Lightning bolt last week fried my old (snail slow) modem
Live in NE Florida
I may be moving out of town in 2-4 months
Don’t want a cable TV package or other nonessential bells and whistles
Am also planning to get a new machine as well, but might wait until I move (likely posting something in the other computer thread)
Don’t need a superfast connection, but…
Luxury pie in the sky desire is MS Flight Sim 2020, which of course needs one of the warp speed ones, but again can wait
The guide leads with Comcast, natch, tho I am not crazy about going with them. Nor am I with AT&T, my last provider (shut down the account after the modem got nuked). LOL at seeing Earthlink, since I had an account with them 20 years ago.
The product itself itself is excellent. I’m paying $50 per month for internet only, that is my total inclusive bill, guaranteed fixed price for 2 years, for “up to 600Mbps” which is currently giving me 674 Mbps down / 23 Mpbs up. My speed upgrade is recent, but when I previously paid for “up to 300Mbps” they delivered close to that consistently. Of course, Santa Fe is a small place, so we may not get the fluctuations at peak usage that you might get in major metropolitan areas. I’ve been with them for 6 years, and I would estimate that I get around 5 outages a year, mostly less than 30 minutes, occasionally a few hours. I don’t recall the service ever being down for more than 6 hours.
The problem with Comcast is that interacting with their customer service is always horrible, you simply cannot trust them to be honest about product or pricing, even if you interact via chat and get things in writing. My recent contact with them was typical. I had a cable+internet package, I told them very clearly that I no longer want any TV service, I want to switch to internet-only. They told me that the new price would be $70, and that this would be my total bill including all fees. I then discovered that they had terminated my cable as I asked, but (without asking or telling me) added “Xfinity Flex”, which is some other kind of TV service. And why not, when it’s “free”? Well, because it turns out that this “free” TV service increases your bill by $40 per month in TV-related “fees”.
However, I then discovered that I could make the change I wanted to my service myself entirely online via account management, rather than interacting with a customer service rep at all. That went smoothly, and if that now means I never have to interact with their customer service reps ever again I’m happy.
Also - if you’re an Xfinity ISP customer, their mobile service is a great deal if you don’t use much data. I have a by-the-GB plan since I never use more than 1GB per month on my phone. I get the Verizon 5G network, the service is indistinguishable from what I got as a direct Verizon customer, for $17 per month with Xfinity Mobile.
I recently switched from Xfinity to T- mobile. It’s 5G from the cell tower to the modem, which converts it to WiFi.
So far it’s been more reliable. Speeds are comparable with upload speeds actually faster. It’s $20 a month cheaper. There’s no monthly data limits like Xfinity had.
Another cool thing is you can take it with you. As long as there’s a 5G signal, just plug it in and you’re there.
I have my cable TV and internet with Comcast. I had been on a package that I had gotten, at least a decade ago; when I contacted them a month or so ago, about different options, the rep sold me on a new package, which gave me faster broadband (it did), and she promised that it was the “top tier” of TV channel packages, and included “everything you have now.” (The TV package isn’t as important to me, but is to my wife.)
A day later, we discovered that we no longer had access to HBO, Showtime, or Starz – turns out that those are, in fact, “add-on” packages, and not included in the package that I’d been sold. We didn’t care about Showtime or Starz, but I did wind up having to pony up an extra few dollars a month for the HBO package, as there are several series on it which my wife really wants.
Anyway, back to the OP, and internet: the upgrade got me from a download speed of about 120 Mbps to over 600 Mbps. So, that was a win.
The big question I’d have if I were you is whether the contract can be easily cancelled in two or three months if the supplier doesn’t service where you move to.
I can’t fault Comcast on that score. For my current internet-only service, they offered a guaranteed fixed price for two years with no contract commitment from the customer.