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 Review by lonnyb 
UPDATED: 228 days ago
member for 5.8 years, 2100 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Elizabethtown,Hardin,KY
 $45 per month
 "this is a fast, reliable connection"
 "I really can't think of bad points."
 "It is good"
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(ratings match consensus)
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Update 15Jun08
Smooth sailing. The connection is not in the 12 mbs as it was occasionally when the speedboost first started, but it is reliable. If I had to start with any ISP offered in this area, I would still choose Comcast.
Update 29Jun07
Comcast has speed boost in my area. What this means is speeds up to 15 megabytes for down load. It has tweaked up load to be almost always above 1 megabyte. I've noticed that speed boost doesn't always work, this could be due to an excessive number of simultaneous ongoing boosts.
Update 27nO6
Reliable connection. Bandwidth has improved. I still rate them "OK."
I have switched isp's from InsightBB to Comcast. It took forever to set up service and the first telephonic contact seemed to totally drop my account. Setting up was a breeze, though; even my home network was no problem. Comcast didn't force me to load some mysterious program on my computers. I just hooked up my router to their modem and all computers that I have started so far have worked just fine.
I have only had this connection for a few days  I'll try to update this as needed.
It is now 21Apr06. The tested bandwidth has gone WAY down. I think they have over sold this node. My neighbors have hooked up to Comcast and uncovered part of my line. Both their line and part of my line have been unburied for months. Comcast must not have a good relationship with the line diggers. Other than these problems, things have been pretty good for me and my household.
It is now 24Apr09. No changes. I would rate their service as good. I have a rather odd by-the-way for you: my next door neighbor was have router problems and I was helping her and her family find a resolution. I did everything I could think of to help to no avail. I finally called Comcast to discover that my neighbor had chosen a service so low that Comcast blocks the use of any router. That seems strange to me. It seems that should be the prerogative of the customer - to use a router or not. If the bandwidth prevents effective use of a router, so-be-it; let the customer figure that out by performance issues.
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 Review by Phoenix22
UPDATED: 247 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 1511 visits, last login: 83 days ago
Grandville,Kent,MI
$55 per month
"Rock Solid 5.5x+ faster than any dsl, that I'm familiar with. Measured speed at 3 sites of 20+mg.../3mg"
"none ever"
"It is the only game in town, period! Comcastic! Really 4/04/09"
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There is a choice of speeds......2. It costs $45.95/55.95 per month and has a bandwidth cap of 6.4/8.3mg-384/768kb. The initial order and install was fast and instantaneous. The upgrade to open the pipes to 8.4/768 was over the phone and also instantaneous. Performance is Rock Solid! I lease their modem, which is replaced free of charge for power surges or technology changes. The IP is actually static, however it accesses it dynamically.
Update the speed..........20mg....dn...and 3mg....up.....that's blazing......oh......and the IP Telephone thingie..........never fails...............they are still the only game in town and the price has not changed.......i'm gettin' biased......but hey........always connected....
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 Review by wafen
UPDATED: 254 days ago
member for 8.8 years, 5158 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Saint Paul,Ramsey,MN
$42 per month (month by month)
 about 14 days
"It has been fairly reliable and fast."
"They have had router troubles in my area for a while."
"Good service at a decent price."
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Update
Time to say goodbye to AT&T and hello Comcast.
I know it is going to sound crazy, but after what has been happening in the last week I am going to miss you.
Advertised speed is 1.5mb/300kbps for $49.95 or $39.95 if you have ATT Broadband cable or telephone service.
I have been getting 1.1mb or above download and 270kbps or above upload speeds.
Ordering and installation went way better then when I had DSL installed.
They installed a Toshiba USB modem.
I have only had the service for a few days, but I am very pleased with the service so far.
Update
3/29/09
Consistently reliable and above average speeds.
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 Review by mistakenID
UPDATED: 255 days ago
member for 9 years, 2500 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,UT
$52 per month
"reliable with consistant speeds"
"price"
"great for me, would be very hard to go back to dialup"
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I can't comment on the days from order to success. A rep came by one day and talked to my wife, had her sign papers. She stated that she just wanted information for me because she knew I was interested in changing from dsl to cable. The rep told her ATT would contact us.
