My new apartment complex has a contract restricting me to just Comcast as my ISP. How fucked am I?

My new apartment complex has a contract restricting me to just Comcast as my ISP. How fucked am I?

Completely. Get ready to get railed.

You have one of the best isps in the states. And better than most of the world excluding Europe and south Korea. Not fucked at all

What's wrong with Comcast?

Get ready for completely unreliable service and absolutely terrible support.

Why is this? I had WOW previously to this; 110 Mbps for $60 a month, great costumer service, and modem that dueled as a wifi router. How does Comcast compare? I'm finding a lot of one star reviews.

>comcast cuts deals with apartment landlords so tenants can only use comcast as their ISP
>this isn't a monopoly

>Customer service is some of the worst rated of any business in the US.
>Speed is "up to", they aren't lying here, I've had mine drop to 10mbps from 150

"Free enterprise"

For anyone who lacks social interaction with homo sapiens this user was doing satire.

I used to work for CC as a field technician. Honestly, cable is so much more complex than most people understand.

>hurr ISPs suck
>hurr google fiber is great!11!!!

Comcast honestly isn't that bad. there are far worse. people will always bitch about their ISP (just like they do everything else in their lives) because they don't understand how they work, and don't care to.

indeed. i work in a NOC for a major ISP, and the honest to god truth is that people just don't know.

btw thank you techs. you guys rock.

Don't forget about obfuscated billing and "accidental" price hikes. By not itemizing their bills they steal fortunes from their customers who just accept that their monthly bill jumped $30 to $70 without asking questions because fuck spending an hour dealing with Comcast support.

How is Comcast communist?

The real problem is often a customer service issue, but it's not just an issue with CC. Other ISPs often have bad CSR issues. That's representative of trying to save money by having overseas call center workers.

Usually people are pretty happy when they get a real, live technician. I've worked call center stuff, too. That was far worse.

Problem with being a tech is that it's hot as fuck outside and climbing poles in this humidity and heat is godawful.

No one seems to understand signal degradation or that splitters cause signal loss. They don't understand that cable is a fickle beast and that wrapping your cable too tight to make it look pretty can cause impedance.

And then there's the whole "throttling speeds" thing, which I believed until I was a technician. Throttling speeds doesn't make sense. The plant is designed to have service for all customers in it at max capacity. If that's not working, then it's probably in need of some maintenance or a replacement with newer technology.

Yes, it's not just coax. It's HFC and distribution nodes.

It would have been easier to just rollout the fucking fiber.

Time Warner is doing the same with my apartment.

Why would a technician know anything about throttling? It's not hardware related and certainly not low-level enough for a technician to ever touch. Techs don't touch algos.

It's going that way, I think. In ten years, it'll be FttH.

He means that it's like dealing with a fascist dictatorship.

Hmmmmmm

I guess in theory it could be possible, but it seems highly unlikely. The system seems far too much of a mess for that to be a controllable factor seeing as we have hard time getting signal into a house sometimes.

Most cable issues are caused by the drop cable or the house wiring. People have Radioshack shit in their house and push-on connectors that cause noise.

And coax is weird. Sometimes the house can be filled with noise but only one TV is affected or something insane like that. And Comcast spends ways too much time harping on techs to make the house clean and perfect for them to simultaneously be ruining that by throttling speeds.

Tenants don't even get a discount

>given apartment contract
>$xx/month for comcast package
>part of that is a basic TV package
>"I don't use TV, can I substitute it for something else?"
>"No."
It's complete bullshit. I was even offering to rearrange the package in a way that would still come out to the same (if not more) rate.

>Accidental price hikes

I can attest to this. My shit went from $60 to $90.
I immediately called them and before I finished my first sentence he said I'll bring it back down, anything else for you?

Wtf is that shit Comcast? Your call centers shouldn't be that used to customers calling about random price hikes.

The dude didn't ask one question, just oh damn another one caught it better switch it back.

I feel you bro, that's even worse than Comcast's regular bullshit.

They charged me more to get blast internet vs a plan with tv and the same internet.
I'm convinced it's because they report how many users are purchasing tv plans to advertisers as a way to dictate advertising prices.

Naturally I told em to fuck themselves I'm just getting internet and that's it. I eventually got my price lowered when I switched to att for a month.

And yet when it comes to other utilities (or services if you want to be anal about calling internet a utility) like water, sewage, and electricity people seem to rarely complain. Hmm... I wonder why...

