Comcast or AT&T?

Hi guys! So, I'll be setting up a home wifi and can't decide whether I should go with Comcast or AT&T. Can subscribers of these 2 provider give their feedback? I'm at the Bay Area. How's your experience? Customer Service? Thanks!

 

I highly advise you speak with both Comcast and AT&T about their bandwidth cap limits and whether they include download and upload or just download in your area.

 

Also find out if they block any ports.

 

In addition to above advice, I suggest that you (if possible) find out where AT&T's DSLAM locations are. DSL service quality is, in part, affected by your distance from these locations, with you being closer being better.

I use Bellsouth (AT&T) DSL, 1.5Mb/s down, 768Kb/s up. Actual speeds are plus/minus 10% of advertised speeds.

 

Comcast #1 both got limitations and the prices are similar but comparing the speeds of ATT vs Comcast in my case Cox is a joke I get 30MB/S down almost all the time caps 250GB for $53

 

AT&T customer service is a joke...

 

^ This. At least here in Chicago, I've talked to and read about people who have had nothing but problems. Their customer service is outsourced to India/Bangladesh and is extraordinarily difficult to work with. I have Comcast at home, and for all the you-know-what they get, they've done right by us for the six-plus years we've had them. Customer service is based in the US (from what I can tell at least). The small handful of times I've needed service (maybe 4 times in 6 years) I've always been able to get convenient appointments, even on Saturday and Sunday. The techs have always arrived on time and were competent and professional.

If you do decide to go with Comcast, buy your own modem. With a coupon from Staples, you can buy a Motorola Surfboard SB6121 for $70 or less. It costs $7/month to rent one from Comcast. You can do the math from there.

 

If you get comcast upgrade to business class service for a few more bucks. There are no bandwidth caps and customer service is pretty good. Otherwise you will be limited to 250gb a month.

 

It's not all overseas, but it's absolutely moronic to deal with.

After having voip issues, they shut off my clients DSL, which ran her phones at 3pm on friday, abandoned work on her system on Tuesday, and didn't get restored until Wednesday evening after threats of sterilization and lawsuits. All because of a viop system cutting out.

Part of the problem is that you can't talk to the in field, line techs.
You have to convince customer service (who cannot see if there is a work order and only want to reset your modem), that you need to talk to actual technical support. This could take an hour or more, and that is AFTER you finally get through, which could take an hour. Technical support then has to call the local office and wait for them to get the order (this can take 3-5 hours). Why? Because the local office is an unmanned office with an answering machine that the local line techs call in to retrieve their messages every so often and promptly go home at 5pm. No. Matter. What. Even if they just crated a whole new problem.

They don't even call when a job is finished to verify that it worked, they have a robot do it, and if it doesn't they forward you to... Customer support... Which starts the whole process over again. One hour on hold, one hour to convince, 3-5 hours for the order to be processed.


This was business class, I can't imagine how bad consumer dsl with them is.

 

I can only order it through Amazon. Is this the one?

Amazon.com: Motorola SB6121 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem: Electronics

Do I have to order a separate Wireless Router?

 

Since it seems to be just a modem, you will also need to order a separate wireless router. Netgear, DLink, and Linsys all make good wireless-N routers, from my experience, though I hear good things about Asus's router as well.

Amazon, interestingly enough, lists the modem's weight as 0.0lbs, so you might want to buy some straps to hold it down onto your desk

 

That's it. Unless you have store credit, why does it have to be from Amazon? You can buy a coupon for $1-2 from here that gives you $25 off $75 for an online order, making it much cheaper even if you pay sales tax. The site to order the coupon from looks weird, but they are legit, as I've used them several times. You buy the coupon, then input the code when placing the order on Staples' website.

You will need to buy a wireless router as well. Netgear makes good, inexpensive routers. You can often find refurbished models for dirt cheap on Newegg. I've personally not had good luck with recent D-Link and Linksys products. If you can afford it, I'd recommend the Apple Airport Extreme.

 

Yes, I do have an Amazon store credit so I'm ordering it from Amazon. I'm looking at this router. Amazon.com: Medialink Wireless N Router - 802.11n - 150 Mbps - 2.4 Ghz - NEW Design w/ Internal Antenna: Computers & Accessories

Is it compatible with the Motorola modem?

 

That is ony 150mbps on 11n if I read it correctly. If thats the case it will limit your wireless performance. I would at least get one that does the 300mbps on 11n. The Netgear N600 (WNDR3700v2) or Linksys E4200, and the Asus should be the front runners. Netgear has the best firmware of the router I've used. Going to aftermarket a lot of time you take a hit on wireless performance.

 

Close to the same price, much better performance: http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys...2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1338928298&sr=1-2

 

Can you give me an idea of the difference between the speeds of the router that I posted and you are suggesting? Thanks!

Thank you. I'll look into this also.

 

How much are you willing to pay for a new router?

 

Check out the smallnetbuilders.com They have a chart with all of the routers they have tested.

 

I've had ATT DSL in Redding CA, and now have Comcast cable in Eugene. In the Redding house, 3 gb was the theoretical max speed, Comcast provides around 15 gb, enough to stream HD video without breaking a sweat.

We never really had to use ATT tech support much. The modem that came with the ATT DSL package died just short of the two year point, and they diagnosed that remotely, I think it was during business hours on a weekday. Had to cough for a new modem, best price was at the local ATT store. Turns out that was because I was quoted the wrong price when I called, but they honored it based on my word, which was sporting of them.

ATT customer service was good to us. My girlfriend lived in the Redding house and I was in Eugene for about five years, and I was commuting down from Eugene every couple weeks. She had signed up for some service back when she had dialup that would pop up a message in Windows if a call came in while you had the phone line in use by the modem. She hadn't used that service is years, and it was completely unnessary with DSL.

When I finally to a look at her DSL/phone bill, I noticed that she was still paying for this service every month. She was getting billed for it because ATT lets third parties glom on to their billing system, and that how this company had been paid. Nobody responded at the actual third party company, so I called ATT and got a very helpful person (YMMV). They stopped the billing and credited my GF for all the payments to this company since she started DSL, which was enough to cover her entire phone and DSL bill for the next 10 months.

When we were looking to upgrade from her original 1.25 Gb to 3 gb, I checked some local independent ISPs that rely on ATT to provide the DSL infrastructure to the house, while the local ISP actually provides internet access. Some of these had better rates than ATT, so that may be an option for you.

Now we're both in Eugene and have Comcast's triple play: phone, internet, cable TV. It's around $145/month, but it all works well together. Believe me, I've tried to find ways to whittle that down, but since I do want cable (gotta have ESPN, at least during baseball season) there's nothing that really saves money. If you drop any of the three, the other two go up. The only thing that might even come close would be to drop the phone and go VOIP, e.g. Vonage, but that breaks even at best.

I rent the modem, which supports the phone line as well as internet. I also pay a nominal monthly fee for service, which avoids being charged for service calls. (If something goes wrong and the tech finds that the problem was not Comcast's issue, like your internal cabling or something, they'd charge you for the service call.) They do schedule service calls in the 4-6 pm time slot, and also come out on Saturdays and Sundays.

I'm generally pretty happy with them except for prices

 

after trying for 5 min to comprehend what exactly was that you were trying to say, I gave up.

stop uploading your life on youtube and you'd be perfectly fine with the ~9gb per day for that matter ...

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but to the OP - my regular comcast cable service is like 5 times faster than the neighbors regular AT&T DSL service. So unless you got like cable AT&T that you can compare to comcast cable, it's really like a no brainer, capish

P.S.
get fiber optic, if you can.