What is Digg?175 Comments
- stetic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"its important that Comcast does not get away from this incident."
Are you kidding, Comcast has been ripping us for years. In several European and Asian countries consumers are offered cable that is 2x faster and half the price. We need to stand up against this monopoly for more than just this incident!!! - chickenrob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5yes, but if you were paying for running water and only got a trickle you would be pissed off.
- gamerzworld, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Who Cares? In fact who in the hell would give Comcast money? THEY KILLED TECH TV!!
- BritOverseas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For all these people saying, "well, just use another company" Where do you live? In the center of NY, LA, SF? Because these are about the only places I know of that offer more than one cable service.
I live in a city of 4m people, we have Time Warner. If you don't like TW, then basically you are *****. There ARE no other cable services (even the "alternative" cable companies built by new housing subdivisions use TW's backbone).
Since I moved into my brand new house 7 months ago on an established subdivision/community of 12500 acres or nearly 100,00 people, I have had TW out 8 times. They have replaced the cable to the local switching box (in my back yard), my internet has gone down for DAYS countless times, my picture on my cable TV is horrendous and basically, they still have not managed to do anything about it. It is so bad, I can not even use Skype. My bill for Internet/TV per month is over $120, do you think I am getting value for money?
DSL (which may get my vote soon) is the ONLY other option (for internet) and the ONLY company that offers DSL in my area is the same ***** that we got rid off at my last house because their ***** never worked, their billing was ALWAYS wrong and I would NEVER use them again...
Free choice my arse.. - volcompimp, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4This is not news nor is it even factual. This is ONE USERS EXPERIENCE.
I have friends who have Comcast and game all the time at good speeds as
well as download at very fast speeds well over 100k a second (for example, I dono where it caps).
I live in the East Bay (Newark, CA). People need to quit posting crap like this.
Anyone can go on a forum and post about bad experiences. Look on any tech support forum. - reets, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"past few weeks have been undergoing massive slowdowns due to a faulty AT&T backbone"
And how is this Comcasts fault if it's an AT&T problem exactly? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not sure what else one would expect from a non-guaranteed bandwdith bus architecture.
- dralter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No it is Comcast I talked to Tech Support and they said there has been a problem in the Bay Area since February 15th.
- tileeater, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1comcast is the single worst corporation i have ever known.
- joshpape, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Tiscali is exactly the same in the UK. Click on there google adwords and cost them money. Punish these crappy companies
- dknighton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@chrisstar7
I don't care what your speed on your "Comcast-optimized-company-laptop" is...your CUSTOMERS are not getting those speeds, by and large. Yes...when I had Comcast, I had a splitter. It was the splitter that came IN THE COMCAST INTERNET SELF-INSTALL KIT. Several members of my family have Comcast. They have all had the same problems. Techs, such as yourself, have come out and replaced THE COMCAST SPLITTER. It made NO DIFFERENCE. And by the way...they WERE charged for a service call EACH AND EVERY TIME.
I know you're drinking the Comcast Kool-Aid, but maybe your company's problem is that it is in denial. If you would...I don't know....LISTEN to the feedback from your forums, and from sites like this, you might realize that you do, indeed, have problems.
At heart, it's a basic issue of supply and demand. As your customers get more knowledgeable about what they can do on the Internet, they start demanding the bandwidth that you sell them. You simply don't have enough of it to meet your customer's demands. You should consider teiring your services (like the DSL companies do), so people only pay for what they want. You would find a lot fewer angry users that way. - dknighton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"everyone always tries to tell me that cable is faster than DSL, yet when ever I use someones connection that's on comcast, it's slower than my DSL."
I was a Comcast user for years, and recently switched to BellSouth DSL. I have found the same to be true. Cable broadband networks in general are oversubscribed. I can sit and monitor speeds in the afternoons when people start coming home from work, and watch my connect speed drop as people hop on the net. I was paying for 6mbit, and could only consistently get 1Gbit. That's probably why I remained a customer for so long, though...I didn't notice the speed drop-offs for regular browsing. Once I started telecommuting and had to VPN to several servers for file transfer, I noticed.
My 3Mbit DSL is consistent. The first few days after the install are rough as you have to call support and get them to smooth out problems on the line, but now it smokes, all day, every day. - pinsomniac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Comcast seems rather inconsistent at times with speed, but my larger issue is random disconnects and downtime that happens off and on for periods of weeks at a time. Thing is, I still find it an improvement over SBC Yahoo!. (See: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15257753)
At this rate, I might as well tether my Sprint phone to get online. I'll probably get faster speeds, too. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Lol! Nobody deserves bandwidth because you have nothing to eat. Ask Sally Struthers for some cheesy poofs.
