Feb

23

Why Comcast Sucks! (It's not what you think.) A.K.A., Why you couldn't read my blog last week.

»
sascha's picture

Last month, Comcast announced it was taking over control of Insight's networks in much of the Midwest. Last week, without any warning to its customers, Comcast cut off service as a part of a "network upgrade." For the past decade, the Chambana.net community webhosting project has provided low-cost services to our local community. For the past several years, we've utilized (and paid the premium for) enterprise class connectivity.

Since we're in the midst of upgrading and adding redundant backup uplinks, we were quite reliant upon Comcast. We've had to pay a huge mark-up for services that are supposedly better than the norm -- but Comcast completely disregarded the service level agreements that Insight had and, but cutting off service, caused the outage of service to scores of websites, hundreds of e-mail lists, and thousands of users.

The silver lining in all of this is that after two days of zero response from Comcast, Pete Collins was able to put us in contact with a Comcast employee (Jim) from the Chicago offices and Jim was able to get things cleared up fairly quickly. The total outage time was several days, and without Jim's help, would have been far longer.

But the real problem is that this sort of massive disruption to service was both completely unnecessary, entirely avoidable, and done in an environment where Comcast faces no negative repercussions for causing substantial harm to the communities that rely upon Internet connectivity for their livelihoods. This sort of business practice must be disallowed by the Public Utility Commissions and other bodies that are supposed to protect the general public from this sort of corporate malfeasance. Otherwise, it's only a question of time before it happens again.

Tags:
  1. Matt Westervelt (not verified) on Mon, 2008-02-25 13:54

    cuwin.net appears to be down still.  

  2. sascha on Tue, 2008-02-26 15:30

    Grrrrrrrr... I'll have folks check it out!


  3. Hachi (not verified) on Sun, 2008-07-27 21:23

    I'm a TV subscriber. Comcast took the contract in this small NE town 10 years ago. When they first took over, everything was great, then they started taking away channels. In the last 4 years they have had a rate increase every 6-8 months, and with every rate increase they reduced the number of channels available by 3-6 channels. It takes guts to increase rates and reduce service at the same time. This month was the last straw. They took away channels to add Internet bandwidth. I'm a TV subscriber, I don't care about Internet bandwidth.

    Direct TV gets installed Friday. Goodbye, Comcast!

  4. ffxi gil (not verified) on Thu, 2008-08-28 05:11

    Good for you Hachi, it's consumer action like this that will eventually affect change.

  5. Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 2008-09-22 07:44

    COMCAST SUCKS BIG TIME....THEY HAVE BEEN THE WORSE SERVICE PROVIDERS THAT I HAVE EVER BEEN WITH...i HAVE GAVE THEM A CALL AND TOLD THEM THAT i WOULD LIKE MY SERVICES DICONNECTED AND THE LADY I SPOKE WITH SAID THAT THE SERIVES COULD NOT BE DICONNECT UNTIL I PAYED MY BILL OF $49, i ASKED HER IF THEY COULD DISCONNECT IT AND BILL ME AND SHE SAID NO, NO...PAY THE BILL THEN I WILL PUT IN THE REQUEST FOR DISCONNECTIN AND I SAID BILL ME AND I WILL PAY ITAN SHE SAID NO YOU'VE GOT TO PA US FIRST THEN I CAN REQUEST FOR DISCONNETION SO, I SAID OK, YOU WON'T DISCONNECT IT THEN I'LL JUST KEEP MY SERVICES UNTIL MY 60 DAYS OF NO-PAYMENT OF SERVICES AND YOU CAN JUST EAT THAT BILL B/C I'M NOT PAYING IT..... I'AM IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING DIRECT TV, AND AT&T FOR PHONE SERVICE AND INTERNET AS WELL......SO TO ANYONE WITH COMCAST OR WANTING TO SWITCH TO COMCAST......DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND DON'T DO THE SWAP.....YOU WILL HATE IT......COMCAST SUCKS!!!!

  6. runescape gold (not verified) on Fri, 2008-10-03 18:47

    Good for you Hachi, it's consumer action like this that will eventually affect change.

  7. Bill (not verified) on Mon, 2008-10-20 16:54

    I was completly bombarded with offers and finally went with internet/cable 2 for 60.00 for one year. That was five months ago, this months bill 84.32, last months bill 106.86. I never added any thing. Was told they would credit me 30.00 if I would stay , yet refused to admit or refund the over charge and accused me of ordering digital extra channels , which they could not prove, but to say why would we charge if you did not order it (argh). I have now direct tv , which I like but I have a slow internet to deal with again. But as long as Comcast stole from me I shall consider them thieves.

  8. ffxi gil (not verified) on Wed, 2008-11-05 22:20

    Since this new approach only kicks in during times of congestion, this seems like a reasonable approach. It's similar in premise to weighted fair queuing. It attempts to stop bandwidth-hogging flows from choking out smaller flows. This is very common. Every major network exercises some form of queuing and Quality of Service.

    9. Post new comment

    The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
    • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

    More information about formatting options

    Captcha Image: you will need to recognize the text in it.
    Please type in the letters/numbers that are shown in the image above.