Comment by pdxandi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdxandi | Hacker News Reader

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I just cancelled Comcast this week and am in the Bay Area too. I've been going (polite) rounds with their customer support since March. Constantly losing connection, uploads peak at 1Mbps, horribly unreliable.

I paid for their 110Mbps plan and have worked remotely for many years. Video dropping all the time, router hanging. After upgrading all my equipment because they wouldn't admit fault, I got a tech to come out who was completely candid because I showed him my modem SNR and power levels and he knew I wasn't messing around.

Without fail, he pointed to the pole top node and said that's the problem. It was Sunday and the realtime congestion was near 80%. He said it was scheduled for upgrade but everything is delayed because of supply chain issue in China.

That was all I needed to hear. Canceled that day, got AT&T copper (no fiber here), and it's been solid so far.

Have you ever considered going on to one of the small business plans? I have this through work, and instead of the usual gripes, my connection has a minimum guaranteed bandwidth instead of some soft "may be shared and degrade with neighbors" clause in it.

Unless it runs through a different junction box, which it might, it wouldn't matter. The tech said as much, that they could upgrade my plan for free, but it wouldn't make a difference. The node is literally on top of the pole outside my house and there doesn't seem to be a way around it.

The AT&T internet plan seems sufficient for my usage. It's capped at 100Mbps, which I understand to be a limit, at least in part, of running over copper phone lines. I get about 20Mbps up pretty consistently, which is enough. Apparently fiber in my neighborhood is right around the corner (literally, my neighbors have it), but we probably won't live here when it arrives.

On a side note, AT&T threw in free install, $150 in gift cards, and a free 24" Samsung LCD. All for $45/mo no contract service. Made it real easy to switch, though I would've anyway.

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