Shane's Drivel

Comcast vs AT&T March 7, 2011

So here I am after a long absence. Lately, Facebook has been my preferred method of spewing drivel. But here I am with this piece about Comcast’s Xfinity cablemodem internet service and AT&T’s DSL service.

For a couple years now, AT&T has been unable to provide me a stable internet connection. There’s apparently something wrong in my neighborhood, as my DSL modem looses communication with AT&T-land periodically. Recently, “periodically” became once every few minutes.

Also for years, Comcast hadn’t offered anything that was price competitive with DSL. Until now.

FINALLY, Comcast is offering what they’re calling a “Performance Starter” tier for $49 which gives 6Mbps up/3Mbps down. Awesome. So I signed up.

And instead of renting a cable modem from them for $5/mo. I decided to buy one. I consulted Comcast’s list of approved cable modems and chose a Zoom 5341 modem from from Best Buy for ~$80.

Now here’s the problem. Despite the Zoom modem being approved by Comcast, and despite the modem’s box listing support for Comcast – the Comcast installer told me it wouldn’t work with Comcast. The alleged problem was that the label on the Zoom cable modem listed no “customer serial number” (which is apparently different from just a “serial number”). The installer and his supervisor both stated its been a longstanding problem that “the Zoom modem won’t work”.

He showed me a Motorola Surfboard cable modem which did list a “customer serial number” on the bottom.

Motorola Surfboard Label - Customer Ser No listed up top (ordinary serial number listed 2nd)

Baloney. I highly doubt Comcast would list Zoom as approved if that weren’t the case. I also doubt that Zoom state compatibility with Comcast that were not the case. I suspect the real problem could be that the people at Comcast simply didn’t know how to put a Zoom modem into their database.

Some time later, I ended up returning the Zoom modem to Best Buy and buying a Motorola surfboard from Walmart for $61. …But not before the Comcast guy had to leave my house with Internet service in tact – which required him installing the Motorola surfboard from his truck….which was put on my account as a rental.

Ugh. So then I had to 1) purchase my own Motorola Surfboard from Walmart, 2) get on the phone with Comcast to have them activate it, 3) return my Zoom cable modem to Best Buy, and 3) take the Motrola Surboard left by the installer back to a Comcast office (they’ll only rent these..they won’t sell them). Oh and 4) hope that they don’t make a billing error and still charge me for renting their cable modem which I never asked for.

Yeah, phone and cable company customer service still sucks. What else is new?

So…all you folks considering Comcast cable modem service without renting a cable modem, save yourself some trouble and just buy a Motorola Surfboard. Or call Comcast first and ask them if they’ve figured out how to turn on whatever brand cable modem you are considering.