About a month later at 8am an installer shows up. I got the information I wanted at that time and told him to go ahead with the install. An hour later another installer shows up to install telephone service. I said HUH! Well long as your here tell me about the service. Go ahead and install that also.
The installers were great. Put in a new drop to the house and had internet up and running in short order. The phones are another story, while they work fine...billing was/is hilarious. I couldn't get a bill for months because I was told I have an account but it wasn't active, this is while I'm talking to ATT on their own service.
I was never down except for during the changeover from @home, service was a little sketchy for a few weeks but has been very good since. I'd rather have my old d/l speeds back but ATT is 3 times faster at the 1500 cap than my dsl and 15 bucks less per month. Uploads are half...i.e with dsl I had 256.
I run a lan through a linksys router, 4 systems ranging from a 200 pentium pro with linux to 866 pent3, Win98 SE and XP, have no problems.
I was supplied with a Toshiba modem which I used for a couple of months and then bought a Linksys. The changeover was painless and easy. Billing was corrected when I walked the modem in for return.
I've never used tech support so no comment on that either.
All in all I'm satisfied but if vpn is going to be an issue later I will have to go back to dsl. My wife needs it for work.
Update
The last 4-5 months have not been the reliable fast connection I had for the first year. Pings to the gateway are all over the place and have been up to 450ms, nothing like the 10ms I had for a year.
No problems staying connected, at least thats been reliable.
I'm not happy with the $7 a month increase for modem owners and it looks as if there may be another $10 increase with the att/comcast merger for NOT having basic cable. A $17 increase in 6 months is rediculous. I spend to buy a modem so they increase the bill. Then because I dont want/need cable I get penilized another $10.
I'ts criminal to jump from $35 a month to $54.95 and top it off with talk of data caps, no vpn and crap news.
If isp's implement this I will vote my opinion with my wallet and put the money towards longer vacations I lived without internet for a long time and I can do it again with no trouble.
Here we are a few years later...I've had to call tech support once. Call was answered quickly and questions answered. There have been a few outages that don't last long, usually early in the morning.
Speeds and connection are consistant, reliable and pings are generally under 100ms. I don't use the Comcast dns servers on my system but on the wife's system it seems like they work pretty well.
I did drop the telephone service and put $20 month toward a higher tier on our cell phones over 2 years ago. That was a good decision on our part. We never use all the minutes, no more soliciter calls and since all family members are with Verizon also, all our calls to each other are free. The only thing I miss is the ability to use my fax quickly.
Bottom line is Comcast has done a very good job for the past couple of years. The newest upgrade while not implimented yet will finally get me back to the upload and download speeds I used to have, although at $15 more a month. I am interested in the Comcast VoIP offering but I will not pay the premium price they are asking.
March 2006
Still with Comcast. Service continues to be reliable. I have had very few issues, no calls to support the past year. Speeds have increased again and are stable. I do get the slower tier because I still don't have cable tv. I will most likely move to Utopia when it is available but only because of the price. I have been fortunate to have a very good Comcast connection.
October 2007
Comcast HSI is still reliable and stable. Currently I have the 8/768 speeds due to signing up for a TV package 15 months ago. Reliability is the same, speeds are not as fast as advertised.
The initial TV/HSI package was around $82 for a year. It's now $126. The promo price is about what I feel the package is worth. I will likely be dropping the TV part and going back to Dish. I've had many more glitches with Comcast TV in a year than I had in 10 years with Dish. Changing will of course drop my internet speed but that is fine. For my needs, the slower speed is not a problem.
If Comcast will drop the TV price, I will stick with them but over $70 for the TV package with NO premium channels is just too much. The only good thing is it's easy to hookup another tv in a different room and no extra fee for the basic channels.
I think the Salt Lake market and employees are doing a great job. Seems to have less problems than many areas. I've had very good experience's with every Comcast employee in Salt Lake that I have talked to.
March 2009
I still have the same setup except I dropped from the 8 meg internet to the 6 meg. I never did get close to 8 megs but then I don't need it either, 6 meg is fine for what I do. Internet is still very reliable. I don't remember that last time there was a problem. TV on the other hand is pretty crappy sometimes. At times watching a show is pauses, lines of pixels, short blackout then picture comes back. Annoying! SNR and power level has been slowly creeping up since the original install. Nothing serious, well within limits but is changing. Connections and box are under long eves and never hit by rain, snow, just some afternoon summertime sunshine as it's on the north side, center of the house.
