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Comcast Bidding To Buy AT&T's Cable-Modem Unit
jobugeek writes: "Comcast is making a bid to buy AT&T's cable modem unit for over 44 billion. That would combine the #1 and #3 cable modem providers in the U.S." If this deal should really happen, it would create the country's largest broadband provider. I wonder which of these two has better technical support, installation speed, etc.
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I have AT&T @Home now, but it was Road Runner until last week. Nothing changed except the name and their home page. This was MediaOne before, not TCI, and MediaOne runs their own cable modem system, tying in to AT&T's national Internet backbone. The mail server's a bit slow and I'm having trouble posting via the news server, but basic connectivity is excellent and reliable. This is near Boston.
The old TCI systems, on the other hand, let @Home do real work for them. From what I hear it hasn't worked out so well. I really think AT&T would like to put @Home out of its misery. They made a mistake going pubilc with it; now they have public minority shareholders they can't screw.
I think Comcast pretty much does their own thing too, albeit with an @Home label. As cablecos go, it's a high-class outfit too, more like MediaOne than TCI. But do note that over half of their current service area was not theirs two years ago -- they did a huge swap with AT&T/TCI as part of the MediaOne deal. (Comcast tried to buy it; AT&T outbid them and owed them a $1B breakup fee, which was paid in the form of cable subscribers. They have been swapping systems to create larger, more contiguous clusters.) So lots of Comcast systems are old TCI systems, which usually means "fix-er-uppers".
The big question for this deal is concentration: AT&T had some legal problems taking over MediaOne, because they ended up owning more than a 30% prorated share of the national CATV market. That law's legality is questionable, but Comcast-AT&TB would be WAY over the mark. And I don't think AT&T has finalized their divestiture of 25% ownership of Time Warner Entertainment.
That pool is pretty well defined. It's set forth by the following qualifications.
- Must speak some english
- It'd be nice if you had a GED
- Must be willing to take abuse from irate customers over the telephone
- Must do all of the above for $7 an hour.
Naturally, these requirements are listed a bit differently in the the newspaper ads announcing hiring for the position. They read something like this:- Excellent communication skills required
- Education: Diploma or GED, Assiciates Degree preferred
- Outstanding customer service skills required
- Competitive wages and benefits, excellent advancement opportunities
And you're left wondering why these people aren't qualified sys-admins???________________________
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I've used way too many @Home providers. I've moved around a bit... Comcast@Home in Newport Beach, Orange County, CA. Cox@Home in San Diego, CA. Currently I'm using AT&T@Home in South Lake Tahoe, CA.
Comcast@Home only went down once in the half-year I used them... their stability is definately acceptable. In Orange County, my connection limits were 15k/sec outgoing, 500k/sec incoming. The basic service is a static IP setup, which never changed.
Cox@Home only went down once in the half-year I used them... their service is definately acceptable as well. In San Diego, my connection limits were 35k/sec outgoing, 400k/sec incoming. The basic service is a static IP setup, which never changed.
I've had AT&T@Home service for 2 months now. I've had two outages so far. I'm not sure if its their fault, as Tahoe wiring tends to end up being shredded and turned into squirrel nesting. They do NOT offer static IPs, period. Nor do they offer higher grades of connection... the base-level consumer cablemodem is the only form of network access they provide. I checked, I hate DHCP. Right now, my connection limits are 15k/sec outgoing, probably 500k/sec incoming, but I have yet to see over 320k/sec. They also have these inexplicable patches of half-connectivity where 50% of packets are dropped, causing pretty much everything to pause. These last probably 30 seconds, occur all the time, and I have no idea whats causing them. A tree farted, or something. No idea if its their fault or not - local conditions are occasionally harsh.
Of the three, Cox had the best service. I wish more broadband providers would run their service like Cox does. Its simply astounding how much those extra 20k/sec (outgoing) matter. Many protocols have tons of ACKs, and both Comcast and AT&T don't really allow enough outgoing bandwidth to make the most of the incoming. Plus, for some reason, Cox doesn't slow down when you're uploading a file to someone else... it simply drops packets instead of keeping 100k of queue and incurring 10 second ping replies. Which makes for a more useable connection, overall. I wonder if broadband providers will ever realize this, or if they even care (hey, they're beating 56k, what else does the customer want).
Overall, I hope this goes through and we switch to Comcast. That is, assuming they're still using the same setup and they're able to provide the same level of service. In addition, Comcast's techs actually knew what they were doing, unlike AT&T's.
In any case, I'm glad I haven't been subjected to PPPoE (yet).
Disclaimer: Comcast may be run by evil tribbels from Venus's core who enjoy eating peoples faces and blowing things up. AT&T may be On A Mission From God. I could just be an extreme outlier, my experience unique and completely different from the average. Or I could be from Alpha Centuari (I'm not, as far as I know).
