They are the HOA of the Internet world.

I’ve had the exact same equipment scam happen. I ended up paying the first time. The second time I had a full video of me walking into the office (because at the time you had to return the equipment to the actual office, couldn’t ship it) and it took only a few months to get resolved.

I don’t think there are many places that aren’t Comcast only. I briefly lived in an area with fiber-to-the-home. It was the same general cost as Comcast, but so much better and the service was rock solid reliable.

They are a national disgrace, especially after all the money put into rural broadband initiatives and fiber optics rollouts somehow managed to produce basically… nothing. But I’m sure they weren’t involved.

And what’s happening is plain as day. Check this quote out:

> Comcast’s lack of broadband growth started last year, when the largest U.S. internet provider reported no additions in the second quarter of 2022 for the first time in the company’s history. Since then, Comcast has reported net broadband losses in three of the last five quarters.

> Comcast executives have pushed investors to focus on broadband’s rising average revenue per user (ARPU) growth, driven by price increases and upselling packages, rather than net additions. Comcast’s residential broadband ARPU rose 3.9% in the quarter.

> “As we continue to manage this balance, we expect ARPU growth to remain strong and our primary driver of broadband revenue growth with somewhat higher subscribers losses expected the fourth quarter compared to the 18,000 loss we just reported in the third quarter,” Comcast Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong said during the company’s earnings conference call Thursday.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/comcast-broadband-worries.ht...

They’re not even interested in expanding broadband footprints anymore, just getting more revenue out of existing customers. And they are completely upfront about it.

Sorry, but I haven’t had one good interaction with this company, and I don’t think I’m alone.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/comcast-is-americas-most-hated-co...

I bought my own router and modem before I signed up for their service as they were the only internet provider in my apartment building at the time. I viewed it as a preemptive measure against bullshit equipment rental fees. Everytime I have had to interact with them since they have tried offer me extra services (none of which I want) for free or reduced price if i would use their shitty box.

Did you get hit with the “no bandwidth cap” if you use their equipment or the $15 a month charge for using your own equipment or a combination thereof? Because that’s their official policy in many places (it’s insanely unethical and barely hidden consumer exploitation of fees).

I have that where I am... Total bullshit. But I make sure I use it as much as I can, download tons of stuff to just delete it 30 seconds later.

> I don’t think there are many places that aren’t Comcast only.

Really? There are entire states (and countries) without a Comcast presence.

I’m sorry I was only speaking of the US, as this is a US company.

> You already knew that home broadband competition is sorely lacking through much of the US, but a new report released today helps shed more light on Americans who have just one choice for high-speed Internet.

> Comcast is the only choice for 30 million Americans when it comes to broadband speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, the report says. Charter Communications is the only choice for 38 million Americans. Combined, Comcast and Charter offer service in the majority of the US, with almost no overlap.

> Yet many Americans are even worse off, living in areas where DSL is the best option. AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos still provide only sub-broadband speeds over copper wires throughout huge parts of their territories. The telcos have mostly avoided upgrading their copper networks to fiber—except in areas where they face competition from cable companies.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/comca...

Also, “broadband” being 25 mbit is their lobby’s choice and definitely should not be a legitimate threshold in the modern world.

Then add that even though others operate in different regions, they generally do not compete for high speed service or are very poor at delivering it, thereby not actually presenting an alternative even though they “officially” do.

Also, be clear that these two companies, that dominate areas of the US, collude.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/comca...

https://corporate.charter.com/newsroom/comcast-charter-annou...

https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-charter...

While 30 million is too much, that’s less than 10% of the population. In the most populated areas it’s most common to have a duopoly. Sucks but “I don’t think there are many places that aren’t Comcast only” is not close to being accurate. They’re not even the dominant provider in Texas and New York. If anything it makes it easier for them to survive, antitrust below the national scale is much harder to apply.

It’s not a real number.

> At least 49.7 million Americans only have access to broadband from one of the seven largest cable and telephone companies. In total, at least 83.3 million Americans can only access broadband through a single provider.

> Over the past two years, federal stats suggest that Charter and Comcast have an absolute monopoly over fewer households, but we think this is mostly a mirage resulting from how the FCC reports data. A significant number of the census blocks showing new competition are likely only partially served.

https://ilsr.org/report-most-americans-have-no-real-choice-i...

That’s more accurate but much of the “good data” comes from the providers themselves.

Don’t know why you’ve got such a pro-Comcast / Charter bent, but I assure you they aren’t worth defending.

