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Review by Anubis Prime See Profile

  • Location: Avonmore, Westmoreland, PA, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified. (24 month contract)
  • No Cap
Works very well. Great speeds and little downtime.
No downsides anymore
Great contract price. Can't do better!
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)

Update 06/20/2024
Have moved to GB service. I have my own equipment as I've found the provided/leased equipment is no bueno.
The service has remained excellent.
 
Update 8/18/19:
I have cut the cord with TV, but have maintained my internet service. I own my own modem and router. I maintain the Blast! tier of internet and it has been near-perfect. Down times are minimal and I've been able to negotiate great pricing. They are trying to lure me with their streaming TV packages which appears to be getting better all the time. I tried one about a year ago and it was disappointing, but I may reconsider depending on if my current TV streaming service hikes their prices.

Internet service has been fantastic!

Update 3/14/2016:

My modem downstream channels are upgraded to 16. TV has been good. Not too shabby!
I'm locked in for about 17 months more. The price is good for Blast!, X1, and HD Premier on 6 TVs.

Update: 5/29/2015. I moved and scored a double play deal with Xfinity X1 (with near every channel and DVR) and 105 Blast! The X1 platform was very buggy when it was first installed last year, but has come to be excellent in the last few months with software updates. Internet service has been fantastic as always. I upgraded my trusty SB6120 to a SB6183 in attempt to futureproof my hardware.

Xfinity has "temporarily" suspended data usage caps, and I am thankful for this. Our household heavily uses Netflix. We game and stream quite a bunch. One month our usage approached 700GB.

All is well for now!

Update: September 2012. I moved to Xfinity Blast! in my apartment and have the most basic 22 channels. With DOCSIS 3.0 it is very, very fast. This area now also has upstream bonding. The downtimes are rare, and usually are resolved within a few hours. I have a new phone with 4G LTE that I can hotspot for those rare downtimes. When I have called customer service they have been polite and seemed very interested in helping me with my concerns regarding any downtime or billing. I do get letters from Xfinity saying they would like to review my account to see if I can save money. They really can't unless I want more services. They keep sending and sending those letters though.

Update: July 2010:. The price was going from promotional 82.99 (see below June 2009) to 132.99. For financial reasons we have backed off of most of our cable and now just have internet (as always) and the basic 22 channels. I had called to see if I could keep the promotion or if they had a similar one (for just tv and internet--no phone). They of course did not. When we asked to downgrade...THEN they could give us a comparable price. (THUS the decrease in rating for "Pre Sales information") By that time we had battled back and forth and set ourselves giving it up.

Most of the shows we watch we can see on the internet.

WHEN the internet works which is most of the time, the speeds are great. I decided to jump aboard OpenDNS again and the page loads seem a bit snappier. One to two times per week the modem with cycle a few times cutting me of when I least expect it. Might be related to weather? Who knows. Largely the internet has worked well but then when I'm having a problem with modem cycling the solution is very elusive. I'll be looking at the competition in the next year to see what kind of deal I can get. (THUS the decrease in rating for "Connection Reliability")

Update: June 2009: We've downgraded to Digital Starter with HSI. We are still very pleased with the HSI. No problems or hiccups. Good, consistent performance for all of our needs--web surfing, downloading, MMO's XBOX Live, and Wii.

Update: Oct 2008: Well I got divorced and I've moved. Comcast works quite well out here in Indianola, PA. We have the triple play here and it's a great deal! (yes I ended up going back to cable...it's what my wife had)

Update Feb 2007: Got a call offering a fee upgrade to 16/1 tier. It's a welcome upgrade from the 8/768 for which I'm under contract. They also extended my contract out another year (so I now as of March have another 1.5 years at a good price). Connection can be a little flaky in the evening. Pings sometimes go up significantly and speeds drop. It's doubtful that its my equipment because if my equipment was bad it would be just that--bad, period. It wouldn't be bad M-F 7pm-11pm and sometimes on Saturday. When it works, it works very well.

I now use OpenDNS instead of Comcast's DNS servers and am pleased with the performance boost to surfing the web. Gaming works fairly well. BUT playing an MMO can be a little tedious when the pings go up. I'm not sure if they've oversold my area or if Comcast VOIP and VoD drag down the total bandwidth available on my node. Something like that must be going on because it's too much of a coincidence that it only seems to happen when everyone in the neighborhood is home from work/school in the evening.

Update (8/28/2006) Upgraded again to upper tier. Got a great price and with a year contract. I'm not worried about the contract as I have been customer for a while. I'm still quite pleased with the service.

I still don't like the fact that I am forced to pay for economy basic cable that I don't use. I will never go back to cable TV. I would rather have an antenna on my roof for OTA. My neighbor has Comcast Digital HD Cable with a new HD TV--and yes it is hooked up correctly. I can't believe people actually pay for a poor picture and a slooooowww DVR box. My analog TV and satellite setup has a far better picture. The cable system in my area is recently rebuilt--so the whole thing baffles me.

