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Review by paullaw 
member for 12.1 years, 11 visits, last login: 12 years ago
lodged 12.1 years ago
 Hamden,New Haven,CT
 $50 per month about 3 days "It is available and unlike DSL did not have to wait three weeks for installation" "Poor user support materials, lack of TAC web site, upstream capping." "Fast downloads, no contract and so far .. fairly reliable."
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I live in a town where only one phone company provides telephone service ( SNET ). SNET has given me a hundred reasons why I do not qualify for DSL and made it clear that I would be looking at DSL service maybe in mid 2002 or 2003. This despite the fact that my neighbor has DSL and is actually farther away from the cage than I am.
When I got a second phone line installed, the tech told me that my DSL issues where based on a new policy and SNET's DSL partner. I was told that the DSL installation folks who drive SNET vehicles and wear SNET t-shirts are actually not formally part of the SNET group and are sub contracted out. He was convinced that my denial of service was based on a $300 dollar maintenance fee to clean up some line taps which SNET did not want to pay for. Apparently SNET would do this and share the cost with the subscriber in the past, however they are standing very firm on not doing this anymore.
As for cable, I thought this option was dead since I was told that the neighborhood was not ready for @home when I called our only cable provider Comcast. About a week and half ago however, I received a flyer for a free month of service, called on Sunday and by Wednesday was hooked up.
I had a friend wait around for Comcast and when I got home, a new cable run was installed with a SB3100 modem. Besides an invoice and modem box they left no support information including help line, tac site, news or mail numbers. I have since found all of this information ( no thanks to a really bad web site ) but pity a novice user.
So far so good with @home and Comcast. My speed tests have been at least three times I would have received with DSL ( if I could have even got DSL ) however the upstream capping at 128 is very lame. Overall, I'm very pleased and I'm wondering when they will offer local telephone service too 
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Review by Diablo021
member for 12.1 years, 39 visits, last login: 11.9 years ago
lodged 12.1 years ago
- Verona,Essex,NJ
- $39 per month
- about 5 days
- "Price, speed, reliability, and the list goes on...."
- "upload...mail... not that much yet...."
- "it's worth the money if you're into speed... download speed that is"
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Comcast has presented itself as a reputable contender in broadband field and technology. Once i placed an order it was followed up and i was able to get it installed. The installation was smooth, no real difficulties or problems. The speed that i had was miniscule compared to what had been advertised. But that was without the tweak in windows with changing the registry. But after that has been done.. consistent speed... always up as far as i can tell or when i'm on. Can't really complain... i've got the speed and the broadband access that i wanted. Compared to dsl... i wouldn't think it would be worth getting with all the headaches that dsl would present in my area. So comcast so far is great and i hope it will continue. To those who can get cable... GET IT!!!!!!
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Review by Zippy The Squirl
member for 12.1 years, 1 visits, last login: 12.1 years ago
lodged 12.1 years ago
- Folsom,Sacramento,CA
- $35 per month
- "Great get upto 400kB/s"
- "modem wouldnt sync (found out it was because they had the wrong MAC"
- "well worth it"
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Well I had got DSL long ago and was happy this that, but then i moved (not even a half mile away) to a house. Well the house is about 11 years old and speeds went from 150kB solid at my old place to 40kB max and drop connection at least 3 to 4 times a day. Most of the time it wouldnt even connect.
Now for the cable have in the mail after 3 days, had a problem cus the MAC was wrong for the modem, but after that it took 5 mins and off it went. Have a dynamic ip setup static on router had it close to a month now.
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Review by EnigmaPrime
member for 12.1 years, 17 visits, last login: 9.8 years ago
lodged 12.1 years ago
- Manassas,Prince William,VA
- $40 per month
- about 7 days
- "Worked on the first try, Quick Start Package Great and Complete"
- "Pre Sales are Clueless"
- "Good So Far"
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Speeds been great peaked at about 2mb d/l, also peaked at 128kps u/l cap. Pre Sales support was clueless, I called back to enquire about when my quick start package was going to be delivered, and Comcast couldn't find me in the system. Also on activation Comcast provisioning computers kept crashing, it tooked about 5 sec after they got them up and running, but it took half an hour to get everything up and running.
