8 replies to this topic

[automaton]

my 6 month time with 5-20mbps is up at comcast
the only other affordable option is verizon 1.1 to 7 Mbp
will this be radically slower
can I watch my beloved videos
could someone explain this
comcasts only affordable plan was 784kb to 1mbps

[TheyCallMeGunny]

I think this should help answer your questions about comcast's previous service:

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/15643

A conversion to keep in mind: 1Mb=0.125MB [256Kilobytes] (megabit/Megabyte) Which in turn includes the reverse equation: 1MB=8Mb (Megabyte/megabit)

So 7Mbps gives you download speeds of 875KBps. That's slow, but more than enough to play youtube videos in 480p, maybe even 720p. As for sites like hulu, the site will be fine, the desktop client requires 2mbps (250KBps): Which means once again you'll have enough.

I'm running on a 1.5Mbps DS/ 384Kbps US right now. So I'm WAY slower thant he 7mbps you get, and aside from the hulu desktop client nothing is restricted. Sure, my youtube playback suffers at 480p or above, but I can at least play videos. And at 360p or below, it works fine with 2 to 3 videos at once.

**The notation to tell the two measurements apart is the "B". If it's capital, it's indicating "byte" measurment. if it's lowercase, it indicated "bit" measurement.

Edited by dragonsdontfly, 24 March 2012 - 08:59 PM.

[TheyCallMeGunny]

Sometimes I swear they do this intentionally.. the megabit per second advertisement: As most users think of Mb as megabyte, which is actually 8 megabits.

some sites even mix this up, speedtest.net used to list megabytes when it was actual measured by megabits. I believe they fixed this. But point is, I swear they try to be as deceptive as possible with the terminology.

Edited by dragonsdontfly, 24 March 2012 - 08:59 PM.

[Deathmineral]

Sometimes I swear they do this intentionally.. the megabit per second advertisement: As most users think of Mb as megabyte, which is actually 8 megabits.

some sites even mix this up, speedtest.net used to list megabytes when it was actual measured by megabits. I believe they fixed this. But point is, I swear they try to be as deceptive as possible with the terminology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_O7GSFWKs0

Sure... they could have said megabyte or megabit in the commercial, but why give the customer something to question and learn about? Yes, they intentionally mislead customers with these terms. Any time I've ever been to the cable company for something and they were explaining stuff to a customer, they always used byte, never bit. To be fair though, the person working the counter just may not know the difference or terminology, but I think that's a bit of a long shot, it's easier to believe they intentionally do this stuff, mostly because phone reps for these companies always use byte as well.

Anyway, to the OP, 7Mbps is fine for anything. Even loading videos in 1080p on Youtube will work fine. I used to have that exact same speed and it was good for just about anything that can be considered normal use, for my less normal activities, like torrents, it could have been faster. Honestly, right now I'm on a plan with 3Mbps and it's fine for pretty much anything, the only thing I have any trouble with is 1080p videos on Youtube but even then, all I have to do wait a little bit, no big deal.

[Speedway]

I call Comcast every 3-6 months (or when my special pricing is about to end) and ask to be transferred to the retention dept. From there I explain that I will cancel my services due to losing the introductory pricing for internet. Amazing that every single time I do this, they always find a deal that keeps me at the same cost

[Deathmineral]

I call Comcast every 3-6 months (or when my special pricing is about to end) and ask to be transferred to the retention dept. From there I explain that I will cancel my services due to losing the introductory pricing for internet. Amazing that every single time I do this, they always find a deal that keeps me at the same cost

Do you tell them you will just flat out cancel or do you tell them you will switch to someone else? I mean it's a good trick and all but most ISPs tend to have a monopoly in their areas so it's not someone could threaten to switch. Personally, it's either Charter cable or dial up for me, and I'm kind of thinking they'd call my bluff if I told them I would switch to dial up.

[Stonerboy779]

I call Comcast every 3-6 months (or when my special pricing is about to end) and ask to be transferred to the retention dept. From there I explain that I will cancel my services due to losing the introductory pricing for internet. Amazing that every single time I do this, they always find a deal that keeps me at the same cost

I am in the processes of still sorting out the mess my ISP has left and hopefully can get the concrete evidence I need to call back to ask why I was diliberately miss lead and lied to by a customer service rep after calling up to find out why my ISP had failed entirely to deliver on what they promised.
Should take me 5mins with online reps to get what i need, they are much better than phone reps especially if you act as a new customer.

[hornybluecow]

i was offered 30MB connection last week. i told them for $50 who wouldn't pass up the fastest internet in the world. People who do sales have no clue the difference between megabit and megabyte. hell people with satellite say they are getting 1.5MB/s when really it's 150kb/s, they do not have a clue either.

[Speedway]

Do you tell them you will just flat out cancel or do you tell them you will switch to someone else? I mean it's a good trick and all but most ISPs tend to have a monopoly in their areas so it's not someone could threaten to switch. Personally, it's either Charter cable or dial up for me, and I'm kind of thinking they'd call my bluff if I told them I would switch to dial up.

I say I'm looking at going with U-Verse through AT&T.