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Review by JTR See Profile

  • Location: Carbondale, Jackson, IL, USA
  • Cost: $116 per month
  • Install: about 3 days
  • Caps of 2000 gigabytes/month
Speedy, reasonably-priced, much better than DSL
Phone service is expensive, installation wasn't initially done correctly
An excellent alternative to DSL, as long as you're willing to deal with possible issues
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

I used Verizon DSL (later bought by Frontier) for about 5 years, then in May 2012, I finally got fed up enough and switched to Mediacom. The tech screwed up the install (left/attached a filter/trap on the line that was failing and for the wrong service area), which caused issues for around a month before another tech took a look at the line and fixed it.

I ordered the 20/2 tier (bundled with phone/voicemail), and usually max out at 28/2.8 on tests, so I'm highly satisfied with that. Even after speedboost wears off, my speeds are still usually over what's advertised. On the other hand, during high traffic times of day, my speeds will dip down below advertised.

The supplied modem was an Arris combo DOCSIS 2.0 voice/internet modem with a built-in battery, but that failed within a few weeks (probably because of the line issues). The replacement one is also an Arris DOCSIS 2.0 voice/internet modem, but without the built-in battery.

Overall, I'd say I'm very satisfied.

Orig review date: 8/29/12

Update: 9/10/12

With the students back in town, speeds have dropped by quite a bit. I'm seeing ~25Mbps with speedboost, and as low as 16Mbps during peak times. Still decent speeds though, and Cdale has a backend upgrade planned within the next few weeks for more capacity, so hopefully my speeds will return to their former glory.

Update: 3/7/13

Speeds are fine. Service is pretty good. I sometimes see short (~15 minute) outages around midnight, but I'm not sure if that's my fault or Mediacom's fault. 30Mbps still isn't available here. I've used 170-250GB per month without any issues. Like many other DSLReports members, I see terrible speeds to YouTube's primary cache servers in the evenings, but that seems to be Google's fault, and it can be (hackishly) fixed with a simple firewall rule. I can't think of anything to complain about, other than the lack of the all-digital upgrades that were promised ~7 months ago.

Update: 5/28/13

Speeds are still fine, no issues here. My bandwidth usage is still fluctuating, but I haven't passed 250GB (and it's still unlimited for now). The YouTube cache issues are pretty much nonexistant at this point, I guess YouTube fixed their issues. The price went up (phone by $10, internet by $10, taxes by ~$2), but I already knew that would happen, so again, no complaints (it's still ~$40/mo cheaper than Frontier for vastly superior service). I have another year at this price before the contract expires. The local infrastructure got updated recently, so I'm now getting 30+Mbps, which is great (I see as high as 35Mbps at times!).

Update: 12/17/16

Well, it's been quite a while since I last updated this review. In the meantime, we've upgraded to 50Mbps service (can't recall why), then later to 100Mbps service (due to us starting to consistently hit the 50Mbps tier's cap). I currently have 100Mbps internet service, phone service (which is surprisingly expensive!), the voicemail addon, and I rent my modem from Mediacom. I am on contract and paying $115/month, which will increase to approximately $120/month in a few months due to the current offer I'm on.

The service's stability has been excellent, better than it used to be. Overprovisioning is more than adequate - I'm supposed to get 100/10, yet DSLReports' speedtest yields 115/11, and Speedtest.net does even better at around 115/30! While not all sources are capable of supplying data at this high a rate, there are a number of sites and services that will max out my line, so it does continue to perform as expected during real world usage scenerios. I am satisfied with ping speeds. Bufferbloat isn't great if you max out the line, but that's to be expected with a maxed-out overprovisioned DOCSIS 3.0 setup and no artificial QOS limits on the router, so I don't consider it to be a negative. Oh yeah, there's also native IPv6, which I'm pretty happy about. Overall, I am very satisfied, but the cost of the phone service is a bit of a thorn in my side, so I can't say that it's perfect.

Update: 12/23/2016

After a modem reboot, I'm now getting 135/31-39 at Speedtest.net.

Update: 12/2/2018

In December 2017 we purchased a used DPC3216 16×4 DOCSIS 3.0 modem/eMTA to save some money by avoiding that annoying $7.50/month modem rental fee (which was set to increase to $10/month in early 2018, making purchasing a modem even more attractive). There have been no notable issues with the DPC3216 and this plan has worked out quite well.

In February 2018 I called in to rebundle our services again since the prior "customer loyalty offer" or whatever expired on February 1st. This went very smoothly. I inquired about the cost of upgrading to the 200/20/2TB tier due to our bandwidth usage being consistently high enough that a 1 TB cap was starting to feel quite inadequate, and ultimately we ended going with the 200/20/2TB tier as it was only slightly more expensive and definitely far cheaper than paying overage fees. I have been very satisfied with the 200/20 tier's performance — download speeds cap out at roughly around 255–270 Mbps while upload speeds have a very nice initial burst of speed before settling down to around 24–28 Mbps. Performance is pretty consistent and reliability is as good as ever. Haven't had any major/noteworthy issues with the service.