I've never had a problem with Comcast. I pay $50 a month for 75/10. At my old place I paid $40 a month for 100/10.

Please post your bill

At least you have the choice. There are competitors in this area, but all the apartments around here are owned by the same landlord with this comcast racket.

they cant because theyre comcast shills

Former technician here. Calling bullshit. I paid that much as a technician with discounted service for all products.

They don't allow people to change it up, because people in apartments like that are notorious for stealing cable and shit. Most of the time the owners have to get a contract or cable companies will just refuse service to anyone in the complex. I am surprised that they didn't just include it in your rent.

Do you live in the middle of nowhere? I'm considering upgrading to 200Mbps.

I didn't realize sharing resources was now classified as "stealing".

It is when you contractually agree not to do so.

>With 1 year agreement

No, I live in a city ~500,000 people.

That's also not your bill. Here's my employee bill.

You mean the contract which I had to sign because I can't choose my ISP and access to internet is an important resource in the modern digital age?

so say, we are mining iron right, and canada comes up in our shit and just takes it without asking us. Are we sharing resources or is Canada stealing?

>renting a router
>renting a DVR
>using TV and phone in the first place
Good goyim. My bill is exactly $49.99.

In that analogy Canada forcibly gained access to our resource. What if my neighbor is cool with me using his internet?

consider yourself lucky. just lookup an isp known as moonbeam. Nobody would willing go with them. They also contract with apartments.

Do you know how impossibly expensive it would be to have two cable providers in a system?

You understand that every cable provider maintains and owns/leases the entire cable system in an area, right? That if you wanted multiple choices, you'd need two separate cable systems on every telephone pole/underground?

It would be nice to have choices, but it's not feasible. So, you either have to wait for fiber or choose DSL (and we know what their speeds are).

I actually got rid of the router and modem, just needed to return it. I had phone because my girlfriend needed it for her job since she worked from home. I had TV because I only had to pay for the boxes as an employee. And I got every single channel plus all the premium channels for free.

Yes.

right and user specified it was stealing, so obviously it was without permission.

Less than with AT&T. I got cucked into Comcast with my first apartment and railed on them for the whole year as being the worst ISP ever, worst company in the US, etc.

My new apt has a contract with AT&T and we're now paying the same price for a fifth of the speed, AND they're making us pay a mandatory $100 installation fee for a new router unless we package television into our Internet bundle.

It's pretty hard not to get cucked by ISP's but you don't have it the worst.

Must people in customer service are forced to read a script and follow it even if they know how to fix your issue, and can.

I don't even want to here it I only get 3 down and 1 up average when I am advertised at 10 down and 3 up keep in mind that is the best plan I can buy in my city on top of the fact at&t is the only is in my city

Ok. My Comcast bill is still $50 a month for 100/10 internet.

Internet is neither the first or last infrastructure to be built in a country. Yes, it is expensive, but that's not a justification for zero competition.

Apartments are horrible. Some regions of CC don't have dedicated tap ports for each apartment building and instead router you through an endless daisy chain of splitters at the apartment box.

And if there's a wiring issue, most CC markets don't touch it because then they have to get permission from the apartment complex and they have to charge them and enter the dwellings of multiple residents. It's a nightmare.

I know. I worked CSR side for a bit. It was horrible.

Who is your competition for your power company? How about your water company? Gas company? Exactly. Utilities are a monopoly and always have been because to build a secondary infrastructure is overwhelmingly expensive and time consuming for no profit. Some areas are rare and do have secondary utility companies, but it's very rare.

For a year. I hope you read the fine print.

The original statement was:
>They don't allow people to change it up, because people in apartments like that are notorious for stealing cable and shit
Forcing each person to pay for internet access doesn't sound like "gud goi Comcast protecting me from thieving neighbors" but rather "gud goi Comcast has to make sure the sheep don't band together to collectively safe money by sharing and better utilizing the resource."

And after the year is up I just cancel and start a new service.

Traditional utilities like water and gas are heavily regulated in the United States unlike ISPs. Try again.

Tech here again. It's also impossible to steal cable unless you live in an analog area. Which he doesn't.

I didn't say they shouldn't be regulated, but certain parts of the US have ridiculously overpriced utility prices.

Unless you're locked into a contract.

Which is coincidentally also one year.

>It's also impossible to steal cable unless you live in an analog area.
How do you figure that?

Because every service is assigned digitally. Every piece of equipment is designated in the system. You'd have to work for CC to steal cable.

