Comcast XFINITY → Pros/Cons of switching to Triple Play

I already have a high end tier TV subscription with 3 DVRs to Comcast digital cable, so my monthly cable bills are creeping up.

Because of my home alarm, I had to keep ATT for POTS and also took their 6Mbps/512Kbps DSL which has been rock solid and low latency (25ms pings on SpeedTest). I just switched my alarm to cellular for monitoring, so now I'm free to switch my phone service and HSI.

After reviewing the triple play offerings from Comcast, it looks like for the first year, I can save about $60/mo and after the initial year, about $30/mo over what I have now. I'm all for saving money, so I'm considering switching my phone and HSI to Comcast.

Without a huge religious war, I'm curious to hear experiences of people who have switched to Comcast Digital Voice and HSI, and also understand any pros/cons besides the savings. My wife and I surf the web and check e-mail, along with work VPN(L2TP), while the kids use the web and also play online at XBox Live. I have a combination of wired (100Mb) and wireless nodes (g and N) on our home network.

depends on what speed offerings you can get in your area.

I had the top cable package with premium channels + the 8/1 internet service. I switched to triple play because for a year is saves me about 20 bucks a month, and my speed got bumped up to 16/2.

I have no use for a home phone line, but it's essentially free so w/e.

If you're saving money, there's no reason not to switch. You should at least be able to get 8/1, unless you're in a really, really underdeveloped area. I can't really say much about the CDV as I have yet to really use it. I tried calling my cell phone, the sound quality was pretty good, but I think it's highly subject to interference since everything will be running on the same lines and you'll probably have your cable spliced a bit.

I'm in a suburb of Atlanta (Marietta is about 20 mi northwest of downtown center), and not sure of the speed offerings. Anyone in the area offer any info?

I'm in Kennesaw and have had triple play for awhile. I have the "up to 16 mbps with Powerboost", one unlimited phone (stable enough for alarm) and premium cable tv with HD and Tivo DVRs set up with cable cards. After the discounts were over, I'm still paying only $210/mo for all that. The internet is rock solid and I've been getting emails that they are shortly upgrading to fastest fast in Kennesaw.

I was on Comcast's triple play for two years. During that time I really can't think of one problem with the phone line. The voice quality is excellent. It was my wife's line. I kept Verizon copper for my line. In February my "contract" expired and all of a sudden my bill went up forty dollars or so. I called them and in order to drop my bill back down to where it was, I had to drop a number of movie channels. I just dropped all my Comcast services to go go with verizon (FIOS), but the 2nd phone line was a difficult decision. The Phone service IMHO is Comcast's best service, but they overcharge for it when you buy it by itself. They wanted $46/month and that is just too close to the Verizon package at $49/month. I ended up going with Vonage on the 2nd line. The first line is on fiber from VZ. My one complaint about Comcast's digital voice is their voice mail. I have yet to figure a way to delete or save a message without having to listen to the whole thing. If someone leaves you a long-winded message, I don't know of any way to go on to the next without listening to it. Maybe someone can point out, what an idiot I have been. Like I said, it was my wife's line and she looks at voice mail as something to forget about and ignore. They also don't email you the voice mail, but email you a link to their site, so you can listen to it. That is sort of lame.

The short of it, Comcast has a great phone service for the money when included in a triple play package. The voice mail is weak, but the line quality is excellent.

HSI is very good, but doesn't come close to FIOS. Their cable TV sucks, but that should improve this year for most users.

Press 77 while listening to the message.

Thanks! OK that solves how to delete one. How about to save it is as new or to just save it without having to listen to the whole thing as a lot of people would want to do when a long message is left?

Dump the POTS and get a monitoring service that works over the Internet. I went with NEXt alarm since they had a network adapter that worked with systems that only dial in. So it basically uses VOIP to dial in over teh Internet. Bottom line is that it works as advertised and I'm paying under $12 a month(with a 3 year prepayment)for the monitoring service.

*HERE* with Blast internet, Unlimited CDV, and Standard cable TV(no boxes), my bill was $166 per month.

With the HD Starter Triple Play, the bill is $114 + $10(to keep Blast) - more channels because of digital and free HD(box and HD programming are free) with a bill of $135 now.

After the promo, the bill will be $144 - still a $20+ reduction and more bang for buck.

I just couldn't pass it up, ya know?

In the chicago area I pay 129.99/12 months for CDV, HD-DVR Starz+Show, and 10/1 internet. 12/2 is an extra 25 and 16/2 is an 50ish.

The phone has been great. Only problem is it makes our GE wireless phones act crazy with caller id. We can't search through the caller id on the phone because the cdv pushes data to the phone and resets it every 3 seconds.

(emta only sends caller id data when a call is coming in. Just like a pots line. Something else is going on with your phones )

Must be a compatibility issue. Even though it's not listed as "incompatible", I don't believe it's 100% compatible. I have to beleive the mta send data or a pulse or something more frequently then only when a call comes through. When I am going backwards through the caller id it will bring it back to the menu as if it received a data blip. It worked 100% on pots though.

I have had the triple play for more than a year and HSI from Comcast for about 7 years. In short, it is the best deal around here in Indiana. I had my promo deal extended after the first year, will try again this fall, if not I can get into 3 year business contract for about the same money and not have to worry about the usage caps! The Digital Voice service is great and any outages have been very limited and short in duration. No complaints here at all, our local techs have been very good at keeping the system humming along.
Some area are better than other, so check with people in your area....good luck!!