internet service

I've had it with Comcast! Since they rolled out Xfinity their service has been crap. Anyone have an alternative they'd recommend?

As it takes a lot of infrastructure to build a last mile network, your choices are probably very limited. In most areas your choice is either the cable or phone companies.

It's looking that way, thanks.

i had comcast for a year in Mobile, AL and it knocked the socks off this cableone garbage.

YMMV(obviously)

Xfinitey is more than I want to pay, around $230/mo., I've no interest in 75% of the offerings and...it doesn't work! Some portion of it has been non-functioning from day 1.

I have AT&T U-verse. It's expensive too - but it has been extremely more reliable than the offerings from the cable company for TV and Internet.

May want to check to see if Verizon has 4G in your area, if so get the USB 4G modem... I use it for work and it does a pretty good job. Have yet to hit the 5 Gig monthly limit....

Getting back to Comcast, I have them for home cable internet ONLY and no problems.

Comcast was fine until they rolled out Xfinitey, which doesn't work, and increased my bill from $160 to $230 a month. My internet is now very, very, slow.

The money is an issue but my outrage is over the poor service. I'm not going to pay someone to beat me up!

For that price they should supply hand maidens to do your typing for you. I pay Hawaiian Tel $30 for 7 meg, no data limit, service.

If your wallet is resigned to paying that kinda money I'd look at a business circuit from your local phone company. The nice thing about biz lines is that they're symmetrical or the up load and download speeds are the same.

No, we're not going to pay it at all. My CFO is doing the research now.

I carried a Mobil gas card for twenty years or more. Was never late with a payment, never carried a balance forward. One day (my boss happened to be riding with me) the card wouldn't work! To make a long story short, they just didn't want my business, weren't making enough money off me.

That seems to have worked fine for Mobil, maybe it will work for comcast. I just know I haven't bought Mobil products in years, not that they care.

There is always more than one source for anything...

Then do what I did, just keep them for the internet and go with a HDTV antenna on top of your house for the local stuff and Dish or Direct... for all the other jazz....we did Direct. The over the air stuff is a better picture etc... they don't compress the signal....

And, we're thinking of canceling this as all the stuff is junk and doing more Net flicks...

Verizon is coming to town with Fiber Optic in a year or so.... can't wait!

FIOS is not all that! It can be slow, tech support sucks, it's expensive, etc

Net flicks will be taking a hell of hit from the producers soon. They had the market all to themselves, but no more.

But, I'm thinking along your lines.

I F@#%^%n hate commercials! I've almost stopped watching anything that hasn't been recorded, just so I can ff through the commercials. I'll bet half the 30 minutes alocated to the evening news are commercials.

Plus, the equipment at your end requires power. If there's a power failure everything goes dead including the phone.

being a cheapskate, it would appear that an internet-ready HDTV and the HD antenna should take care of both local programming as well as downloaded content (movies, shows, etc).

I thought Hulu and other sites were free (or cheap) so you can download old TV series. Not sure about the commercials, Pete, but I'm with you on the saturation factor. It's about 9 minutes of adds per 30 minutes of TV

the other thing is everyone is turning off their land-line phones and using their cell (with unlimited minutes or night/weekend free) as their primary phone. A little issue that the local school districts are finding out is that the 2.5% surcharge on long distance calls from land lines isn't bringing in any more money these days, so Florida has frozen it's school construction fund...

I like Hulu and Instant Net Flix.

Had never heard of an HD antenna, I'll check that out.

Welcome to the Telecosm.

I'm curious what your speed is if you are paying that much money for it.
Could you go to this website, run the speedtest, and post the results?
http://speedtest.net/

Ping 45ms
up 3.21Mbps
down 0.59Mbps

download 8.5
upload 4.2
ping 53

Pete,

I doubt that it is because of the switch over to xFinity. They just switched up here and I'm running at

14 Ping
21 Mbps Download
4.3 Mbps Up

When my service is slow, it usually is the result of someone backing into the cable box on the street. Sounds like you need a service call.