Nah, if I install a splitter before a cable hits the modem and put that directly into a digital tv, the TV will manage to display quite a few channels. That jumps even higher if I access the cable box and remove the filter. I am not even paying for cable. Those channels just come in with internet signal.

Some of the higher frequencies used for internet are also used to carry cable channels. I doubt you're getting anything out of the cable. What you're probably getting are digital OTA frequencies.

What do you mean "access the cable box and remove the filter"?

Also, if you pay for internet, you pay for cable.

>What you're probably getting are digital OTA frequencies.
Nope. I was picking up shit like Cartoon Network.


>What do you mean "access the cable box and remove the filter"?
The signal trap they add to the line to filter out cable channels since I am only paying for internet.

What the fuck kind of market do you live in that still uses fucking signal traps?

>everything bad is communist
this is how muritards have been brainwashed
>inb4 communist government

The kind where I can get some free channels if I want them, a choice between two cable companies, and better speeds with lower prices than most people here are talking about.

I am not a cable tech so I don't know if this shit is outdated or not, but it works to my benefit so I am not complaining.

As far as I know, we don't use cable filters for that reason. Most things are assigned digitally. Unless you don't have CC. Because other companies may use them.

If you have internet, I doubt you have analog because there's a return path, but... who knows.

Hello, user
I'm curious as to why you'd combine the logo of a corporation with a communist symbol.
You see, monopolies like Comcast are an integral part of capitalism. Capitalism is at odds with communism.
Are you confused?

I don't have CC. They assigned the modem I use.

Yeah, throttling would be done on Layer 2 or 3, not Layer 1 that techs are working on.

While true, it seems unlikely if you knew how fucked up the plants can be.

im stuck with comcast as well. So far no real problems either. I was a bit concerned and wanted verizon because they dont give a fuck about P2P traffic and never throttle while comcast has a history of it.

The big problem is the rumor that comcast will be spreading their faggot download limits to all customers. Which will hopefully get shot the fuck down.

Overall experience has been pretty good.

There is literally nothing wrong with Comcast. Stop being mentally retarded.

They are but they've also been testing out a higher threshold. The new limit is a terabyte a bandwidth of month, which is far more reasonable (but still bullshit).

>slow as shit speeds
>expensive
>terrible services
people defend this
I lol'd at the retarded muricans

I've never had much of a problem with their actual service. I'm quite happy with it. It's the company and it's bullshit that is the problem. Everyone who works for them is considered to be in sales. So if you have a problem ever, get ready to be pitched to, and probably not having your actual problem addressed.

At their most extreme, both are pretty much the same thing. The only difference is in which buzzwords they use.

>you didn't look into what your utilities would be before taking the apartment
you did this to yourself

the entire concept of data caps is complete bullshit - it makes zero sense and does nothing to eliminate network congestion

Yes, but they always need to squeeze a few more dollars out of everyone.

Comcast had ok service, and it would only drop once a week.

But when I was moving and had to cancel? Holy shit. Never in my life was I given that much trouble.

The fuckers even said "we can get you started in your new place" - to which I kindly replied "no thanks, I would've asked you to transfer my service if I wanted that. I want to cancel."

And then they called me every day for a month straight asking how my new ISP was and if I wanted to go back to them.

Better-than-nothing internet.

Shit-tier customer service.

Same.

I get "up to" 15mbps for $19.99/Mo as well as basic cable. It's not great but it could be worse. I don't like being told who to go with as my ISP. Lotta Comcast threads tonight. Too much of a monopoly desu.

absolutely fucked, enjoy your 3mbit upstream

>Sattelite internet

I had satellite growing up. No monthly cap, but an hourly cap of 169MB, and if you went over that cap you were throttled down to like 5kbps for 24 hours. Good times.

We have a monthly cap of 10GB, and ping for most online games were absolutely unplayable (when I played league before the server move, ping was in the 700's), I don't know actual speeds in megabits since the cap is overtaken in less than a week, but steam and qbittorrent can do between 10 and 100KB/s, usually around 30KB/s

See:

I live in the Lehigh Valley and have RCN. The technicians were very nice and any time I have called into customer service, I didn't wait that long. Maybe 5-10 minutes. Service is pretty good and the Internet doesn't get throttled down as bad as when I had Comcast. I'm thankful I live in an area that has multiple cable and ISP providers.

>In some place of the world, some third worlder gets paid $1 an hour to tell americans to come back to comcast
Absolutely terrifying