The fiber broadband association themselves reports over 70 million household availability for fiber. That just doesn’t square with your original statement.

> Don’t know why you’ve got such a pro-Comcast / Charter bent

Kindly go fuck yourself. Stick to facts without baseless accusations.

DSL / wireless does not count. Very, very few homes have access to fiber. Most homes only have coaxial broadband, and most of those are only served by Comcast.

While it could be better, 70 million households is not 2x very few. I can only imagine you’re going off very outdated information.

Of those 70 so million with fiber available about 30 million actually use it.

I do not believe 70M households have fiber available. I have searched many, many houses in many, many metros, and the ones with fiber are few and far between.

The FCC map is not reliable at all. You only see that fiber is not available when you search the address on the ISP website and it returns with the option for DSL. Even in the region I live now, the FCC map says fiber available in most of the city, but in reality, it’s only the newer housing developments. 90% are older homes in developments from a couple decades ago, and they only have coaxial.

The common factor in fiber availability is a housing development built after 2005 or even 2010, or built so long ago that the utilities are overhead and maybe they could string up fiber for a sufficiently low price.

Any home in any development built 1970 to 2010 with underground utilities that did not already have fiber will most likely not have fiber.

Also, any apartment building from before ~2010 will not have Ethernet wired to the apartment, only coaxial wires, and the apartment building owner is not going to wire it up for fiber, even if fiber is run to the building itself.

These numbers are from the FBA themselves, I don’t see how it is in their interests to lie that way (they have anticonsumer reasons for not doing so, this is not a defense). I’m more inclined that you’re experiencing sampling bias. Infrastructure is clustered - fiber or anything like that is not “few and far between”. More like large swaths have coverage within deserts. If you’re always looking two doors from the house in the desert, it too does not have water.

I would personally never buy a house with comcast only and would likely not without fiber (I currently live in a Uverse/Shitcast ghetto which essentially leaves me with only one option). I sympathize with the shittiness of US broadband but I see no reason to stretch the facts, they suck regardless. And we do not represent the normal customer. In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world.

> These numbers are from the FBA themselves, I don’t see how it is in their interests to lie that way. I’m more inclined that you’re experiencing sampling bias. Infrastructure is clustered - fiber or anything like that is not “few and far between”. More like large swaths have coverage within deserts. If you’re always looking two doors from the house in the desert, it too does not have water.

I don’t know why they would lie either, maybe they are using FCC maps since that is the best data they can afford. And given the low rates of new construction, I still doubt the figures, given the economics of a business installing fiber in older neighborhoods with underground utilities.

I would love to be wrong though, as I also nix living in any place only served by coaxial internet.

> In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world.

Yes, which is why installing fiber has to be a taxpayer funded effort by the government, because it will never make financial sense for a business to spend all that money to install the infrastructure and have Comcast just lower their prices to below the fiber business’s installation costs.

Please tell us that you didn't sign!

Ditto

Oh hey, they tried this exact thing on me one time too. They were all over me for it, then went totally silent after I got an attorney friend to write them a nastygram. I really shouldn't be surprised it's a pattern of abuse - they must get away with it pretty often.

Exactly the same here: We had Comcast Business for at least a decade, and cancelled it ~Oct after switching to city fiber. They wanted me to ship back the equipment by taking it to a UPS store, didn't have to package it up or anything, just hand it to staff.

I took photos of the gear in the UPS store. We worked for a few months with them to try to get it cancelled after that, eventually they said we didn't ship back all the gear, there were 2 wifi boxes we didn't return. We never had Comcast WiFi. We made a couple more back-and-forths saying this, and eventually they relented, but during this time I think we were charged $600-900 bucks (2-3 months of service) that we couldn't use (because we returned the modem) but they wouldn't cancel because we still allegedly had the WiFi gear.

> I ended up having to go through a local regulator to bludgeon them into submission

I would love to hear more in details on this. I feel like I am going to have to do something like this but not sure where to begin the research.

I forget exactly what I did, but it was an FCC complaint. Here's what one of Comcast's executive customer relations officers sent me after the FCC complaint was processed (with parts removed):

I am writing in response to the FCC file received in our office on December 2, 2014 regarding your request for the disconnection of your Comcast Business Service. I apologize for the inconvenience and frustration this has caused.

I have forwarded your concerns to the Business Services Group and you should be contacted by a representative concerning this issue. If you have any further questions, please contact me at ----------, ext. ------- and I will be happy to forward any questions or concerns you have to the correct group. Thank you for your time.