US Cable Support → W.O.W. > Re: Recommendation on which modem to buy?

Re: Recommendation on which modem to buy?

I signed up a month ago and had the same concern. What I did was let WOW install their modem, prove that it worked, and let it sit a month. Their modem actually failed (or something) after 2 weeks. I had a tech come out, he installed a "new" one (more like a "refurb") and the problem went away. I let it soak a week (i had a new modem ready in my basement the whole time) and after i was happy with the speed, I ditched their modem for my new one. The model I chose was a Moto SB6121 (found a deal on newegg.com). I installed it in like 10 minutes, with no hassles from the tech support phone line, and it is working great. Latency went down compared to the DPC2100, but overall the speed is the same since i only have 15meg service.

Oh, you won't have any problems with the modem. But when WOW has problems somewhere between their head end and your house--no matter where that is--they'll tell you that without their modem in place, their hands are tied and they can't really even begin to help.

I've been through this dance three times. So I'd go to the WOW office, pick up one of their units, install it, then call to get the broadband issue of the day fixed. Maybe they could find it right away, but one time it itook several weeks and the final resolution was WOW Dan looking at things--and 6 hours later he had it resolved.

And yet, even Dan said "yeah, we really need our modem in place for me to help".

It turned out that the problems I had every time were down the line somewhere, outside of my house--and outside the modem.

Nonetheless, I had to go get their modem and pay the rental fee just to enable them to start the troubleshooting process.

This last time the tech took pity on me and simply left the WOW modem in place, without charge.

So yeah, every week someone comes here asking about "I wanna get my own modem and not pay the fee". I was one of those people, until WOW beat it out of me. To be fair, I would still be using my own modem, but I know now for sure that any troubleshooting can't start until I get a WOW modem in place. That's the cost of having my own. I save the $5/month, but a couple times a year I'm wandering over to the WOW office and paying them a few bucks to borrow theirs, then wandering back to return it.