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Review by rahulruna 
UPDATED: 3.1 years ago
member for 5.1 years, 180 visits, last login: 201 days ago
 Rancho Cordova,Sacramento,CA
 $20 per month
 about 10 days
 "Advertised high speed"
 "Awful reliability, BAD upload speed which may affect QOS in ur ip phone"
 "Still unsure whether I should go back to sbc or wait"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
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Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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I had sbc yahoo for 1.5 years and a real happy camper. But I always hated SBC phone service because of their price and tendency to upsell their product. I jumped into VOIP with Sunrocket and really happy with them now. So decided to switch to COMCAST for hsi. First of all they charged me for shipping and handling of "self install pack" (which essentially has some co-ax cables and a splitter) that I purchased from Circuit City along with my modem! Then they forgot to activate the second line in my place which I ordered. That caused a delay of one more week. I didn't care much as I had my old SBC active that point.
Finally when everything were fixed, I was able to install it and get it working. However I am getting around 1.2mbps down and 300k up which is worse than my SBC. Even worse, the speed is just not reliable at all. Sometimes (rarely) I get around 4/384 and half hour later, it drops to 1/250 ... and the sometimes to 500k/100k ... Obviously I spoke number of times with their technical dept. Apparantly only thing they can do from there is ping your modem which is not a real test for line condition. Then they typically try to sell the idea of "computer problem" to you. After some interesting exchanges they sent a rep to my place ... who said that I am in an area which is "over populated" with modems (more than 400 in number). And they are suppose to be fixing this in one week or so. I am kinda sceptical about this analysis ... and will wait for few weeks to see this get resolved ! But funny thing is ... their telephone support has no idea or information about such issues ... and generally they have very little knowledge about anything. You can feel that they are reading from some existing scripts ...
Comcast looks like totally messed up company.
Update: 6/3/05
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Nothing really changed except 2 tech visit and one scheduled for next week. Techs keep on saying that I am in an overpopulated node ... and still keep on saying that it will get better. They gave me credit for the month. But it seems now that I won't be able to even use VOIP with COMCAST ...
With new SBC rates ... I am tempted to go back to SBC. But I shall give it with another shot with LinkSys WRT54G ... utilizing its QOS. If that works, I shall hang on with Comcast for few more months and waiting for dry dsl from sbc ... if not, I am going back to DSL.
Update: 6/13/05
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Comcast tech support should be awarded for their non-performance. After multiple tries ... nothing worked with them. So now I am scheduled to move back to SBC on next Thursday and then call them (COMCAST) to cancel my account. I got SBC Pro package for $25 ... for an year ... which is okay for me. Also I hope I shall get to use VOIP with that now.
Lesons learned:
1. Cable is just not ready for VOIP because of its inherent Latency and low upload speed. Even with best moments with COMCAST (4 down and 356 up) QOS was around 55% ... which I was getting a stable 85-90% QOS over DSL with 2.4 down and 400+ up. So I shall wait for Dry DSL and dump comcast now.
2. COMCAST techs just have no idea what's going on. Only thing they check is Ping Test ... which really doesn't show much. When I showed them the trace and where it was taking time (one of their router) ... the rep had no idea what I was talking about.
3. I would now look for SBC's IPTV move and rather go towards Media Center approach than depending on COMCAST on everything. I still have a good deal with COMCAST cable TV (thru Dish Buy Back) ... will continue it for a while until something better shows up.
4. Only good thing about COMCAST is ... no contract 
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