For what it’s worth, Comcast is really, really good at providing reliable internet access (providing relatively good managed WiFi routers since WiFi is usually the worst part of the network, proactive detection of downtime and service degredation, improving latency even though it’s not a ‘headline number’, maintaining enough slack that they hit the “up to” advertised speed close to 100% of the time, etc.). The only service issue they have is not caring up upload speeds, but there’s a fundamental tradeoff with the legacy cable network and they’re probably right that most people would rather have faster downloads than faster uploads (still makes me sad though).
I’m probably biased because I worked for the cable industry (around a decade ago), but purely looking at service quality, Comcast is actually very impressive.
I think that’s the OP’s point, and he (and you) are correct. Comcast provides, for most people, an incredible service that would have been unthinkably amazing only a few decades ago (I remember pricing out T1 lines in the mid ’90s—low thousands per month for 1.5Mbps).
It’s ALSO true that the gap between what it seems like they could do and what they actually do, especially around communication regarding outages, unexpected edge cases, slowdowns due to shared infrastructure, and bad configuration/provisioning, is frustrating. I can’t remember the last time they noticed an outage before I did, and even though it’s NEVER my equipment (well-monitored Unifi gear), they won’t talk to me until I reboot my damn laptop in addition to their modem.
For what it’s worth, Comcast is really, really good at providing reliable internet access (providing relatively good managed WiFi routers since WiFi is usually the worst part of the network, proactive detection of downtime and service degredation, improving latency even though it’s not a ‘headline number’, maintaining enough slack that they hit the “up to” advertised speed close to 100% of the time, etc.). The only service issue they have is not caring up upload speeds, but there’s a fundamental tradeoff with the legacy cable network and they’re probably right that most people would rather have faster downloads than faster uploads (still makes me sad though).
I’m probably biased because I worked for the cable industry (around a decade ago), but purely looking at service quality, Comcast is actually very impressive.
I think that’s the OP’s point, and he (and you) are correct. Comcast provides, for most people, an incredible service that would have been unthinkably amazing only a few decades ago (I remember pricing out T1 lines in the mid ’90s—low thousands per month for 1.5Mbps).
It’s ALSO true that the gap between what it seems like they could do and what they actually do, especially around communication regarding outages, unexpected edge cases, slowdowns due to shared infrastructure, and bad configuration/provisioning, is frustrating. I can’t remember the last time they noticed an outage before I did, and even though it’s NEVER my equipment (well-monitored Unifi gear), they won’t talk to me until I reboot my damn laptop in addition to their modem.