Verizon, too?
I asked Verizon how much I could save off my TV + Phone + Internet bundle if I cancelled the TV and gave them back the set-top box. They said it would be $5 more per month. I kept the bundle.
Comcast will only bump some customers up to its fastest broadband connectivity if they subscribe to its cable television service. The American telco'n'telly giant last week promised to increase people's bandwidth in a handful of US markets – Houston, Oregon, and south west Washington – provided they sign up for cable TV. How …
I got the same 'offer' from Frontier (ex-Verizon in California). Eventually I had to give up my FiOS for Time Warner cable (....sorry. "Spectrum") to get a cheaper deal (Frontier were pulling close to $200 a month out of me so they screwed me while I didn't have any choice -- I was paying for dozens of TV channels that I never watched (half seemed to be in Spanish, anyway).
I really just want Internet. Everything else is redundant.
"Comcast says customers who pay for 60Mbps will get upgraded to up to 150Mbps, while those on 150Mbps will move to 250Mbps and those on 250Mbps will get boosted to either 400Mbps or 1Gbps service"
The articles tries to make it sound like they're not letting people get faster broadband speeds, but it seems like that only means the 400Mbps or 1Gbps speeds, since the above states people can already get 60, 150, or 250 Mbps without TV service. The linked articles says people can't get a FREE upgrade to the next speed levels (60 to 150, 150 to 250, 250 to 400/1000), but that's very different than not letting people get faster internet. They give you the upgraded speed for free because you are giving them more money for the TV service. It's just like the "double play" or "triple play" style packages they've been offering for years.
I don't know if/where you can pay to get 400Mbps or 1Gbps without TV service, but we're really not at the point today where a connection faster than 250Mbps is really beneficial, unless you're downloading a bunch of stuff from a bunch of different places simultaneously, which is not the typical usage pattern.
I get what you're saying, and if you don't need the high speed stuff then this is irrelevant to you. I pay Comcast for 50Mbps broadband with no TV service, and get nowhere near that speed. Plus I'm basically paying about the same as 50Mbps+TV anyway thanks to Comcast slowly ratcheting up the price and me not having the time nor energy to complain.
Anyway: you can look at this – Comcast offering faster speeds if you get a TV package – as Comcast offering free TV if you get faster speeds. And you might be cool with that.
But I suspect subscribers who just want decent broadband without TV will be a little cheesed off at this renewed push for TV. Just give us the damn internet, please.
C.
Poking at Xfinity's site I see there is an offer for 400Mbps for $75/mo (first 12 months - internet only), they also have a special page for gigabit offerings(up to 2Gbps) though looks like they want an address to check first.
As another user noted the data cap is still 1TB, and as you noted there isn't much use of having such a fast connection anyway for most people. I have a 250mbps plan and the ONLY reason I'm on that plan is it was the one(at the time anyway) that gave me the fastest upload (20Mbit). I'd be perfectly fine with a 50Mbps or even less (less than two years ago I was on another cable provider in another city with a 30Mbps plan, though upload was only 2 or 3Mbps).
I saw flyers around recently advertising 400Mbit(that it was available, no mention of free upgrades) so I have no idea if I will get upgraded, I really don't care since I won't use that speed anyway.
We have to take their over priced TV offerings even if we don't want it? I haven't had the TV on in couple of years except for a couple of DVD's and I have friends the same way. I've doing the "life" thing rather than Youtube and Streaming Services. Much more peaceful and enjoyable.
But then, I have Spectrum... with Internet and Phone it's about $80/month. I add TV is another $80/month... meh.... a pox on them.
I ditched Sky last year due to the non stop price hikes that saw a 40Mb fibre (+phone) being priced at £46.99... and went to Virgin who offered 100Mb + Phone for £32... what a mistake that was. My average since Nov was less than 20Mb and I actually got one of their staff to admit that their network couldn't handle the traffic.
I got out of that contract with some refunds and so forth and went over to Vodafone... f'kin halfwits lied through their teeth about not being able to transfer my BT originated number from Virgin (they never even tried) and I cancelled that within a few weeks and have been refunded everything paid... so almost 4 weeks of internet for free and a phone line that was never used as Virgin kept my line/number open waiting for the number port... which costs me line rental.
I got so fed up with crapp companies that I bit the bullet and went with Zen... it's pricey at £50 a month for phone/full fibre and free calls 24/7... But it's been a hassle free journey so far. Line active within 2 days or ordering, internet within 7 days and so far getting 62Mb on a 77Mb line with more tweaking to be done (I know it can support 69Mb as I had that via Vodafone).