Eutopia has not gotten to my address yet and likely won't before I move. Was supposed to be here last year. I decided to just stick it out as we are planning on moving when the house sells. I still think it's too much money for the service, especially the tv part. I don't mind the $45 for internet but my total bill is over $120 with nothing but some Encore channels in with the tv package. I don't know what "tier" my tv package is. Something Comcast gave me when I first signed up but it sure isn't worth it.
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Review by jbunniii
UPDATED: 269 days ago
member for 271 days, 10 visits, last login: 200 days ago
Mountain View,Santa Clara,CA
$60 per month
"Overall pretty reliable and good download rates"
"Inexplicable very very slow service during the week of 3/9/2009"
"Seems to be the fastest residential option for now in Mountain View"
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After a rocky period during the past few week or so, with painfully slow download speeds (100kbps and less at times), everything seems to be OK again; today I've been clocking downloads at 18-20Mbps.
Therefore I've updated this review and have for now shelved the idea of switching to DSL.
I'd like to say thanks to the user "ComcastSteve" who responded to my complaints about the service problem, at whose prompting I was contacted by a member of Comcast's "executive customer relations" to check whether everything is OK now. I'm not sure what these folks did to right the problem, but the service went from unusably slow to excellently fast overnight!
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Review by damox
UPDATED: 292 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 2276 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Olympia,Thurston,WA
$43 per month (month by month)
about 90 days
"Connection is fast and reliable."
"Bandwidth Limit"
"It's the most bang for the buck at this locale."
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UPDATED: 2/19/2009 In my last review I mentioned that the inconsistent "speeds" that I was experiencing when Comcast first increased the bandwidth in my area. That has completely disappeared. My download speed is very consistent, and my downloads are almost always around 1.5 megabytes per second, whether I do one or twenty. Apparently Comcast has adjusted whatever it was that needed adjusting, and I actually have good download speeds all the time! I do not know if it was their Traffic Management System over reacting or some other flaw in their system, but I am so glad that it's been fixed.
UPDATED: 12/31/2008 Usually I only update once a year, but since things have changed considerably in the past month I wanted to acknowledge the changes. In the past ten days or so, our bandwidth has doubled from 6000/786 to 12000/2000. I have noticed a difference in my downloads, though it is not consistent. I download a lot of large files, and sometimes I'll see speeds of 1.5 megabytes per second, while a few minutes later downloading a different file, my speed will drop to anywhere between 150 to 400 kilobytes per second. I'm assuming that is Comcast's new traffic management plan. In any case the new bandwidth is better than none at all. I also appreciate the fact that the price hasn't gone up. We are considering getting the High Speed Package that would give us speeds up to 30000 megabits down, but that will cost an additional $23 a month. I guess I'll have to wait and see if I still have my job at the end of May. Comcast has upgrade their mail center, making it possible to check both voice and e-mail on the site. It seems like they are making an effort to provide more services.
We haven't done too badly in terms of the bandwidth limit. We've been about 20 - 30 gigs below the limit every month so far, including this one. I understand that next month Comcast will make a bandwidth meter available on their site. That way I can check my numbers to make sure that they agree with Comcast's.
I'm going to say that overall, I am more pleased with Comcast than I was previously.
UPDATED: 11/16/2008 We've been with Comcast for about 5 years now since they took over the old ATTBI. In the past several months I have grown somewhat dissatisfied with Comcast. We really haven't had many connection issues, only one in the past 8 months that I can think of. Comcast is in the process of instituting the new bandwidth limit and though we are usually below the threshold, I have to keep a constant watch so we don't go over. I hear of the great bandwidth or speed that people elsewhere in the country are experiencing, but since we're out here in the Pacific Northwest, we're not going to see a significant "speed" increases anytime soon. As it was with the previous upgrades, we will be one of the last areas to see Comcast's higher bandwidth simply because there really isn't much in the way of competition out here. Apparently Qwest is rolling out higher bandwidth, but not in this area. In any case, we'll on getting what we can until something better comes along. Things could certainly be worse.