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 Review by linflas
member for 13.7 years, 750 visits, last login: 200 days ago
lodged 12.1 years ago
- Manassas,Prince William,VA
- $42 per month
- about 14 days
- "Very fast downloads"
- "Poor communication between local and national offices"
- "Would still prefer sDSL but is not available"
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I have some prior experience in trying to obtain Comcast @Home service. It pertains to my review so I will briefly describe it first. In October 1999 I began inquired of my local (then Jones Communications) cable company as to cable modem availability. They said they were anticipating December-January 1999 for my neighborhood. In January 2000 I called the local office again (now Comcast) and they referred me to the @Home 1-800 number. When I called them they told me cable modem service was available to my neighborhood and scheduled an install 2 days later. The guy came and hooked up the modem and left with it not synched up telling me to call customer service if it was not up in an hour. After 2 weeks of back and forth with the support line and 1 visit by a local tech it was determined that my neighborhood was not serviceable but check back in February it may be up by then.
In late February 2000 I went through pretty much the same experience as the above. At that point I obtained the node number from Comcast tech support rather than continue to force truck rolls to determine serviceability. In August 2000 I obtained iDSL from Speakeasy and quit checking with Comcast about cable modem service. As some may know Speakeasy has had some saturation issues on their NYC pop so on March 9, 2001 I called Comcast to inquire about the status of service to my neighborhood. I was told it was now available. I then reminded them of the above install attempts and asked them to double check to be sure. They did so and assured me that service was now available to me.
I then went to Circuit City on my way home from work and purchased a cable modem and self install kit. I brought it home, hooked it up and called Comcast for what I was told would be a 4 hour process to initialize my service. After an entire week of repeatedly calling the tech support to find out when my settings would be available I sent an email to the support folks on March 17 detailing what I had done vs what I was told when I spoke to the sales folks. I received an email back telling me that my node was not serviceable along with the standard boiler plate apologies.
At this point I contacted my local county government offices to find out who was the oversight authority for our franchise. I then received a call from the person in charge of this who took all the details of my experiences with Comcast. He then talked to the local operator who said that yes the node was serviceable and to try again and provided me some local contact numbers. At this point things moved quickly and I was online by March 23. It did require a visit by a tech to install a piece of electronics in the pedestal outside my house to allow for the up side communications. As I suspected the main issue was lack of communication between the national @Home people with the local Comcast franchise. Unfortunately the local franchise chooses to refer all calls about cable modem to the national number no matter what the issue. It was only when political pressure was applied that they would break this protocol.
Since I have been online the speeds have been spectacular in comparison to what I am used to with iDSL. I have experienced a few brief outages but it has been mostly smooth sailing since it has been online. @Home usenet news servers leave much to be desired. The retention on binary groups seems to be hours, not days so it is useless for that in my opinion. If my cable modem continues to function as well as it has been I will not be renewing my iDSL connection when the contract is up in August. If prior to that time Verizon enables my RSU for full DLS capability then I will most likely stay with Speakeasy and choose an sDSL package since Speakeasy allows server and provides static IPs.
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Review by Kurisu0
member for 12.2 years, 483 visits, last login: 9.9 years ago
lodged 12.1 years ago
- Chester,Chesterfield,VA
- $40 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 14 days
- "Fast order-to-installation, good download."
- "Horrible upload."
- "Good if there aren't any other providers around."
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We ordered @Home right after Christmas, and I was quite surprised at the turnaround, especially since Comcast had to have been bogged down with orders at the time. The installer came out within the 3-hour window(though he did get lost trying to find my house, lol). He did his work in about 45 minutes, and left me to play with my new service.
The download speeds were amazing to me after just coming off 56k, though i had a very poor modem and usually went closer to 33.6 speeds. Then I enter into what I spend most of my time doing online: games.
My pings were awful the first couple of weeks, in the 250-300 range almost the whole time, which pretty much kills your chances of playing well in the online world. The speed tests were giving me ratings of around 1750/75. It's ridiculous that I can't even get half my cap almost all the time, but my pings to HL: Counter-Strike servers have gotten into the mid-100's, so that problem seems to have cleared up.
Once again, right at the beginning, Comcast had a couple of outages for up to 12 hours at a time, which is really annoying. I'm set up for DHCP, but my IP hasn't changed in the 4 months since i've had the service.
