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Comcast vs AT&T


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So my Comcast internet connection went out Friday morning. It was working fine on Thursday night when I went to bed, but Friday morning it was dead - the digital phone worked fine but the internet was dead. I went to work and came home Friday evening and the situation was the same, so I power-cycled the modem and reset the airport express and the damn thing still didn't work.

I called Comcast and spoke to some tech support with one of the hardest to understand spanish accents I've ever encountered on the telephone. She tried to ping me from her side and said the response she was getting was that the modem has gone bad and that the easiest solution would be to go exchange it for a new one at a store front, which, by the way, closed at 6:00pm. So at 5:30 I packed up the baby and sped down and got a new modem. I got home, plugged it in and called them on the mobile phone to provision it and get it set up and they couldn't do it. I suspected incompetence so I called back three more times and spoke to three different reps and no one could see my modem from their end or tell me what the problem was. And to top that off, with the new modem, my digital phone service quit working, too, so the problem went from bad to worse thanks to the first tech's awful advice.

Eventually I had to accept an "escalation" and wait for a service call on TUESDAY and face spending the whole weekend with NO INTERNET SERVICE. I have a TON of work to get done and if I weren't able to come to the office this afternoon and use the internet there, none of it would get done. Which, is where we stand today.

So the more I think about this, the angrier I get :angry: that it was working fine at 11:00 on Thursday night and 7 hours later quit working and no one has any idea what the problem is and can't get a tech to me for 96 FREAKING HOURS :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:

More than a few people have told me now to just switch over to AT&T DSL and forget Comcast, especially since it's apparently cheaper and I have DirecTV already. Thing is, I had DSL back when it first came out and the service was so spotty and slow that I switched over to cable (Time Warner then) and have had no serious problems until now. I also seem to remember that Comcast's base speed is still faster than DSL's premium package, and in checking it out just now, I just remembered how much I hate the phone company because they still want to charge a premium for "services" like caller ID and long distance, when all of that crap is included for free from Comcast.

So the question for HAIF'ers is, should I switch? I am especially interested if you live in the Timgergrove/Lazybrook/Shady Acres/Heights areas as the quality of these services tend to be pretty location specific. I am certainly going to demand a pound of flesh from the billing department as compensation for my trouble when this is done, but I'm wondering if a more extreme measure is warranted.

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You know, stuff happens.

As irritating as that statement is, it is rather true. It could have easily have happened with AT&T or any other provider. Now i understand how infuriating that your not being able to do any work is, but the Internet isn't always going to be available and its up to you to make changes to be able to work from home. You could have always just grabbed a laptop and go to a hotel or other WIFI spot to get it done or head to your neighbor (IF they have access) or a buddy who owes you a favor.

I'm just sayin'.

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I've had DSL for half a year now and it has been flawless. Upload speeds are ~40% better than ComCrap, and download speeds are maybe 200 KB/sec slower. I don't notice the speed difference during normal browsing one iota, and I have the 3Mbit service level, not the super duper deluxe 6Mbit package. The best part is the price...it is SO MUCH cheaper than ComCrap. You'd be remiss not to at least try it.

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So how much is the 3M DSL? Last I looked into it to get the same speeds as cable it cost pretty much the same. Don't they make you do contracts to? That seems to be a phone company thing and I hate it.

EDIT: BTW, I'm in 77008 with Comcast and I didn't have an outage. We've had a couple of tv blurps in the past year but nothing big.

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So how much is the 3M DSL? Last I looked into it to get the same speeds as cable it cost pretty much the same. Don't they make you do contracts to? That seems to be a phone company thing and I hate it.

EDIT: BTW, I'm in 77008 with Comcast and I didn't have an outage. We've had a couple of tv blurps in the past year but nothing big.

The total bill for my 3Mbit service is $28...that's with no phone line; I have what they call "naked DSL"

My bill for internet only from ComCrap was something like $60.

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I have Crapcast for my tv provider and ATT for my phone/internet. I live in the Woodland Heights and the ATT guy told me they are wiring our area for their new U-verse digital tv service. I'm not a fan of the compression that Crapcast does with my HD, and ATT promises a better picture with U-verse. And since this would allow for phone/tv/internet to all come from your phone jacks, that is appealing since I have more phone drops in my house than cable outlets, so I can arrange my whole entertainment layout better...(tv mounted above the jacuzzi, why yes I think I will).