I also have to say that I'm impressed with the supplied router too... Far better than anything supplied by Sky/Virgin/Vodafone.
The moral of this story.... pay peanuts, get shat on by monkeys.
I ditched Sky last year due to the non stop price hikes
I've just had two unsolicited letters in the space of two weeks from Sky confirming that my "half price" fibre broadband offer is being extended into its third year (actually, possibly fourth by the end as they reset my contract date when I moved) and reminding me of that in case I'd not noticed.
All I had to do originally to get it was to log in and threaten to cancel: no human intervention, no-one to argue with. I suspect that once you are deemed to be the kind of customer that accepts a price hike, you keep getting them.
While our system is far from perfect there are at least third party providers. About two years ago I told Shaw Cable to get stuffed and signed up with aebc.com
No requirement for getting TV service, and speedtest.net tells me I am nearly always getting more than the speed I am paying for.
Starting with Fiber Optic 200 Mbps Internet and Telephone (via the same Fiber Optic) service.
I could get a speed bump to 300 Mbps, add TV service (which I don't really use, seriously it's just sitting there unused for months on end), and reduce the monthly cost by a few dollars.
Of course they promised two years of the better deal, and then arbitrarily truncated it after about one year. Something that they are now in serious trouble for. One client took them to Small Claims and has set a precedent that will lead to a CCTS decision, and likely a Class Action lawsuit.
Every year, for the past 12 years, I had to call Crapcast and threaten to leave if they did not offer me new customer promotional rates. I would make a pot of coffee on a Saturday morning and say to myself, "Crapcast, today we do battle!" I would argue my position that I am a low cost customer. I own my home, thus you are not rolling a truck to the same address 3 times a year to disconnect/reconnect service. I do all my inside wiring and own my own modem. After about 60-90 minutes I would eventually win the battle and get some sort of promotional rate. They would alway try to up sell me to an internet+TV service for only a little extra/month. I eventually figured out how to stop them in their tracks and save myself a lot of time and energy. I would simply tell them, "It is against my religion to have TV service in my home."
Of course, my threats of leaving was a bluff. My only alternative was slow DSL service which cost even more $. That all changed last year when ATT started burying flexible conduit under everyone's driveway. I had been hounding ATT for years when our HOA dropped bulk service from Crapcast. Last year when my annual call to Crapcast was due, I had already researched ATT and made up my mind I was switching. I didn't put up much of a battle. I am pleased to report I have ATT Fiber 50 Mbps symmetric service for $30/mo when combined with my ATT wireless bill. I left my Crapcast equipment installed, but unplugged. If ATT chooses to play games in 2 years, I actually do have a viable option and can switch in seconds.
The Federal Trade Comm. and state consumer protection agencies are suppose to protect consumers from blackmail and extortion but large companies in the U.S. are typically able to violate law with complete impunity. Even when there are tens of thousands of consumer fraud complaints, the government agencies are slow to hold criminal corporations accountable. If and when they decide to prosecute these companies the punishment is so insignificant as to not even be a slap on the wrist. It's a disgrace and the very reason why corporate crime is so pervasive.
The dirty little secret of both cable and DSL providers, essentially since they became a thing, is that the bottleneck is usually not between your home and their "head end". It's usually somewhere between there and "the cloud". You and your neighbors may each get allegedly 100Mbps, but only if you are getting stuff that's originated (or cached) on their system. If you dare venture on the real internet, you will all be fighting for the same bandwidth. Some may recall the "Cable Hog" ads run by the DSL providers when cable started competing with them. Yeah, well, the DSL guys did the same thing. In 2000, I was working for a settop-box maker, and was able to read one of those expensive reports on the actual state of U.S. Internet access. Seems that both cable (allegedly 1.5 Mbps) and DSL (allegedly 128Kbps, IIRC) were actually provisioning their systems for something like 20Kbps/subscriber, apparently on the idea that "how fast can one person click a link, and what are the odds his neighbor will do it at that exact time?
The speedtest results may be an artifact of running a peer on their own network, so it is not actually measuring "speed to the internet" but "speed to somewhere on your ISP's network". Comcast was caught doing it back in the day, and assume that ATT is up to their usual antics, especially since being acquired by SBC (Sodomized By Cowboys)
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Shaw Cable offered a similar deal in Alberta, Canada about 7 years ago. When a friend of mine called them to order the service they asked what kind of TV he had and he responded that he didn't have one. My friend was told that he couldn't order the service without owning a TV, even though he had no intention of watching cable, he just wanted the internet.