- jmichaelg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Monopolies always suck. Comcast gives Berkeley a fee for being allowed to be the only cable provider in Berkeley.
Want better cable service? Go to a city council meeting and demand that the city drop its exclusivity deal with Comcast. Cities that have multiple cable providers have far fewer customer service complaints and lower prices. Tacoma Washington, for example, has two cable providers and is looking at a third cable provider. Fees are 35-40% lower than nearby cities with exclusive franchises.
If your cable service sucks, it's your own damn fault for not engaging in your city's politics. Don't blame Comcast - blame yourself. The cable companies have cities buffaloed on the idea that the city has "to protect the consumer from under-funded competitors" and the cities stupidly agree. It isn't the end of the world if an under-funded cable company goes *****-up - the other providers will scoop up the customer. - kmartshopper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Funny how the backbone problems are from the same ***** that want to create a tiered Internet.
Not to mention from the same people that won't even let you watch TV without encrypting nearly ever god damned channel you PAY for (at least in Boston this is true, I know not everywhere). Even the analog TV is scrambled...
I'm also sick of cable companies crying about how much money they put into the infrastructure to maintain it. They make a fortune to provide what I consider a public service. Half the money comes from the tax payers anyway. Long term contracts to monopolies such as Comcast only create unhappy users.
I digg. - thyratron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I guess I'll give this a Digg because the subject is on the money, but it'd be nice to see some real investigative journalism going into such stories in depth. Whining isn't going to do much of anything until there's a positive change of leadership at the federal level, and such change filters down to the F.C.C. It's loot and pillage time, and we're just here to be cash cows for big business.
SBC DSL service has been tolerable, but only because it's been a dirt-cheap promo price.
I think they're doing it as much to kill competition as to get customers. With $14.99 or even $12.99 a month DSL plans, they'll kill all of the small ISPs. Even big ones too? Seems like I hardly hear of Earthlink anymore. AOL has taken a big hit. (although they've announced a DSL/Cable upgrade to services although with a minimal rate boost that may help them)
When the term runs out on my DSL and I'm faced with a higher rate, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm even less optimistic than in the past about SBC, now that they're merged with AT&T which is total scum. My family normally used prepaid long-distance, but one day accidentally called me with AT&T. A call of less than 3 minutes (about 200 miles away, same state) cost them about $10!!! It wasn't just an obscene per-minute rate. They had all sorts of fees tacked on including a few dollars just for billing! Total slime. AT&T is a core backbone provider. They've been pushing to provide inferior routing for normal traffic. I don't believe these people want to be a good "access" provider. I think they want to be a "content" provider.
They want to extort more money not only from customers, but providers (Google, Yahoo, Apple etc) giving second rate service to those that don't pay more. That monopolistic use of power is likely to bolster whatever attempts they make to become downloadable/streamable video/music providers. They'll also attempt to cripple VoIP telephone service.
We're in an era where the U.S. should have very cheap very fast broadband, free wireless, and a healthy economy with competitive emerging new video services. Through corrupt federal legislation/regulation we instead have high market prices due to artificial scarcity.
For more evidence of AT&T attempting to cripple the free market, look to their recent lawsuits claiming patent rights over MPEG4/h.264. If they could patent and extort money from the language we speak, they would. Doing the same with the launguages our data speaks is just as bad.
What the f**k is wrong in America? We've got cities kicking people out of their homes to turn the land over to DEVELOPERS (for commercial use - not building hospitals, schools, or freeways), but the government won't use this eminent domain to put patents aside or moderate them for the public good?
I think it was in Greek times a phrase meaning "give them food and circus and they won't rebel" came into being. We'll we've got a bunch of junk-food stuffed fat americans watching way to much junk "clear channel" television, way too apathetic to do squat.
Wake up America! - Nighthawke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Tisk. Comcast blew it big time this time around. I thought when AOL oversold their dialup pools back in the late 90's the other ISP's stood up and took notice.
Guess not.
Looks like alot of folks will be in contact with billing regarding paying for lousy service. - Guspaz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This digg submission is wrong on so many levels.
1) Overselling is normal, GOOD for consumers, and necessary
2) The current issues are not due to overselling issues, but a surge in demand that their current capacity can't satisfy
3) This is a recent problem, not a long term issue
4) This has no business on Digg.