But my ATT internet service seems fast to me, and they have different rates of upload/download for those that really need to do high volume work. Obviously, a package deal would get you a better price on all their services, which I will do in the next couple of months once the service is installed in my area.

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Ok, now I'm interested. For this new AT&T (tv) service there is a need for new lines? Meaning if I'm in an old inner loop neighborhood that probably isn't already set up? I just assumed AT&T's version of TV was their partnership with dish network. As far as internet my Comcast is 39.95 plus whatever taxes apply. For tv, with the HD and DVR add-ons the price keeps creeping up. I'd love to pay less, but every time I've seriously looked at other option, the price is always within 5 bucks a month after you get over the 3-months-at-a-lower-rate hype.

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I had an ISDN line back in the 90s. When DSL came out it was a major step up. When I bought my house, I made sure DSL was available for it. After I moved in, SBC (now AT&T) told me they had lied to me and DSL wasn't available. I swore then that I would never do business with SBC again.

I've had cable modem since and it's very fast. There have been a few outages, but it seems comparable to the outages I experienced with DSL.

What I really want is FiOS.

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Ok, now I'm interested. For this new AT&T (tv) service there is a need for new lines? Meaning if I'm in an old inner loop neighborhood that probably isn't already set up?

Sorta. They string fiber from the central office to the spot in the neighborhood where all the wires come together. They put in a couple cabinets of equipment there, and hook all the existing copper lines into that cabinet. So they do have to install some fiber, and equipment, but they don't have to rewire the entire neighborhood.

I just assumed AT&T's version of TV was their partnership with dish network. As far as internet my Comcast is 39.95 plus whatever taxes apply. For tv, with the HD and DVR add-ons the price keeps creeping up. I'd love to pay less, but every time I've seriously looked at other option, the price is always within 5 bucks a month after you get over the 3-months-at-a-lower-rate hype.

I don't know how much and what TV shows you watch, but if you typically only watch the major broadcast networks you should consider getting an antenna and an HD TiVo. After ComCrap raised their rates a while back, I decided it was time to ditch them. I cut my TV and Internet bill from $120 a month to a one time outlay of about $700 (HD TiVo, lifetime sub, and antenna) plus $28/month for DSL. With this setup, my picture quality from OTA HD is better than what ComCrap stuffs down the wire, and don't even get me started on how horrendous their DVR software is compared to TiVo.

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The total bill for my 3Mbit service is $28...that's with no phone line; I have what they call "naked DSL"

My bill for internet only from ComCrap was something like $60.

No, comcast is only $19.99 a month for RoadRunner. Even if you are a customer already, you can get this price. All you have to do is threaten Comcast with the fact that you are "thinking about going to AT&T as you have seen their new commercial, so what can you guys do to stop me from cancelling my service with you?" Somehow, Comcast can MAGICALLY meet AT&T's rates all of the sudden, and VIOLA...........you have better service than the DSL.

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I'm all in favor of you dumping Comcast. But do a little deep research into U-verse before you switch.

I've read that the U-verse picture and channel lineup is much better than Comcast. But I've also read that you can only have a maximum of four TVs hooked up to it. If you have a family with growing kids, this could be a problem.

Unlike cable, which pushes all of its channels down the coax at your home all at once all the time, the U-verse is more like a fancy on-demand service. It looks like a cable box, and it acts like a cable box, but when you're changing channels at home, you're actually changing channels on a outbound port at the AT&T facility.

In many ways, the AT&T setup is far superior because you can have unlimited channels, where cable is limited by the bandwidth of the coax. But the downside is the limit to the number of simultaneous HD signals AT&T can squirt at you through the copper phone wire. Again, I think it's four.

Check out Engadget HD for more information on all of this stuff.

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Luckily, whether or not I switch has nothing to do with TV since I am already a DirecTV subscriber, which, has it's own customer service issues, but is generally good and has never gone out since I upgraded to HD last summer.

Nonetheless, once this gets fixed I am going to call Comcast and tell them I want this entire month for free in return for my trouble and an adjustment to match the AT&T rates or I'm switching by the end of the week.

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Luckily, whether or not I switch has nothing to do with TV since I am already a DirecTV subscriber, which, has it's own customer service issues, but is generally good and has never gone out since I upgraded to HD last summer.