UPDATED: 3/22/2008 The Comcast experience is just about the same. Nothing has really changed in the past year. I yearn for greater bandwidth, as my son uses quite a bit with his activities. Some times those download numbers dip pretty low. I may look into jumping up to 8 megabit down for $10 more, but from what some others have said, they didn't notice a difference between the 6 megabit and the 8 megabit packages. I sure wish Verizon had service in this area and offered Fios. Unfortunately, Qwest is the only other real game in town. No technical problems in the past year, except for a couple of brief outages.
UPDATED: 3/25/2007 My experience with Comcast overall, continue to go fairly well. Connection speeds continue to increase as does reliability. That's the good thing. Tech Support, however, is another thing! The other day I had my first outage since I can remember. It lasted two hours. When I tried to call Comcast, I could never get through to a real person. I was cut off twice getting the message that my call couldn't be completed and that I should visit "Comcast.com" for more information. To my knowledge there is no useful connection information at Comcast.com. As I suspected, it was an area problem that affected not only my internet connection but my cable tv as well. That Comcast does not direct users calls to a recording explaining that there is an outage in such cases, or post that information on their web site, is just plain irresponsible! They really have never been good at tech support. That is why having a reliable connection is so important. Hopefully I'll never have to use tech support again. Overall, I'd give them a solid C.
UPDATE 3/5/2006 Things continue to improve with Comcast. Bandwidth continues to increase, outages have been few and far between, and the price has remained stable though I still consider it to be expensive. I've had no dealings with Tech Support in the past six months. At this point I am very satisfied. Fast and reliable with no complaints . . . that's how I'd describe my broadband experience.
UPDATED 07-17-2005 Comcast has continued to upgrade the network. I have been pleased with how consistent my connection has been. Currently we are supposed to have 4000/384, but I've started hitting the mid 5000s on my bandwidth tests. Also, I've had two occasions to speak to Tech Support, one very recently when I replaced my Comcast owned cable modem that I've rented for 32 months. Tech Support was not only helpful, but really pleasant as well. Further, the inability to run "Trace route" has been cleared up. I don't know what Comcast did, but issue resolved. I'd given up on that. At this point I have no complaints, except for the price . . . IT'S TOO HIGH! I understand that the when the new bandwidth thresholds become available, if I want the next higher package (i.e. 6/384, it will cost me $10 more than I'm currently paying because I only have "Limited Cable" (the $15.00 a month bare bones package). If I want to continue at the price I'm currently paying for Internet Service, I'd either have to stick with the lower bandwidth, or get Basic Cable ($42.00 a month). I don't need anything more than Limited, because I really don't want to watch that much TV! Admittedly, I'm not very happy about that, but I guess there isn't much I can do but to switch service providers . . . I.e. go with Qwest DSL.
UPDATED 12-22-2004 We’ve been with Comcast (formerly Attbi) for 2 years now. Since my last review, I would say that my connection has improved. Speed, connectivity, and reliability have been excellent since the bandwidth upgrade. Even with 3 of us browsing the internet at the same time, browsing is normally snappy. I have only one complaint. After Comcast took over, in October of 2003, I lost the ability to do Trace Routes which is very annoying. That problem still hasn't been resolved. I did try to resolve the problem through e-mails, but was told I'd have to call. I really don't have time, and hate talking to Tech Support since many of them seem to have little knowledge beyond the script they are using to troubleshoot. Unfortunately those troubleshooting scripts are sometimes lacking as they only cover the basics. Though obviously I would like a better price, the rates are competitive and not unreasonable for the United States.
Update: 03-27-2004 New speed upgrades are in place. Connection has been very good and reliable! I am seeing download bandwidth between 3000 - 3400! One problem that I've been experiencing ever since the Blaster episode last fall is that I have become "Unpingable"! Unless the problem is with my Cable Modem, the problem is not on my end. I have hooked directly into the cable modem (bypassing my Hardware Firewall), I don't run a personal firewall, and TDS-3 was off. I was still unpingable. I also tried several different computers, all without personal firewalls, still unpingable. Comcast can ping my IP from inside of Comcast, but not from the outside. The other problem, which I believe is related, is that Trace Route does not work for me. Only the first 2 and last 1 hop show; everything else times out! I had contacted Comcast on-line and through e-mail, but was told that I would have to call their dreaded Tech Support. Eventually I will do that, but since it will probably take several phone calls, and several good blocks of time, I've been reluctant to do so thus far.
