I am looking for experiences here to better inform my change. I have AT&T DSL and hate it. I have hated it for years but have kept with it because it was easier and I am lazy. But really the quality is not great (I am supposed to be getting 6 mbps but nothing on my network ever reads that high...in the 4's on one computer, 3's on another, and around 1 when I connect via mobile or tablet), the price is not great, and the customer service is not great. Also, whenever my wife works from home she keeps getting booted from her VPN but nobody else seems to have that trouble. As far as I know the Houston options are: ATT (I know this sucks) Uverse (still ATT but maybe better?) Comcast Clearwire Who likes what and what are some of the better values? Thanks.
I recently switched from Comcast to AT&T DSL. DSL is moticeably slower, but not so much that I want to punch someone. I might switch back if 3 months from now I still notice the slowness. I only switched away because of Comcast's bundling. I had a dish contract for TV (to get French channels), but they wanted to up my internet price if I dropped the cable tv. This bundling is how they keep customers from leaving. That annoyed me, plus they had a cable tv problem they were too slow to fix, and I found out they were charging me $7/month for their crappy modem that had to be rebooted all the time (I know now I could have had them replace it, but I didn't know for a long time), and I've always been annoyed at how much their website sucks. So I told them to just drop the whole thing. Now, I can go 12 months on an introductory rate with AT&T. Maybe I'll switch back to a Comcast introductory rate when that one is over.
Can you buy and use your own modem and save the $7 a month? Anyone know what a similiar (or better if it makes a difference) modem costs?
At my current house, I have never not had trouble with Comcast. It has especially been bad the last three months. I now have both ATT DSL and Comcast. When up, Comcast is 3 times faster than DSL. The up is the problem.
U-Verse (the top tier) isn't any faster than Comcast, but I've found it to be much more reliable. I got sick and tired of Comcast being down for 1-3 hours at a time for whatever reason. Seemed like it happened on a regular basis. I found myself hating Comcast. My in-laws that live around the corner made the switch and told me U-Verse was better. I concur. For me, U-Verse is close to perfect: Good speeds and rarely down.
Comcast is hit or miss for alot of people. If it works well in your area, get it. Especially with VPN access, you'll need a decent connection. Clear is okay, but you might end up getting around the same speed. 5-6 mbps.
Just know that comcast will be the first to give you up in case of a subpeona for a bittorrent lawsuit. Just saying. Not that it has happened to me or anything.
Comcast was horrible but became somewhat decent when I got a new modem (that I now have to pay monthly due to a glitch ). If you want speed, then Comcast will be your best option.
Purchase a Motorola Surfboard Modem from your local walmart for about $50, call 1800-comcast and have them activate it. Voila. My biggest advice to people in Houston is not to call 713-341-1000. Sometimes you might get a local rep on the 1800 number, but I've had numerous instances of out of state reps helping me out. They also can usually get you a better deal.
I had Uverse for about 2 years and I can say that although the speed couldn't compare to Comcast, the service was much more reliable. I can only think of maybe once where it was down for any period of time. I've had Comcast for a month now and its already been down at least 4-5 times. But the speed is impressive.
Comcast is seriously pissing me off...it's been off constantly on and off for the past month. I've had two techs come out, and it continues to fail. I have to restart the modem to get signal....and it doesnt always work. When it does come back on it only stays on between 5-30 minutes before it goes off again. Extremely frustrating.
Comcast has been very, very reliable to me for the last year and a half. Before that it was awful but they've cleaned up recently.
Yes, you can. I just didn't know in a timely fashion. Which reminds me of the other problem I had with comcast, that they were unreliable about mailing me a bill. Fortunately, the billpay notification worked, so I knew the amount and due date, but I didn't see an itemization that would have shown the $7 because I wasn't getting a paper bill most of the time. I didn't tell them to go paperless (I like getting paper for all my bills) and I would get one ocassionally, but my process by then had evolved to not look at it.
This is exactly what I have done and I have only had to restart my modem 1 time. The speed is also blazing (~1.5MB/s downloads). Comcast is all about the modem. Off the record, I hear there is a way to get 4x the speed using this modem by editing a configuration file. I haven't done it because the speed is enough for me. On the record, if you pay for their top notch service and have this modem, you will get the 4x speed.