So my friend drove down to the recycling depot and pulled a TV that looked like it had been run over by a tractor out of one of the bins. He took said TV home and propped it up on it's side against the wall in his office. When the installer saw it he asked if my friend actually wanted the TV hooked up, to which he declined. My friend still got his internet.
It's interesting the things we do these days solely to satisfy arbitrary requirements.
When Comcast calls with a lower price for a TV+Internet be sure to ask how much your total monthly bill will be. In addition to the base price there is a local TV station fee, local sports franchise fee (some markets), hardware rental fees (you MUST have a TV box nowadays, sometimes they include the first box, sometimes not), HD technology fee (!!), and various local, state, and federal fees.
...and current offer is for a 12-month contract. The base price will not change for the duration of the contract, but all the associated fees can and will.
Internet-only service currently does not have any of those associated fees.
I've had the Comcast triple play package (phone, cable, internet) for years; I got cable originally because my house sits in a valley with no line-of-sight to broadcast towers, so basically I have unacceptable over-the-air TV reception here. Eventually I splurged for HD which is mainly for sports. Sports on standard def is almost unusable these days because you cannot even read the score and stat boxes.
I got the cable internet as soon as it was offered in my area (I had insider information ahead of the availability) because my only other option was dialup modems; DSL wasn't in my area at that time, and later it was available but very expensive and much slower.
Finally, I got the phone package because it saved me a fortune compared to local phone service plus long distance charges, and it provided the triple bundle discounts; the only consideration now would be dropping that and going completely cell-based for phone service.
Every couple of years Comcast bumps my speed w/o changing plans. I don't even remember what plan tier I am on. And they swap out the modem regularly to get higher speeds. (I lease the modem from Comcast because buy-your-own is an iffy proposition at best with the voice service. The modem swap rate is about the same as the payback time for owning my own so I figure it is break-even.)
So, basically, I'm a satisfied Comcast customer. Oh, yeah, originally the cable and internet service was Adelphia, before Comcast acquired them. Now, if you want to talk about a really crappy company...they made Comcast look like geniuses in comparison.
I just attempted to contact Comcast. They were as awful as they were many years ago when I had Comcast service and got rid of it to go to AT&T even though AT&T was slower and more expensive.
1 I went looking for their customer service number. I had to go through three screens to get it. They don't want people to call them.
2 once I got the customer 'service' number, I called it. I was disconnected twice.
3 once I got the system to stay up, I was put into Voice Call Hell. Having navigated the maze, I was placed on hold.
4 after 14 minutes 28 seconds on hold, I heard voices... except that it wasn't customer 'service' talking to me. It was customer 'service' talking to someone else. I could hear both sides of the conversation, including when the victim... that is, the customer... told customer 'service' their name, social security number, address, and account number. I say again, I heard the whole thing. It seems that Comcast has a slight security problem.
5 after a further 5 minutes 57 seconds listening to customer 'service' lead the victim around, I heard a click and then dead air.
It was a really good thing that I had my cell phone up on speaker and was doing something else the whole time. I would have been quite annoyed to have spent over 20 minutes for nothing (other than valuable personal info from a Comcast victim, that is.) As it was I got a few things done while letting Comcast prove to me that they were still as bad as ever.
I then called AT&T. I was connected within 45 seconds, and done in less than three minutes. I think that AT&T wants my business. Comcast couldn't care less. AT&T's prices have fallen and their speed has improved. What I get from AT&T (officially 75 Mb/s down, really more like 70 Mb/s) is now as fast as what Comcast's website says I can get from them, and the price is less than $5/month more. I'll pay $5/month (a.k.a. $60/year) in exchange for not having to deal with Comcast customer 'service'. AT&T says that they will have 150 Mb/s available in my area 'soon' and 1 Gb/s available 'in the near future'. I'm not holding my breath waiting, but for now 75 will do. Comcast's site says that they have 150 Mb/s and 300 Mb/s in my area right now, and 2 Gb/s 'soon', but they've Comcast. If they are hard to contact _before_ I start paying them, well, I remember how they were years ago when I used to pay them. I will not be repeating the experience any time soon.
The saga of the US government's plan to rip and replace China-made communications kit from the country's networks has a new twist: following reports that applications for funding far outstripped the cash set aside, it appears two-thirds of such applications lack adequate cost estimates or sufficient supporting evidence.
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) informed Congress that it had found deficiencies in 122 of the 181 of the applications filed with it by US carriers for funding to reimburse them for replacing telecoms equipment sourced from Chinese companies.