Overall, Comcast continues to be a good value and we’ve had few things to complain about. Still the problem of being unpingable and being unable to run Trace Routes really bothers me because it is keeping me from “line monitoring”, and an important diagnostic tool.
**********
Update: 12-19-2003. We have been with Comcast for 13 months now. Though our connection is still good, the reliability has diminished somewhat and my opinion of Comcast has diminished as well. In the past couple of months, we have experienced at least 4 periods of a few hours to 3 days when our router was unable to obtain an IP address from the DHCP server. To their credit, this last time they fixed it the same day. On one of those occasions, I called and found that the problem was affecting my area. In addition to that, for some time now, we have been unpingable from outside the Comcast network, and trace routes do not work. I was unable to convince Comcast the problem of being “unpingable” is on their end. Even when our firewall is removed from the equation, and our main computer is directly connected to the internet (we don’t run a software firewall), we are still unpingable! I cannot get Comcast to do anything about that. Further, I am disturbed that Comcast refuses to define download limits. My experience with Comcast support has been less than stellar. Overall, this is still a better value than the dsl being offered in this area, but I wish there was true competition.
************
With the transition to Comcast behind us, I am now able to make a fair evaluation of my internet service. I must say that I’ve been very pleased with the bandwidth, the speed of internet browsing, and both the reliability and consistency of the connection provided by Comcast. On the negative side, I e-mailed Comcast twice asking for help with something, and both times, they failed to respond. My three previous ISPs, all DSL providers, were very responsive to e-mails. For us, the transition from ATTBI to Comcast went smoothly. I did it manually rather than using the Comcast software. Not much to it, really. I would say that since ATTBI began transitioning to Comcast, I’ve experienced a more reliable connection. Maybe that’s just a coincidence, not sure. I am pleased with the boost from 1500 to 1800 kbps down. Overall, I’d say Comcast is doing pretty well for me.
************
UPDATE: We've been with Attbi for approximately 110 days now. In that time, we have experienced only a couple of problems. We had two periods of about 4 days each, during which we experienced major connection problems. Both times, it turned out to be a problem with ATT in the Lacey area. The download cap was apparently bumped up to 1800. Our speeds have been very good. Overall, I've been happy with Attbi, now Comcast. My son is a gamer, and he seems pleased with ATT's overall network performance as well. Cable continues to prove to be a better value than dsl. This will be my last review under the Attbi banner. My next review will be an evaluation of the new Comcast network.
**********
2002 I finally broke down and ordered Attbi broadband in early August. Got the first 6 months for $19.95 deal. Ten days after my initial order a tech came to do the install and discovered that the cable from the box to my house had been cut and I didn't have a connection. We haven't had cable TV since 1996, so we never knew. In any case it then took about two months to get a new cable run. Finally on November 8th, a Technician (contractor) was back out here and performed an excellent install. The tech was out here almost 2 hours but when he left I had a clear connection to ATT, and was up and running within 30 minutes without a hitch.
During those two months of waiting to have a cable run, I called ATT on three occasions to find out about the holdup. All three times I was told that the call would be expedited, and that I would receive a call back within 24 hours. I never received one call. Also, all three times I had asked to have my contact number changed to my cell so that when the cable was laid they could reach me directly. However, when all was said and done, they called my home phone and it was a week before I got the message. In defense of ATT for the length of time that it took to get a connection, I was told at one point that the holdup was the process of securing a permit to dig (have no idea if that's true). One thing that made this long wait easier is that I still had a dsl connection until 1 week after Install. If I hadn't had dsl it would have been a significant drawback.
When the new cable was finally laid, I called ATT to reschedule the Install. At first it seemed as though I would not get the 6 months at $19.95. However after a lengthy discussion with the service rep, I was informed that they would honor my 90-day-old order.
So far, this is way better than my dsl connection. On the positive side of that 90 day wait, is the fact that I have all new cabling from the box to my modem, as the Technician who performed the install ended up running a new cable into the house for no extra charge because he could not find the "splitter" and could not obtain an acceptable signal to the modem using the existing cable.