Nonetheless, once this gets fixed I am going to call Comcast and tell them I want this entire month for free in return for my trouble and an adjustment to match the AT&T rates or I'm switching by the end of the week.

Cotton, how much you paying for RoadRunner right now ?

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Cotton, how much you paying for RoadRunner right now ?

For phone and internet it's $109 and change each month. That's about $20 more than the highest level DSL package from AT&T except that my understanding is that it's still slightly faster than DSL, which, since I run some home-based internet businesses right now and plan on starting up a few more very soon, is very important to me.

So I know I'm paying more than I have to, so far I've just been afraid that the alternative won't be as good.

ps - my DirecTV bill is $140 each month, but I get a lot more HD and specialty sports/soccer channels from them than Comcast offers and as a degenerate American football gambler there is no comparison in the Fall

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According toWhere Is HD? (which isn't always that accurate) here are the HD options in 77008:

Over the air: 11 channels

AT&T U-verse: 41

Comcast: 31

Phonoscope: 17

Suddenlink: 14

DirecTV: 78

Dish Network: 59

I'm surprised to see that Dish only has 11, 13, and 26 in HD and then only the main signals.

DirecTV isn't much better, since it adds 2, 20, and 39 but again only the main signals.

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We've got Comcast cable in our condo complex and part of our maintenance fee pays for the basic service. I've got their digital package with HBO along with a DVR in the living room. A few months ago I got a second DVR and this month I notice an increase in my cable bill by $18! Apparently when I got the 2nd DVR, they gave me a free promotional period. Now that that period is done they are charging me $8.95/mo to rent the second box and $8.95/mo for the additional

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We've got Comcast cable in our condo complex and part of our maintenance fee pays for the basic service. I've got their digital package with HBO along with a DVR in the living room. A few months ago I got a second DVR and this month I notice an increase in my cable bill by $18! Apparently when I got the 2nd DVR, they gave me a free promotional period. Now that that period is done they are charging me $8.95/mo to rent the second box and $8.95/mo for the additional
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I know DirecTV charges you for extra boxes. When I was a cable customer I know that they didn't, but I suspect that with the growth in the satellite subscriber base the cable companies found some extra "rent" to seek (to use an economic term) and pounced on it. I would suspect that U-verse does the exact same thing.

I don't particulrly mind the rental of the additional box, I expect that as it's a piece of equipment. What I do mind is the additonal charge for the DVR "service." There is no addional service! Once they flip a switch to give you DVR then you have it regardless of if you plug in a box!

Greedy F**kers!

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No, comcast is only $19.99 a month for RoadRunner.

RoadRunner? That's a TimeWeiner product. Anywho, I had cable internet ONLY (no TV, no phone) and my bill was $60/month. I threatened to switch, and they asked me what they could do to keep me on board, and I asked them to do it for $25/month TOTAL for as long as I wanted the service. They declined.

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For phone and internet it's $109 and change each month. That's about $20 more than the highest level DSL package from AT&T except that my understanding is that it's still slightly faster than DSL, which, since I run some home-based internet businesses right now and plan on starting up a few more very soon, is very important to me.

Do you download large files constantly? That's the only time I can tell a difference in speed. Uploads are faster with DSL. For normal browsing or even quasi heavy browsing such as YouToob I can't tell a difference.

So I know I'm paying more than I have to, so far I've just been afraid that the alternative won't be as good.

Well, switch to DSL and keep your cable around for a month or two, then if you don't like it cancel it and switch back.

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No, comcast is only $19.99 a month for RoadRunner. Even if you are a customer already, you can get this price. All you have to do is threaten Comcast with the fact that you are "thinking about going to AT&T as you have seen their new commercial, so what can you guys do to stop me from cancelling my service with you?" Somehow, Comcast can MAGICALLY meet AT&T's rates all of the sudden, and VIOLA...........you have better service than the DSL.

I had a similar experience...my bill had creeped to well over $100 for digital cable w/ DVR and internet. I called to complain and they very quickly lowered my total for everything to $70/month. The lady on the phone told me it would go back up over time, but that all I needed to do was call to complain again and they'd again give me the promotional rate. Nearly a year later, it has now climbed back to near $100...sounds like it's time for another call? I think you can get some pretty decent rates from Comcast - it's just sort of a pain to have to call and complain every 6 months or so

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We dropped RoadRunner last summer when I was paying $56/mo for internet only. AT&T DSL was only $25 since we already had phone service with them. We can still watch TV shows online or download music just fine. Reliability has been generally good. I don't miss the cable modem at all.

