Hey Comcast - I’d take the internet service if you could keep the video running
This week there was a guy from Comcast going door-to-door in our neighborhood, offering promotional rates on their triple play bundle (video, data, voice), and internet service in particular. In general, I’m enthusiastic about the future prospects for combined services from either the cable companies or the telcos, and the Comcast internet service is attractively priced at $19.99 for 6mbits down/384k up, so in theory we are a good prospect for this service.
Unfortunately, I’ve been on the verge of cancelling our Comcast service for months because of sporadic outages. I’m not totally thrilled with my relatively slow PacBell/SBC DSL service (1.5mbits down/384k up), but other than widespread outages due to flooding or power interruptions, it has been quite stable. In contrast, our cable TV service went out for a week last year, and I have observed outages lasting anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more every month or so since then. I can live without CNBC or Disney Channel, but things can rapidly grind to a halt here without internet service.
The Palo Alto fiber loop passes just a block from here. I should see if it’s gotten any easier and cheaper to set up a connection. The Palo Alto Fiber-to-the-home project seems to be perpetually stalled, but the bandwidth business has been coming back over the past few years. There are enough wireless LANs visible from here, I could probably set up a mini-ISP or bandwidth co-op for the whole neighborhood.
At the end of the day, the main thing I want from an internet service provider is fast, stable performance at a reasonable price. $19.95 is a pretty good price, but Comcast hasn’t shown that it can keep basic video service running yet. Maybe later.
Update 01-21-2007: Ended up installing Comcast internet, but we’re still keeping the DSL service in place to run the office network. Internet video is a lot faster on the cable network, but it’s already been offline once.
Tags: comcast, palo alto, video, internet, isp, customer service
October 23rd, 2006 at 11:20 am
Are you sure the $19.95 is not a teaser rate? I thought that was just for the first N months.
October 23rd, 2006 at 11:31 am
It’s $19.95 for the first 4 months, then it goes up to whatever their normal rate is. I didn’t read past that, since the cable video service doesn’t stay up enough to consider using them for internet access…