After many years of being with AOL, I’ve decided to join the 21st century and get a cable modem. Unfortunately, that means giving Co(munist)Cast $42.95 per month for the pleasure. Worse yet, AT&T owns (or merged with) them. Either way, I have to give my hard-earned cash to an evil corporation. While I’ve had no specific gripe against AOL, it has been horrifingly slow lately, even for a dial-up. The pop-up blocker works quite well, but I don’t see any good results from the spam reporter. They offer no way to filter e-mail and there’s a limit to how many spammers you can block (and considering the infinite number of email addresses from an infinite number of domains, there’s no way to block them all without a filter).
Com(munist)Cast has a “deal” in which you get a $60 rebate on the modem (retails for $80 at Radio Shack) and you get the first three months @ $19.99.
An ironic twist to AOL’s popup blocker is that, when I access AOL’s home page at work (we have ISDN lines) to check my email, I get by three popups for, what else?, AOL service!
If you object to giving your money to an evil corporation, why did you spend several years on AOL? Also, why call them “Com(munist)cast?” Wasn’t it capitalism that made them a giant, uncaring corporation?
Have you tried to get DSL where you live? There are still some relatively small companies offering that. Then again, you might not have a choice and be stuck with a Baby Bell like me. Or you might just not be able to get DSL at all.
In my area at least, the cable company caps their modems at a lower speed than BellSouth’s DSL (1276/128 vs. 1500/256). Also I’ve read that at least one cable company (can’t recall which one) is starting to institute download limits. Other cable companies could follow suit. IIRC, the limit is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30GB/month, which, to be fair, is still a hell of a lot of data. Still, I’d prefer truly unlimited service. So far, no DSL providers have plans to limit downloads.
And watch out for those “three months at half price” or “free modem” deals. Most of them require you to sign up for a year. I found out what modems my ISP supported and bought a used one online for $20.
I tried MSN, Juno, and a couple other “cheaper” alternatives and they were no better than AOL. In fact, most were worst.
I’ve had a long-standing hatred of my local cable company. I used to pay my bill in person just so I could bitch about the service. Not nice for the clerks, but there you go. I wasn’t abusive to THEM, mind you. I just let my dissatisfaction known. I now have a satellite dish. I still carry the very basic cable package (for local news, since DISH isn’t offering my locals. Market’s too small, I huess).
DSL is $50 a month and I know some people who have had it and dumped it within 2 or 3 months in favor of the cable modem.
I’m going to buy the modem outright. Leasing from the cable company makes no sense dollar-wise. There is no required sign up time and even if there was, a year is not so bad.
DISH Network offers high-speed connection, but it’s through EarthLink DSL and I’ve heard EarthLink is worse than AOL.
I’d like to hear the names of some of the telecommunications companies that are being downplayed here.
In my area, cable offers twice the bandwidth as DSL or satellite internet connections. The cable company’s top speed is currently 1 mbps. They have the capability to offer twice that. The only reason they don’t is because no one else in town is offering it.