To go into my points a bit more in depth:
1) Overselling is so misunderstood. Anybody claiming that overselling is bad is simply uninformed. Can you imagine if you had to pay for bandwidth at cost? You'd be paying $300 for 5mbit cable internet! Overselling normally works transparently to users. Imagine a 1000mbit pipe. You sell 10mbit connections on it. After selling 100 connections, you've sold 1000mbit of bandwidth. But what is this, most people don't transfer at max speed 24/7? You're only using 10% of the connection! Well, why not sell some more? You can probably sell 800 connections, and everybody will still get their full speed when they want.
So, overselling is the ONLY way that consumer-level prices can be as low as they are. Overselling is good! If you don't want oversold bandwidth, go lease a fibre-optic line from a tier-1 ISP and see how expensive it is.
2) Comcast admits it has capacity issues in that area, and claims to be working to get more capacity in as soon as possible. Keeping in mind that ordering new fiber lines can take weeks to get installed (not Comcast's fault), this is just a surge in demand issue, not an overselling issue. It isn't like you can just call up the tier-1 ISPs and say "I need a new GigE connection, can you have it by tommorow?". Once you order a connection, it might take a month before it gets turned up. Comcast is at the whim of their own ISPs here.
3) Because this is a surge-in-demand type issue, they are not doing this on purpose. Nobody is saying "Hey, we can fit more people in this area, it doesn't matter if they get slow speeds!". Instead, they're saying "Well, we've got capacity issues, but they'll be resolved shortly, so selling new connections isn't a big deal."
The responsible thing to do would be to halt new signups until the capacity issues are resolved, but (most) large ISPs don't do that. Regardless, this isn't a conspiracy to oversell to excess.
4) Whines don't belong on Digg. Comcast has a problem, they're dealing with it, why is this considered digg-worthy?
Now, before you go claiming I'm a Comcast fanboy or something, keep something in mind. I live in Montréal, Canada. I have DSL. I've never lived in the US, I've never used a comcast connection. But I *DO* know enough about ISPs to know that this digg submission is total BS. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1psyon, regardless of what you may have been told, they turn a proffit even if selling services at $19.99/mo. By charging more than twice that to most of it's customers, they are making a cash cow. Overselling is NOT their main sorce of income, overpricing IS.
- psyon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Overselling of services is common practice, its how you keep it profitable. Hosting companies do it, ISPs do it, just about any service provider does it. You oversell your capacity knowing that alot of your users will never use their full share.
- iKato, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Between this and its rape of TechTV and G4, it's understandable why most here loathe the company.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Comcast can go ***** themselves. They have no idea how to communicate within their company, and nearly everyone that works there is an idiot. I have had signal problems on my internet connection for months now, and everytime I call they give me a different answer. One person told me they have to install and amp outside in the closet, and yet another told me that the drop box is screwed up and they need to replace it. Comcast is seriously retarded, and it's gonna be hilarious when they start to lose money because of fios. I cannot wait until they need to sell their precious newly built skyscraper in Philadelphia to cover their bankruptcy. You hear that Mr. Roberts, you crooked piece of *****. I can't wait until your crooked ass company goes belly up. You run a disgustingly incompetent company, and you deserve to go out of business you ***** *****. All of the ***** that has been dished out by Comcast customer support is going to be spit right back into your uncooperative, selfish, money grabbing face. If I could, I'd make it my personal mission to see you rot in hell, but I'm not like you. I will never sink that low. You will get what's coming to you Brain, oh you will. ***** Comcast!
http://www.dpodgor.net - TailGater, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Comcast is one ***** up ISP.
It promises 6mbps/350kbps (down/up). I pay 45 ***** dollars and what do I get? 100kpbs/200kbps. Its been like this for more than couple weeks and they dont have a clue as how to fix it.
Time to go broadband. - teknotant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I live in a sea of old people so i get 6Mbps or more with comcast service.
- rideaurocks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1American isps suck. I couldn't figure out why my wife's family was getting such slow bittorrent speeds. Turns out Comcast's max upload speed for REGULAR customers is about 384Kbps. So with the upload speed at default in Azureus you'd be flooding the upstream in no time. Dropped it to 20-30KB - problem fixed. Here in Canada upload speeds are double that (on Cogeco at least) and higher for me cuz I opted for pro service. 10M down/1M up. I love pulling down files from everywhere at approx 1.5MB (that's right. bytes). Fast connections rule.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have Comcast in its always lightening fast. On newsgroups I can max out the speed at 4mbps. In games my ping is usually 15-40. Can't beat it.
- hazard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0But isnt the Bay are the one place where Google has launched free wi-fi? Of all the cities to complain about ISPs its the one with free wifi?