Overall, considering some people's experiences with Comcast@Home, i'm happy, but i really wish i could at least get my entire upstream bandwidth 
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Review by heat10
member for 12.6 years, 39 visits, last login: 11.1 years ago
updated 12.1 years ago
- Santa Ana,Orange,CA
- $49 per month
- about 2 days
- "48 hours-order ,to install date. No contract, 30 day money back guarantee"
- "Too soon to tell"
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This is a review in progress. My DSL provider was great, but went belly-up.(Imagine
that!) Signed up for DSL with MSN, but they cancelled before install (Northpoint was their provider). So thought I would try cable. Comcast (@Home) website said not available to my zip code yet, as did their automated phone line, however I wanted to talk to a live person to find out when it would be available & lo and behold........I can get it. They need to update their automated services or lose potential customers. Anyway, 3-mo.promo is $19.95mo + $7.00 mo. modem rental, then $49.95 mo. (including rental) So, tech is supposed to be out in 2 days,
so we'll see and I'll be back to update this review. Mark
OK, two days later, tech came out & I was up & running in less than an hour, now for a speed test.........WOW 5088 down/1123 up! at 2:00pm, about 100 times faster than dial-up. OK tested at 9:00 pm dropped to 344 down/ 184 up hope this fluctuation is not the norm. update in a few days!
OK, I guess wide flucuations in speed is the norm. On 4-5-01 at 12:25 I got a speed test of 504kbps down/ 93 kbps up from megapath, 2 minutes later I got 681/472 from Linkline. 10 min. after that Megapath tested my speed at 1091/235. But speed still is between 10 to 1,000 times faster than dial up. And though it's still early--zero connection problems! One other thing, I pay Comcast, but the tech who installed everything works for Adelphia, are these not competing cable companies?
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Review by gary21032
member for 12.1 years, 5 visits, last login: 12.1 years ago
lodged 12.1 years ago
- Crownsville,Anne Arundel,MD
- $26 per month
- (3 month contract)
- about 6 days
- "self-install without any real problem"
- "none yet"
- "smooth going"
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For months, COMCAST@home has been "coming soon" in my neighborhood.
(I'm too far from the CO for any decent DSL. Covad wouldn't try and
Northpoint would only try for 144K -- not really worth it.)
I returned from vacation to find a post card advertising COMCAST as ready in my area (near Annapolis MD). I phoned to check
and signed up in just a couple of minutes. UPS delivered the self-install kit in
about 5 days. (A splitter, cables, modem, USB interface and CDs.)
Phoned in the MAC address, Plugged
it in, and ran through the install (IE 5.5 included) without notable problems.
I had one nuisance where pop-ups from the old "Dial-Up Networking" kept
appearing. I didn't know offhand where to kill them, so I called tech support:
Tier 1 answered in about 3 rings(!). Tier 1 didn't know the answer and didn't
waste any of my time, but immediately passed me on to Tier 2. After 3 or 4
minutes a nice lady picked up and immediately guided me to the spot to fix
it and I was off and running. (good on 'ya, @Home)
DSL Reports speed tests show 799K dn/118K up without tweaking, and the tools
don't indicate that any tweaking is called for. Cost is $19.95
special for 3 months (plus $7 modem rental), then it jumps to $32.95. Since I'll
be able to drop my 2nd phone line, the cost is not too bad.
I'll probably be looking to buy a modem and dodge the $7 rental.
So far, so good.
We'll see what happens as more subscribers get on board.
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 Review by Loonatic
member for 12.2 years, 1190 visits, last login: 6.6 years ago
lodged 12.1 years ago
- Indianapolis,Marion,IN
- $45 per month
- about 10 days
- "Good download speeds"
- "Upload capped at 128k"
- "It is good but could be better"
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I am basically happy with Comcast@home, however it could be better. I wish they would raise the cap on the upload to at least 1000mbs instead of the current 128k. Otherwise is up probably 96% of the time and mostly trouble-free. I can usually tell when it is time for them to increase their capacity, because the service will be slow for up to two weeks at a time.
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Review by DLoeffler
member for 12.4 years, 3 visits, last login: 12.2 years ago
lodged 12.2 years ago
- Sacramento,Sacramento,CA
- $49 per month
- about 7 days
- "stable, fast, no term contract"
- "kinda expensive"
- "works great"
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I haven't had any problems with Comcast (yet). I signed up in Jan. 2001 and it's already the middle of March and I haven't used their "technical support" once. Although, these days people are throwing around the term "technical support" like it actually means what it says. I was previously with Innercite DSL and although it was cheaper, they were never reliable. Their "Technical Support" was more of a counselor than anything else. Anyways, I pay a little more but it's worth it because it's fast(in my area, at least) and reliable. Speed is 2500 down and 100 up. Install was quick and easy. No contract so I can cancel anytime.
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