Update (9/19/05) Downgraded my plan, but now speeds are back up due to the new speed upgrades. I now only have 384 up, but it has been plenty to fill my needs.

Update (3/3/05): Upgrade happened, getting ~5000 down and around 720 up. Can't complain too much. No problems or significant outages come to memory. Still happy!

Update (9/12/03): Had an occasional problem with having to iprelease/ipconfig 8/03 but this was due to equipment upgrades. It works fine now. Speeds are higher up and down 3000/256, and Xbox Live still works great. My Xbox, notebook and desktop can all be on (via router) at the same time and there is no apparent degradation in performance.

Downside: in recent months I was forced to buy econo-basic cable to keep the price down. I have Dish, but now my daughter has 13 channels in her room (as per my review below). Was going to knock 'value for money' down one notch to 3, but if we keep the current 3000+/256, I'm satisfied.

________________________________
@Home to ATTBI--now sort of Comcast. The billing is changed over, but I guess I'm still on the ATTBI network for now.

I have a Dish, so the price was going to go up for me, so I had econobasic cable installed in my daughter's room. It (HSI + econobasic) beats paying the same money for nothing but HSI.

Speeds work for me. I surf, email and game on XBOX Live. No lag.

We'll see what happens when everything is changed over. If I don't notice any change it'll be a good thing. In general conversation w/ a tech, he inferred that since Comcast purchased all of ATTBI's infrastructure, IPs, DNS servers, etc. would remain the same so the 'transfer' to Comcast would be 'seamless'.

Fingers are crossed! Here's hoping for the best!

member for 23.1 years, 3227 visits, last login: 37 days ago
updated 37 days ago


BrooklynZoo
For Everthing Else, There's Mastercard
join:2001-04-01
Atlanta, GA

BrooklynZoo

Member

Can you post a speed test???

We would like to see your uploading and downloading speeds.

Anubis Prime
join:2001-06-01
Avonmore, PA
·Comcast XFINITY

Anubis Prime

Member

Re: Can you post a speed test???

Sure,

Here's my speedtest results:

Time (US east) Test Results.. Comment..
2003-03-12 21:44:49 Speed test (la) 1729/191 kbps
2003-02-26 20:17:44 Speed test (la) 1729/162 kbps
2003-01-26 15:49:36 Speed test (la) 1729/184 kbps
2003-01-21 16:45:30 Speed test (la) 1729/156 kbps
2003-01-20 21:57:49 Speed test (la) 1733/228 kbps
2003-01-18 10:01:00 Speed test (la) 1729/240 kbps

BrooklynZoo
For Everthing Else, There's Mastercard
join:2001-04-01
Atlanta, GA

BrooklynZoo

Member

Re: Can you post a speed test???

Cool. I am moving to Atlanta in June of this year. I wasn't sure if I should go with Comcast or DSHell from BellSouth.
rhett33
join:2001-01-26
Woodstock, GA

rhett33

Member

Nah..........Seemless ? No..........

I'm in Georgia. Comcast officially took over in Feb. on that day certain sites I was unable to navigate to-Contacted Armstrongs office-it was corrected by late that evening. Had been 8 days, thought the sites might be down. Nope Comcast inadvert. had blocked them. Now, email is bouncing from certain good sites. It is comcast since attbi officially doesn't exist. My address,tho, still end with @attbi.com

krystle
@essex01.md.comcast.n

krystle

Anon

it might suck if u live in an apartment

when i used to live in a townhome comcast was pretty ok. i only had problems once in a blue moon, and the technicians would always come over to fix it in a hurry. but NOW i live in an apartment. and when everyone in the neighborhood is watching digital cable or surfing the web, i do not get any type of internet service whatsoever. this happens at least ONCE A DAY. i've had my modem replaced 3 times, and to get the internet to work again i often have to unplug/replug in the cords, or just sit and wait.
KGBguy
join:2001-04-29

KGBguy

Member

What caught my eye

is that you said your next door dude has an HD and it is fuzzy... the funny thing is that HD has no ability to get fuzzy it is a digital carier and "fuzzy" belongs in analog world. Souond like you or your buddy not sure what you are talking about.
fiberguy2
My views are my own.
Premium Member
join:2005-05-20

1 edit

fiberguy2

Premium Member

No contracts...

You don't have a "contract"... you just have a promotional price for a 12 month time. Comcast doesn't put people in contracts so you could cancel at any time if you wanted.

CDV and VOD (especially) don't affect HSI speeds. You can game effectively on a 128kbps line. You're on a 16/1 line. Your ping times are what will ultimately affect performance in gaming.

Anubis Prime
join:2001-06-01
Avonmore, PA

Anubis Prime

Member

It was indeed a contract.

No, actually it was a contract and when I read it did indeed state there was a fee for terminating early. They offered me a low price in turn for a commitment.

I have the link, but it is not working right now.