Also, xFinity has competition in our county, AT&T fiber optic. Every time xFinity (Comcast) attempted to raise my fees, I initiate discontinuing the service. They have an entire department trained to intercept the request and try to keep the customer. Every time, they have lowered their fee to match AT&T.

Verizon 3Gg Air Card
ping 73ms
Down 1.08Mbps
Up .67Mbps

Debbie has already backed them way down from their $230 (incl. taxes).

We've had a number of service calls with no effect. Currently the TV package is working very well. Internet still is very slow around noon and from 5-7 p.m.

You're getting slammed by the get it done before going to lunch and the early evening users. Your provider hasn't done a good job of network design. Probably easy fix is to add some T-3 or OC-3c circuits to improve connectivity to the WAN.

Interesting. My experience is that even the digital tv service's condition has no relevance to the internet quality. If your internet service is good except for the stated times, then there is someone on your "loop" hogging the bandwidth. Whatever the case, Xfinity should cap the bandwidth hog or split the loop.

More noise you make, the more likely it will get fixed.

"You're getting slammed by the get it done before going to lunch and the early evening users. Your provider hasn't done a good job of network design. Probably easy fix is to add some T-3 or OC-3c circuits to improve connectivity to the WAN." I've no clue what that means but thanks anyway.

Kris, we've spent hours and hours on this thing, to no avail. We hear from comcast that they're putting in all new fiber optics, but at this point I only believe what I see.

Kris, anybody

What did you make of Xffinity's solution to increase down load speed over their old service by running their new software to cache (or do something) to the first XX mb of traffic and then it slows down. I did not really understand what they were doing.. Nor do I believe them... (past bad experiences)

Xfinnity service certainly did not sound like Fios service which did not put any strings on their internet service. Are the advertised speeds truly comparable?

Xffinity can make a great front loaded offer on price but over a two year contract... it was just 200 hundred cheaper but with inferior internet service.

Mark,

I noticed the initial "burst" when I ran the test this morning. I nearly fell out of my seat but then it settled down toward 20 mbps. Makes sense because most page requests would be honored by the burst; whereas, streaming should not be a bandwidth hog.

Couple years ago when Fios was introduced to my neighborhood, I did the free trial concurrently with my Comcast service. I thought that the TV was better but the internet was slower, probably because they were adding so many neighbors onto our loop. Though I did not switch, the full setup (including line into the house) is still present if I ever elect to switch.

Xfinity will lower their price after the 2-yr contract if you have Fios available.

Just saying your provider just needs to add more capacity to your neighborhood (circuit). There is a minimal level of service they should guarantee during peak usage, especially if it is recurrent/cyclical.

I think when I looked at it.... 20 meg service dropped down to 12 or something after the burst.... I assume this is the minimum that they have to provide. So, Fios at 20 K was much better then Xffinity at 12 K at steady state.

So basically xfinity has software that throttles your connection speed as a function of time and then squeezes your speed as they fit as many people on the loop as they can sell.
So... you have to be a squeaky wheel when your 20 /5 which is really 12/5 drops below that.... Same ol Sxxt from Comcast.

It's basically more big data pipes. It would also entail reengineering how the users on the last mile connect to them. A traffic study should be the first step.

In this part of the world comcast is a "sales only" organization. I don't see any sort of engineering happening.

Ahhhhh, never mix up selling with installing.

Ping 0 ms
Sownload 30.1 Mbps
Upload 57.62 Mbps

clearwater fios
9:19 am
Ping 25ms
up 21.56Mbps
down 23.75Mbps

My experience with Comcast has been terrible over the last 24 years. Constantly raising rates, intermitant internet connecions, rude and argumentative customer service people, technicians who don't bother to show up for appointments, several weeks (or months) to complete repairs, and no follow-up to see if they actually resolved the problems.

I switched to AT&T U-Verse as soon as it was offered in my neighborhood. No technical problems, friendly customer service, better channel selection. I'm paying about the same, but MUCH happier!

(I told Comcast's retention department I wouldn't switch back if it were free!)

Comcast's customer service people have been fine. I just don't believe they are getting any supporter from within their own company.

We don't have any real options so we're cutting our costs to the minimum, at least for now.