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I feel for these people. I would never use cable for these reasons exactly. I have had 6mbit DSL for 3 years now through sonic.net. They're great. My "ping" in online games is always under 40, and often a bit below 20. I understand that is really good. Not that it helps me, I'm pretty bad at these games.
I wish I had FIOS. My only beef is my upstream is only 512Kb/sec. I'd love to have 5Mb/sec up. - Guspaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0meaniketd: Oh, I agree. Are they handling this the best way possible? No, better communication is something that most large ISPs need. But is this a vast conspiracy for which they need to be punished like cheese06 claims? No.
I often wish that the large datacenters like ThePlanet would offer DSL service. These are companies that know how to communicate with customers and provide good technical support. At times, their server pricing is in line with consumer DSL (My first box with them was for $49/mth USD), and yet they regularly post outage/slowdown notifications to their forums notifying customers of the latest news, they communicate with customers about what their bandwidth capabilities are, when they're ordering new fiber or removing some, they provide bandwidth graphs to their backbones, they (tech support) answer the telephone within a few rings with no on-hold waiting lines, and they provide way more bandwidth (1200GB/mth) than consumer ISPs do. And yet they do this all for a similar price.
If an ISP provided that kind of customer service (and quality of actual service), they'd become very popular very quickly. - autobahn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0LOL @ anyone who says that the "majority" of cable internet problems are with splitters or NICs.
Maybe for RETARD users who split their cable 20x times without proper equipment. What ABSOLUTELY SUCKS BALLS about cable tech support is you have to spend almost an HOUR with the 1st level techs going through the stupid "we blame your computer" BS when I can tell them RIGHT AWAY that it's the 2nd or 3rd hop that the problem begins.
That's not customer oriented at all. From the fact that chrisstar7 said that it's 95% the user's hardware just shows the ignorance of the techs. What they're looking to do here is to send a service call out to your house, "fix" the problem, and charge you for a service call. When in fact they didn't solve anything but they'll say "the line was working just fine for the technician, so the problem MUST be your computer. That will be $70 for the service call!" It's BS and a racket.
Speeds for Time Warner at my apartment in Downtown Minneapolis are not too bad, but not the best, mainly from the rediculously low upload cap. If my girlfriend uploads something, ping times hit 300-500ms due to the upstream saturation. Kinda sucks when you're playing a game. - vhold, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've been thinking of ditching comcast too, it's gotten particularly crappy lately.
- BritOverseas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0View EarthLink Carrier Information EarthLink High Speed Cable Internet Service $29.95/month for 6 months! Cable Up to 5.0 MB $41.
View TWC Carrier Information ROAD RUNNER HIGH SPEED ONLINE ROAD RUNNER OFFER / $29.95 for first six months Cable 5Mb $44.95
View DIRECWAY Carrier Information "Home" Plan - Upfront Purchase with Extended Warranty GET A $100 MAIL-IN REBATE WHEN YOU BUY DIRECWAY! Satellite Up to 700Kbps $59.99/month
View DIRECWAY Carrier Information "Home" Plan - Upfront Purchase GET A $100 MAIL-IN REBATE WHEN YOU BUY DIRECWAY! Satellite Up to 700Kbps $59.99
View EarthLink Carrier Information Satellite powered by DIRECWAY Save $400 when you buy EarthLink Satellite* Satellite Up to 500K $69.95
View DIRECWAY Carrier Information "Home" Plan - Promotional Purchase GET A $100 MAIL-IN REBATE WHEN YOU BUY DIRECWAY! Satellite Up to 700Kbps $99.99
These are the pathetic services that are available for my area (as previously explained a major metro area), there is not even DSL to choose from, HELP!!!!
- meaniketd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+05blocksfree (0)
I agree with the overpriced comcast . I believe AOL is good its just a little slow. I was happy with cox too when I was in Virginia
After I moved here (newark delaware) i noticed that comcast has a monopoly here in cable internet thats what needs to change .
I am thinking of moving to some other provider. - woodyc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've had the Verizon FiOS service for almost 90 days now. I'm paying $54.95 per month for 30 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream.
I had Comcast for 7 years prior to the switch. I was paying Comcast $49.95 per month for what was "supposed" to be 4 Mbps down and 384kbps up. I rarely ever got those speeds. I watched as the Comcast service degraded significantly over the last year that I had the service. Outages became common. In fact, I had more outages in that last year than I had in the previous six combined. The final straw was a conversation with a Comcast "technical" support person during an outage in November. He claimed that there was nothing wrong on their end and wanted me to reinstall my operating system. Yeah right. I'm going to take that advice from a person who barely spoke English? Not a chance. It turned out be an IP address issue on their end, but that conversation cost them a longtime customer.