The FCC voted nearly a year ago to reimburse medium and small carriers in the US for removing and replacing all network equipment provided by companies such as Huawei and ZTE. The telecoms operators were required to do this in the interests of national security under the terms of the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Wednesday welcomed the decision by a group of telecom and cable industry associations to abandon their legal challenge of the US state's net neutrality law SB822.
"My office has fought for years to ensure that internet service providers can't interfere with or limit what Californians do online," said Bonta in a statement. "Now the case is finally over.
"Following multiple defeats in court, internet service providers have abandoned this effort to block enforcement of California's net neutrality law. With this victory, we’ve secured a free and open internet for California's 40 million residents once and for all."
The Biden White House has put forward a plan that could see 40 percent of households in the United States getting subsidized high-speed internet, with some having service free of charge.
The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was created as part of the recently passed infrastructure law, and will reimburse bills from internet service providers (ISPs).
Households covered by the ACP will have internet service costs reduced by up to $30 a month, or up to $75 a month if they live on tribal lands.
The FTC has settled a case in which Frontier Communications was accused of charging high prices for under-delivered internet connectivity.
The US telecommunications giant has promised to be clearer with subscribers on connection speeds, and will cough up more than $8.5 million, or less than a day in annual profit, to end the matter.
Frontier used to primarily pipe broadband over phone lines to people in rural areas, expanded to cities, and today supplies the usual fare to homes and businesses: fiber internet, TV, and phone services.
Starlink customers who've been itching to take their dish on the road can finally do so – for a price.
The Musk-owned satellite internet service provider quietly rolled out a feature this week called Portability which, for an additional $25 per month, will allow customers to take their service with them anywhere on the same continent – provided they can find a clear line-of-sight to the sky and the necessary power needed to keep the data flowing.
That doesn't mean potential Starlink customers sign up for service in an area without a wait list and take their satellite to a more congested area. Sneaky, but you won't get away with it. If Starlink detects a dish isn't at its home address, there's no guarantee of service if there's not enough bandwidth to go around, or there's another outage.
The Communication and Workers Union (CWU) will this week publish the timetable to run an industrial action ballot over the pay rise BT gave to members recently, with the telco's subsidiaries to vote separately.
Earlier this month, BT paid its 58,000 frontline workers a flat rate increase of £1,500 ($1,930) for the year, upping it from the £1,200 ($1,545) initially offered. BT hadn't cleared this increase with the CWU, and the union branded the offer as unacceptable at a time when inflation in Britain is expected to soar by 10 percent this year.
In a public town hall meeting last week, the CWU said it will take an "emergency motion" to the Annual Conference this week to "set out the exact ballot timetable," said Karen Rose, vice president at CWU.
Parts of South Yorkshire are to get fiber broadband run through mains water pipes in a two-year trial to evaluate the viability of the technology for connecting more homes.
The move will see fiber-optic cable strung through 17 kilometers of water mains between Barnsley and Penistone under a government-sanctioned technology trial. The project appears to be part of a £4m fund announced last year to trial ways of connecting up hard-to-reach homes without digging up roads.
Another section of the trial will be to test out whether fiber installed inside water pipes can be used to help water companies detect leaks, and so cut down on water wastage.
In an analysis of 3,356 fixed-line broadband deals in 220 countries, price comparison website Cable.co.uk found that the UK has the 92nd cheapest internet, beating the US, which came in 134th place.
Based on 41 packages, the average cost per month for broadband in Britain came in at $39.01. Stateside, this rose to $55, from 34 packages measured.
For these bulwarks of western democracy, 92nd and 134th place isn't particularly impressive. But if you really want to shave the dollars off your internet bill, you have a number of options.
The United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has labelled Kaspersky, China Mobile, and China Telecom as threats to national security.
The three companies join Huawei, ZTE, Chinese radio-comms vendor Hytera, and Chinese video surveillance systems vendors Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company and Dahua Technology Company.
Kaspersky is the first non-Chinese company to be added to the FCC's list, but the agency did not tie its decision to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Chinese telco Pacific Networks and its subsidiary ComNet must cease all services within the United States within 60 days from Wednesday March 16 following an order issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
In a canned statement, the FCC cited "potential security threats" as the justification for its action, which passed on a 4-0 vote.
The agency concluded that the companies, which it deemed US subsidiaries of Chinese state-owned entities, are "subject to exploitation, influence and control by the Chinese government" and "highly likely" to be forced into complying with requests from Beijing without independent judicial oversight.
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