said by tomp :Wow, I smell arrogance. I was not notified about the port change. I spent a significant amount of time wondering why what worked yesterday does not work today. Comcast wasted my time and has done so in many other situations. They have a monopoly in my area, we have lost choice in communications providers. Anti monopoly laws were put in place to maintain healthy competition that benefited consumers and promoted innovation. Those days are almost gone if we continue to tolerate this kind of behavior.
Hmm, shall I tell you what I smell?
Comcast sent a notification email to subscribers; there have been other posters in this thread who have verified that (even if you don't believe me). I have no way of knowing if your email was eaten by a spam blocker or simply ignored, but nonetheless, the notification email was sent.
Even if there had been no email notification, port 25 for residential users is listed as being blocked on the Comcast support site (and it has been listed there for many months). The link to that document has already been posted in this thread and in this related thread: »
[Rant] Crazy port blocking . Exactly how much notification do you think that Comcast should have given to you personally?
As for competetion, blocking port 25 for residential users is a very common practice; so even if you had a choice, most likely your alternative ISP would also block port 25.