The fiber-optic line coming to the house connects directly to the Verizon Central Office, which means I'm not sharing bandwidth with my neighbors. I'm only sharing with the other computers on my home network. I get the full bandwidth (30 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream) of my subscription when I test at http://ciseweb100.cise-nsf.gov:7123 or at http://myspeed.visualware.com/
The speed of the Verizon FiOS service is fantastic. It was installed in less than three hours and I had my wireless network up within minutes after that. In nearly 90 days, not one piece of spam has hit my inbox. And there has not been one minute of downtime. - elctrcty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0That sounds cool. Everyone else jump ship and I'll take your bandwidth. I'm out in the tri-valley (East Bay to non-locals) and my speeds are top-notch. I wouldn't think of ditching comcast. My connection goes down for power outages more often than it does for comcast issues.
No complaints here. - aluminumpork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm in Minnesota and have got Qwest DSL. I used to have Charter, what a joke. I'm sure Charter may be an improvement in some areas, but not here. It's almost as if Qwest designed their services for power users. I get as many statics as I want, no bandwidth limits, etc etc. 5Mbps down, 896Kbps up. Not too shabby, and enough to host fairly quickly. All for $40/month. Charter here doesn't "allow" residential services to host period. They block port 80. I hosted on a different port, and even though it worked, it was soooooo slow, due to the fact they only support a 256Kpbs upload unless you're willing to pay well over $500/month. Even if you're paying for the business package (over $100/month) you still cannot get over 256Kpbs. What crap.
- ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This sounds like Shaw.
How the hell can these guys get away with that *****.
Let the lawsuits begin. - aznboi04k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0everyone in the bayarea, switch over to at&t! it only costs $12.99 per month!
- RhythmGuru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0WOODYC
You're making me drool.
I'm in a new subdivision and 1.5 DSL is all I can get right now, but they are running Fiber to the neighborhood (according to SBC). I can't wait. 30Meg... - Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Don't promise what you cannot deliver and most of all fix the problem
- wilf_brim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is kind of interesting, but I all read (in comments and the FA) are individual reports. Does anybody have a link to an actual news story with maybe some facts and numbers to support the clamis?
- snapcase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Personally I don't give a rats ass about the Bay Area customers... but I do hate Comcast, so I digg.
Been telling people that Comcast sucks for years. Currently I'm using SBC DSL. It's faster than any of my local cable providers, and depending on how SBC changes with AT&T on board I'll be with them for a while. I've also been telling people for years that DSL is better than Cable, but people generally don't get it or don't want to get it when it comes to the fact about peak hour slow downs. - PhantomTrogdor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0+digg.
I live just outside of the bay area, and I'm still experiencing slowdowns. I was wondering what the cause was. We need to get this fixed! - Brak710101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Cone on! Don't blame comcast, clearly its AT&T's routers causing these problems. Know why Comcast bought AT&T's division for home internet/TV/Phone? Crap like this.
- junkfood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm in Atlanta and I was just complaining to myself this morning because ComCast was painfully slow and then it was out and then it was back to 28.8k again. When I left for work this morning, I took some files in on a thumb drive because I couldn't even email them to my office.
My service generally drops out once a week, requiring me to power down the cable modem to force a new IP address. When I do that it starts working again. Then about once a month it goes out completely for several hours. I've fought with them on the phone a dozen times or more and they promise to credit me for the outages every time and yet it has never happened.
If there was anyone else I could go to other than BellSouth, I would in a minute. And I generally tell ComCast this every time I talk to them. I'm actually looking forward to moving in hopes that maybe I can get back to my previous cable provider on the other side of town. - RHamel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I use Comcrapstic here in Colorado, and I don't have too many complaints except for their help desk. My only other option is Qworst.
- Technology, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah, I live in the East Bay and over the past few weeks my speeds have dropped dramatically. I've also had to reset my modem numerous times as well as call customer service to complain.
- GoldenGod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wah!! I can't play my WoW account!! Wah!!
- ApplePenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0hrm....
Only probs I've ever had with my SBC connection is the setup. Once you get over that headache, it's pretty much smooth sailing....
I don't really understand why so many people are pissed at SBC. My parents, both sets of grandparents, and girlfriend are all on SBC's DSL, and none of them has any real problems (At each there were a couple hiccups when setting up the service initially, though). -
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