When I called to cancel the cable internet, Roadrunner offered to lower my rate to $29/mo. Gee, they must really value their customers to charge the people who don't complain twice as much as the irate customers.

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We dropped RoadRunner last summer when I was paying $56/mo for internet only. AT&T DSL was only $25 since we already had phone service with them. We can still watch TV shows online or download music just fine. Reliability has been generally good. I don't miss the cable modem at all.

When I called to cancel the cable internet, Roadrunner offered to lower my rate to $29/mo. Gee, they must really value their customers to charge the people who don't complain twice as much as the irate customers.

A lot of these stories sound like the inspiration for that AT&T commercial where the Comcast bill runs around the house with a vacuum cleaner sucking up people's money yelling, "Promotional period is over!"

What I want, but can't get, from either company is a reasonable UPLOAD speed. Even if I go for a business plan, the upload speeds are horrible. Sometimes I have to move a few hundred megs around and it takes hours. Sometimes if I need something uploaded right away I'll go across the street to Starbucks just so I can get it done. But then there's another tradeoff...

AT&T naked DSL at home: 3megs down/512k up

Starbucks wifi: 1.5 megs down/1.5 megs up

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My Comcast ISP service is generally fast and reliable. On the other hand, for me, their DVR/Cable service is horrible. Many channels have been unwatchable for weeks. Their response is that there's a problem in my area. Sometimes they even have that on the recorded message and then just hang up.

I don't see the bill because my roomate gets it at work. Anyway, I recently did the billing information on the phone and it said thank you for your last payment of $190.00!! That's for Internet and Cable, including HBO, SHO, CMAX, ENCR. Maybe I'll try the technique above to try and get it adjusted downward.

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RoadRunner? That's a TimeWeiner product. Anywho, I had cable internet ONLY (no TV, no phone) and my bill was $60/month. I threatened to switch, and they asked me what they could do to keep me on board, and I asked them to do it for $25/month TOTAL for as long as I wanted the service. They declined.

Doesn't matter who owns it. It's still RR. Well, I hope for your sake you negotiate house deals better than you do your cable bill. Anywho, I don't think RR has EVER been $60 unless you were running 3 or 4 boxes, or was it for your business ?

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Doesn't matter who owns it. It's still RR. Well, I hope for your sake you negotiate house deals better than you do your cable bill. Anywho, I don't think RR has EVER been $60 unless you were running 3 or 4 boxes, or was it for your business ?

It's still RR? Is that why everyone had to switch away from a rr.com eMail address when ComCrap took over? Seems strange that they would make everybody change to a non RR address if it was still RR.

Anywho.

I had one modem, residential service. The fee for "Internet Service" was $54.95 and taxes and all that other junk brought it up to $60.67. The base fee for service was so high because that was the only service I had. When I had cable TV in addition to internet, it was something like $40 for internet only.

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  • 2 weeks later...
We dropped RoadRunner last summer when I was paying $56/mo for internet only. AT&T DSL was only $25 since we already had phone service with them. We can still watch TV shows online or download music just fine. Reliability has been generally good. I don't miss the cable modem at all.

When I called to cancel the cable internet, Roadrunner offered to lower my rate to $29/mo. Gee, they must really value their customers to charge the people who don't complain twice as much as the irate customers.

Same here. When I called to cancel the cable television, they cut the price on the combined cable/internet package for six months. On the other hand, when I ended up having to cancel both services, Comcast didn't actually stopped it and continued billing me for another two months. Same experience as when I tried to cancel my old SBC service. I think it must be standard industry practice to ignore cancellation orders for a while in hopes that the customer will change his mind.

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  • 3 months later...

Here's a reason NOT to switch to Comcast:

Aug 29, 7:10 AM EDT

Comcast to make monthly Internet use cap official

NEW YORK (AP) -- Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, Thursday said it would set an official limit on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month.

On Oct. 1, the cable company will update its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of traffic per month, the company announced on its Web site.

Comcast has already reserved the right to cut off subscribers who use too much bandwidth each month, without specifying exactly what constitutes excessive use.

Full article here: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/COM...EMPLATE=DEFAULT

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