My only real complaint is about the bandwidth caps. A 2 TB monthly cap on this kind of connection is a bit of a joke. 1 TB was also a joke on the previous tier, as is 4 TB on the next and 6 TB on the top one. I don't mind having bandwidth caps as long as they seem sensible, but 2 TB is already starting to feel a bit cramped after less than a year, and I don't feel like these caps are sensible at all in today's world. I feel like Mediacom really needs to rethink the way they handle bandwidth caps, but unfortunately there isn't exactly much incentive to bother with that. Hopefully things will change in a few years with DOCSIS 3.1 FD...

member for 11.8 years, 597 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
updated 5.3 years ago


MediacomChad
Mediacom Social Media Relations Team
Premium Member
join:2010-01-20
Gulf Breeze, FL

MediacomChad

Premium Member

Service

I am glad the service is working well for you! Let me know if you have any questions or issues and I will be more than happy to address them for you.

Anonb6e72
@mchsi.com

Anonb6e72

Anon

Are you kidding?

I just moved into a Mediacom monopoly area two weeks ago-- I used to have Xfinity. Lord knows I miss it. Comcast is an awful company for many reasons, but the Xfinity system was much more stable. It had a better menu system/UI. The Mediacom system is CONSTANTLY timing out. Errors are thrown all the time. Internet disconnects constantly. Our bedroom box loses connection with the DVR all the time. Mediacom ON Demand is DREADFUL. There are almost no HD programs. Xfinity had a huge amount of HD programming. The Mediacom menu system is almost totally useless. Every movement through the UI is slow, laggy, or times out.

I called them the night I got service hooked up and asked them about the total lack of HD content for ON Demand programming (note: I have the platinum package with 'everything'). The answer I was given was that "This is the way it is. There are no plans to change this. You can always record programs in HD". So here I am with my nice 4k TV, and this utter waste of money known as Mediacom for my programming.

If I can figure out what legislators to contact I'm going to push to get Comcast/Xfinity into this area. It is a crime that I'm forced to use this service.
JTR
join:2012-05-19
Westmont, IL
MikroTik CCR2004-1G-12S-2XS
Asus RT-AC86
Asus RT-AC68

JTR

Member

Re: Are you kidding?

Can't comment on anything related to their TV service. MediacomChad (he posted the comment right above yours) is REALLY great about helping with support issues, why don't you message him if you can't get useful help over the phone? Since you're loosing connection so frequently, I'd try to get a tech to come out there ASAP to diagnose the problem. Early in my review I mention that I had issues for a little while after installation that ended up being caused by something as simple as a trap/filter left/installed on the line by the initial tech - once I got another tech sent out to help diagnose/fix the issue, he figured it out pretty much right away and fixed the problem for good. Your issues may not be that simple to resolve, but the first step is to contact support and see if they'll send out a tech.

Here's some possible causes for your issues:
* Overloaded node
* Faulty coax run(s)
* RF interference
* Trap/filter issue
* Problematic coax splitter(s) or other in-line devices that degrade signal

Anon2f810
@mchsi.com

Anon2f810

Anon

Re: Are you kidding?

So per Mediacom Tech Support, access to play youtube videos from mobile devices has been broken for nine days. I called Tech Support, and the lady I talked to had absolutely NOTHING to say about it. She admitted the problem exists, but had no status updates. No web page where I can track the progress on the issue. Nothing. So for nine days Mediacom techs have been unable to fix this issue. How in the world should something like this take nine days to fix?

The issue is that Mediacom is incompetent.
JTR
join:2012-05-19
Westmont, IL
MikroTik CCR2004-1G-12S-2XS
Asus RT-AC86
Asus RT-AC68

JTR

Member

Re: Are you kidding?

Huh, I noticed the same issue but as I don't usually use YouTube on mobile devices I chalked it up to a transient non-network-related glitch and moved on. I guess it may be from Mediacom's network after all. YouTube has a bit of a history of having really weird issues for bizarre reasons that don't follow any logical patterns, so I'm still a bit doubtful that it's actually Mediacom that's at fault here, but it's possible that they are. I'd have to go try mobile YT on my network vs. via my VPN to really tell if it's truly their network that's causing the issue, and I don't really care enough to test that.

Are you having any other issues? Internet still disconnecting, or did that at least get fixed?

MediacomChad
Mediacom Social Media Relations Team
Premium Member
join:2010-01-20
Gulf Breeze, FL

MediacomChad to Anon2f810

Premium Member

to Anon2f810
Hello, I'm very sorry that I missed this- it looks like this was attached to an older review. I can confirm an issue with YouTube that has since been resolved. Our Network Operations team coordinated with Google to identify a specific issue on their end that has since been resolved. All YouTube services should be working as intended, but if you have any continued trouble, please don't hesitate to create an account here on DSLR and IM me directly. Thanks!