Followup comments:  RoCJester
join:2006-12-20
Pottstown, PA
| Tracert Actually from what I know is that Tracert isn't blocked on anything. Secondly if the CMTS has ping turned off, it won't work. The way (as i know it.. i could be wrong) is Windows Tracert does the 1st Hop, if it gets ( * )'s then it moves to the 2nd, then back to the first, and so on and so forth.. not like others who just continue to move on to the third hop.
Regardless I'm glad that your connection is stable and you are happy. | |
| | damox
Premium
join:2002-01-07
Olympia, WA
 ·Comcast Formerly ..
1 edit | Re: Tracert Well obviously Trace Route can be blocked. It may not have been intentional, but something was causing a problem with my use of Trace Route. As was suggested by "Mr. Anonymous, I did try running a Trace Route from a web site, and I got the same result. Maybe the use of the term "blocked" was too strong a word, but as I stated in my ISP review in March of 2004, after Comcast bought out AT&T cable, I lost my ability to perform a meaningful Trace Route. I stated that I would only get a response from the first two hops and last hop, everything in between timed out. I also stated that even when I connected directly to my cable modem (bypassing my two hardware firewalls/routers), and did so from four different computers, I still got the same result. Something was causing that inability to get a response for the 10 to 16 or so devices in between me and my targets. I don't know if it was the Thompson cable modem that I was renting from Comcast at the time, or it was something in Comcast's configuration of their headend devices, however, it began happening after Comcast took over. It was after I purchased my own Motorola SB5200, that the problem seemed to stop, so I'm not sure if it was a coincidence, or it was something to do with the modem itself. In any case, the problem went away.
As far as being able to block a trace route, right now, I can run a Trace Route and I get a response from my first firewall, but my outside firewall times out because it is configured to do so. After that, of the six or so targets that I tried to trace, I get a response from most devices in between, but on two of the targets (which includes the technical college where I work where the firewall is configured to ignore ICMP requests), when I get to the actual target, it times out until it reaches 30 hops which is the default for the maximum number of hops! The other target that timed out was the NY Times. It is not unusual for organizations to configure their routers or firewalls to ignore ICMP requests.
--
DAMOX Proud to be a member of Team Discovery | |
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 Review by nozero
UPDATED: 294 days ago
member for 9.9 years, 3955 visits, last login: a few hours ago
InnerSanctum
Contract price not specified.
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.
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Review by jcato77
UPDATED: 295 days ago
member for 334 days, 2 visits, last login: 295 days ago
Dublin,Alameda,CA
$149 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Fast speeds"
"Poor DNS service"
"Better than DSL"
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I have had Comcast High-speed Internet since they took over for ATT in the bay area. It's cable internet what more can you say. Comcast has problems with their DNS service in the area or they used to. If you can get off their DNS servers that is the best open. There are plenty of DNS sources on the Internet that offer a better Up-time and additional options.
They have finally added additional space to their web address over the partly 250mb they used to offer. With 10GB you can now use them as an email backup server if you need to.
I noted my monthly cost as $149 this is because I have the Comcast Triple Play and as such my Monthly costs are all combined. I believe I'm actually paying about $39.99 or so a month for just the Internet portion of the bill.
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 Review by Sly
UPDATED: 329 days ago
member for 5.8 years, 2891 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Johnson City,Washington,TN
Contract price not specified.
"mostly reliable stable bandwidth"
"pricy, customer service is an abomination"
"It's better than AOL but worse than waterboarding..."
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I've been using Comcast for over 6 years and if I didn't need to have Internet service, I wouldn't do business with them. For the most part they have a strong, reliable connection... but business shouldn't stop there. It should include customer service and at least some sort of efficient implementation of features and promotions... Comcast is one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with. In 6 years I RARELY get 2 bills in a row which are for the same dollar amount. They are constantly increasing their prices in a never ending battle to treat the world like its oyster.
I recently upgraded my service to 12 meg down, 2 meg up... While I am getting the upload speed, my download has been cut in half. I had better downloads before I upgraded... I just dread having to talk to customer service to get anything done. In typical Comcast fashion, they will send a contractor technician who doesn't actually work for Comcast, who may or may not show up on the day you requested and who probably will know less about fixing the problem than I already do...
