I used to have xfinity / comcast for my internet and phone.
they were charging me $41 / month for a phone while other VOIP providers charge less than $20 / month.
My download speed with xfinity / comcast, (last time I checked), was download 599 Mbps and upload 24 Mbps @ $147 / Month.
The important thing is i don’t have to talk to people at xfinity / comcast that have English as a second language nor pay an exorbitant fee.
They didn’t even try to talk me out of it when I just terminated my service with them.
They tried to extend my service to o1/06/2025 to get more money. I said I wanted it disconnected today, I think they complied.
For reference on 10/20/2011 I had verizon for my telephone and internet. the download with them was 2.52 Mbps and the upload was 0.69 Mbps (when it worked).
Fiber is one of the few modern options that typically has symmetric speed. (Upload and download ~ equal.) Cable and DSL and satellite technologies are almost always asymmetric (slow upload), unless you pay a huge premium for business-class.
I understand that but they, comcast / xfinity hounded me to get a new modem to get the bandwidth I was paying for. I did and the upload was 118 Mbps while the download was 471 Mbps…
They throttled me and my upload was averaging about 80 Mbps, download about the same 470 Mbps… ( I could look up the date in the online history at https://www.speedtest.net )
About April 2nd 2024, my download went up to 590 Mbps while the upload remained about 80 Mbps
Then, on December 6th of 2024, they dropped my upload to about 24 Mbps. keeping the download about 590-600 Mbps.
That’s when I made my decision about Empire Access and posted a thread on a comcast forum about having to deal with people from a place where English was a second language and them reading from a script rather than hearing what I was saying as well as their telephone BOT repeatedly wanting to send a text or a link to offer a chat via text on my land line. A so-called xfinity / comcast rep replied and just said they understand my frustration about the BOTs and foreign nationals then let it go at that.
The last comcast / xfinity results were 599.15 Mbps download and 24.06 Mbps upload.
I gave up testing as I had made my decision.
The first test with Empire Access was 947.77 Mbps download and 945.13 Mbps upload.
I feel I made the right decision for my wallet as the former was charging me about $147 or so and the new one was less than half that price, (introductory about $58), with an eventual price of about $85 / month.
The bottom line is that xfinity / comcast, (at the time only under the name of “verto”), made a deal with this city and others in the area for exclusivity. This hurt of course. But the 50 years came and went so there is now competition. Thank God.
( I can remember Verto cable and climbing a pole to connect a cable to my house to get local channels better and then building a VFO to sync with the signal that was over riding the Horizontal sync pulse on channel 3 thereby rendering it null so we could watch HBO back in the early 70’s. )
But all cable systems are asymmetric–it’s just the nature of that hardware. And as more upload is spread among customers, they have to throttle harder and harder. Just the way it is.
