMP interfaces available on the equipment in it's headends or in-field power supplies. There are plenty of power supplies in Iowa City and the surrounding counties with no battery backup, so take your own chances with phone service.
2007 update: phone service has been up for a while now and I still maintain that you are taking your own chances with cable telephoney. My neighbors gambling on the big signup discount are not without their dropped calls, and complete lack of service after any power outage longer than 15 minutes. Issues I have never had with Qwest.
Battery backups are only as good as the scheduled maintenance they recieve and when you can't get anybody to stay on staff for more than a year to get any type of competence preventative maintenance is the first thing to let slide.
In conclusion, Mediacom will do the absolute least to give you the bare minimum, in my biased opinion.
Up UP date July 2009: still no competition outside of the city limits so Mediacom continues to get my money for internet access. Speeds have been consistent but suffer during peak times like right after school from 5-8pm. from what I see from the local office any techs worth a hoot run out of that place as soon as a better offer comes along so be prepared to be at the whims of the contractor of the month. Mediacom is happy to be in markets where there is little competition and won't be changing their modus operendi as long as Rocco and his seester run the show.
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