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I don't have any experience with Comcast - so I can only speak for AT&T. (this will be quite lengthy)
We moved to MA from Syracuse, NY, where we'd had an excellent experience with Time Warner's Roadrunner cable modem service (note: this was pre-merger, so I have no idea if it's gone downhill since - anyway, it's not like we had mich choice in the matter - TW has a stranglehold on cable out there)
One of the first things we did was look up who the cable modem provider was in the area. AT&T. So, we called and attempted to set up an install.
Our building wasn't "recognized" by their system.
Not really their fault - when the building we're living in was renovated to make apartments, the landlords didn't do all the correct paperwork. The existing cable lockbox for the house was also (literally) ripped from the wall. Needless to say - the situation was a mess.
We waited about a month for them to get their act together and figure out what they were going to do (they had our name, address, and the fact that we WANTED service - they told us we'd need to wait until they could get a technician out to do the necessary work) - and one never came. Finally, my fiancee called and complained her way up to the guy who manages the installation teams.
Within two weeks, we had the new cable lockbox, as well as a new line to the cable trunk in place. Still took them another month to get an actual install date - but hey - we were finally moving along, right?
Well, the installer comes (3 hours late, I might add) and hooks up the digital cable. He then proceeds to pull out an installation CD - which I tell him that I do not want him to install (my computer had that fine balance of software where Windows 98 actually didn't crash every 5 minutes) -- he insists, saying that it doesn't actually install anything, it just lets him confirm that he made the install. Uh huh. I watch as he "doesn't install" a new copy of IE, "doesn't install" a new set of network settings, wiping out my finely tuned registry settings, and "doesn't install" extra icons to my desktop. In addition, he INSISTS on renaming the IE icon to "AT&T INTERNET" (note: all caps), and renaming the Outlook Express icon to "AT&T EMAIL" (Yep - all caps again - and I didn't have OE installed before this install - I chose NOT to have it for a reason!)
Needless to say - I bitched the guy out - and of course, he completely denies that he installed ANYTHING! AARGH!
Installers suck.
Well, after that's over, how does he test the connection? He pulls up CNN.com, which loads OK, and then packs up and leaves. I get his number (which I called into their support center later...) and he takes off.
After playing with the connection for a few minutes, we realize something is VERY wrong. We can't hold a stable connection to ANYTHING -- we'd get 50-300k into a download, and it would just die. Consistantly.
Try it under linux - same thing.
Replace the Cat5 (hey - it's old) - same problem.
Replace the (new) cable from the wll to the cable modem - same problem.
Hook up to my local network, and transfer files just fine (same network settings, both OS) - so it's obviously not my end.
Call up AT&T's "support" (and I use that term loosely). Spend an hour between being on hold and talking to techs who try to blame everything on my computer - after explaining the situation about 10 times, I get told that I will be "escalated" to a "level 2" tech. His solution? Reinstall Windows.
After explaining to the guy that Windows is not the problem (my local network works fine) about 5 times, he decides that maybe I might know what I'm talking about - and "escalates" me again - this time to an "admin". His solution? "Work is being done in your area - I don't have an ETA, or any more information, but rest assured that we will be fixing the problem."
Uh huh.
Total time spent on the phone to get this response? 2 hours, 45 minutes. Mind you, this is on my cellphone, because the phone company hadn't gotten around to doing their install yet either.
After a month of horrible service, I call back again - armed with my old "ticket number" and the ID numbers of all the techs I spoke to - including the "admin" who told me that work was "being done".
Spend an hour working through the "level 1" techs - who I am convinced are there to waste your time and try to convince you never to call them again, regardless of the problem. I get to a "level 3" tech - who tells me:
1: my old ticket number is invalid
2: the ID of the "admin" I got is invalid
3: there is nothing wrong with my connection - I'm just visiting "slow" sites
Mind you, the problem happened on EVERY site I went to - not just small, unpopular, or slow sites.
Call the guy's bluff - and he gets rude - saying that the problem MUST be on my end, because I'm just a "stupid user", and that I should "know better than to try to test something myself".
At that point I hung up. We started looking for alternatives to AT&T. Noone else in the area offered cable -- they had a lock on that. So, the other avenue was DSL. After poking around for a week or two, we placed an order with Speakeasy.
Within 2 weeks (well, 15 days, actually) we had a brand-spanking-new DSL connection that works like a charm.
AT&T got my disconnect notice the next day - although they still have my address wrong, refuse to pick up their cable modem (which they brought here, and will not give me an address to mail it back to them (I have no car, and their closest "return location" is about 45 minutes away by car) ), and continure to charge me "rent" for.
Last month, they tried to bill me AGAIN for cable modem service -- calling them to resolve the issue took over an hour - and ended up being me saying "I cancelled my service two months ago - don't bill me for something I've cancelled!", to their "Well, we don't have that in our system, and we show you still have our modem, so you MUST still be using the service"
Things just go around and around with these people. If they do it again next month, the BBB will be getting involved (I've already called them once for advice in this matter, and they said to give them one more chance to fix things to my satisfaction before getting the BBB involved)
I would highly recommend ANYONE stay away from AT&T's cable service, if you aren't masochistic.