Thank goodness for third party email providers... Comcast has successfully designed the worst user interface that could have been ever possibly created. The website is slow, overly graphical with mismatched fonts making it hard to read. Unless you use something like Outlook, you have to jump through several unnecessary hoops just to check your email... For that reason, I use their provided email account maybe 2 times a year...
They really seem like they could be a good company if they tried to... but with no real competition (like I have any other choice) they know they don't have to. It's like the same attitude that AOL had for all these years. The attitude that we need them, they don't need us... Well guess what? When someone else comes along, Comcast, you will be greatly "rewarded" for your "respect" you show for your customers... Unfortunately, though, our government would probably just bail you out in the end anyway...
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 Review by SYNACK
UPDATED: 343 days ago
member for 8.7 years, 5069 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Venice,Los Angeles,CA
Contract price not specified.
"Consistent speed 24/7, solid connection"
"tech support"
"Recommended"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I signed up in late 1997 with MediaONE, before it even became available and was put on a notification list. Over time there were name transitions (M1/RR, ...) and currently it is called ATTBI.
When they finally rolled it out in my neighborhood, they promptly notified me and the install in early 1998 was without problems.
Looking back over the last four years of service, the positive experiences clearly outweigh the few negatives. My caps always was 1500/300 and I can get near these speeds consistently.
No major long outages. Two trouble events with intermittent service were fixed with a replacement modem (1. LanCity (failed), 2. BestData (send levels out of specs causing flaky connection) 3. RCA (no problems since))
At the moment my cost includes $10/month modem rental. I'll probably buy my own soon. I hesitated initially, because modems do seem to fail (see above).
Phone Tech support: The front lines are manned by kids that weed out obvious simple issues, but there is no way to get past them without answering the scripted questions (Is the modem plugged in, how are the lights, what does "winipcfg" show, what is the MAC address and serial number of the modem, you use a router? we don't support that), even if I simply want to notify them that one of their routers or servers has problems. For example once they added a second News server for balancing and a DNS lookup gave one or the other IPs randomly. Unfortunately, they forgot to add our specific subnet to the access list so people from my area had a 50% failure rate connecting. Of course thech support could not reproduce this, because they were coming from a different subnet. After I analyzed the problem (e.g. enter one or the other IP in the news client directly gave a 0% or 100% success rate. I also analyzed the IPs in the news header of all users reporting "problems" vs. "no problems" and it was clear that only the recently added subnet (different class B) was rejected by one of the servers) and told them exactly what the problem was, it took them two days to fix it. On the phone, they addmitted that there was a problem, but they had no idea what it was.
Another time, after I sent them some e-mail headers showing that at times a significant amount of incoming messages were randomly delayed by several hours between two of their internal servers, I got a message back about two weeks later, simply asking if the situation has improved (no acknowledment of a problem).
Most of the time, the online status page did not show any obvious problems, even if there clearly were issues. It seems this has improved recently.
In summary, phone support is marginal and often not worth the wait on hold.
Online Support: The support page also offers online chat support. Overall, I had better luck getting a resonable answer. I would recommend using this over phone support. Nice thing is that you can save a full transcript at the end of the session for your records. If you are on hold, you get a status of how many are in line before you. (Of course the connection needs to be working for this  )
Field Service: All encounters with the field techs have been very positive. They are much more knowledgable than the phone staffers, know what they are doing, and don't waste my time with meaningless questions.
Overall, there was little need for support and the connection was reliable to a large extent. The recent transition to attbi involved an e-mail change and went smooth.
The new attbi e-mail allows up to six additional accounts and all incoming e-mail is filtered by brightmail technology to remove obvious spam. This has worked exceedingly well. You can go online and check the "screened mail" folder. I never had a false positive, but it trapped 90+% of all genuine SPAM. Don't disable this!
Over the following years, the providership changed again, first to Comcast, then to Time Warner and service did not really change much. Basic, reliable service.
***** Well, all things have to come to an end! *****
This spring I noticed some guys on the pole behind the house and they said they are wiring the neighborhood for FIOS. I immediately signed up and was again the first in my neighborhood.  I am much now happier with FIOS, but this will be reviewd in details elsewhere. This closes the "cable" chapter and I doubt I will ever go back to cable.
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