Friday, May 11, 2007

May 11, 2007

Just received an amusing email from the BBB today. I couldn't resist sharing. Basically Comcast sent them another response and mailed a copy to our house now. I'll bet nobody could guess what the company said. Any takers??

No, don't hold your breath. Comcast apparently isn't able to do much more than cut and past their reply over and over again (and over and over and over....). It's quite funny actually. You would think a company able to push 150 Mps across a copper wire would be capable of something a little more ... original?

Before I get into that, here is their response




















And here is mine.



















So now I have a list of compromises. The middle ground is NOT getting the answer and resolving the issue. We'll see what the company does. Any guesses??? :-)

I'm curious if the company will improve as a result of this. The Abuse department I hope has some understanding of how dangerous Social Engineering can be. Ever hear of a guy named Kevin Mitnick? Yeah, it's a bigger problem than people realize.

People get a phone call and wonder if it really is Comcast calling. I've heard some say this could potentially turn into some way to scam people. Call around and ask for personal information. Hey, don't look at me that way. Comcast is the one who said Unlimited doesn't mean unlimited anymore. None of this has made sense from the beginning.


Ok. So I've received a bunch of email's about Comcast's latest test over copper wire. They did accomplished something very impressive. I doubt anyone will see 150 Mps but at least they are starting to catch up with the fiber. I hope nobody is really kidding themselves. Copper is 19th century tech and we're talking about moving into the 21st Century with fiber. They are basically investing in technology which really doesn't have a future. Fiber is the future. The potential is much higher. When a gig connection is made over a cable modem then I'll change my opinion :-D

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not going to make any difference one how much they are upgrading their network to DOCSIS 3.0, they will still have the fuzzy bandwidth limit cap in place. You can't trust them.

Mark Brown said...

just need to bleep your last name in the bbb response...
Thanks for publicizing this travesty@

FZ said...

Try getting some competition in your area. Here, I use InsightBB and they charge me about $40/mo. for 10Mbps DL and UL speeds of at least 1Mbps...it's hard to say for sure as I don't upload all that much, but I just managed repeated 950Kbps uploads to the pcpitstop.com site.

André said...

quote: "People get a phone call and wonder if it really is Comcast calling."
We actually get quite a few calls like that at our work. The other day someone called claiming to be from McAffee with information about a new virus threat and wanted to know an email address he could mail the information to. When we returned the call, it wasn't McAffee at the other end, and no one knew the guy.
Our company policy does not allow us to give out such details. But still they try, and it is really easy to fool people.

Bill McGonigle said...

Ah, yes, I see your problem - you didn't get "Executive Customer Escallations" [cringe], you got the Argument Department, which is just down the hall from the Abuse department you've been dealing with.

Rather than have a good argument all you can hope for is a set of contradictions, and mindless repetition.

Astonishing how Comcast was built on the premise of a Monty Python skit, no?

Unfortunately, the final of the act of the skit contains this gem: "If you complain nothing happens, you might as well not bother."

u235sentinel said...

Markbnj said...

just need to bleep your last name in the bbb response...
Thanks for publicizing this travesty@


Oops... that's what I get for cramming too much into my day ;-)

I'm glad I could help. I haven't meet a person yet who knew this is what Comcast is doing. When I asked what they purchased from Comcast you can guess what they "thought" they were getting for their dollar.

u235sentinel said...

FZ said...

Try getting some competition in your area. Here, I use InsightBB and they charge me about $40/mo. for 10Mbps DL and UL speeds of at least 1Mbps...it's hard to say for sure as I don't upload all that much, but I just managed repeated 950Kbps uploads to the pcpitstop.com site.

May 14, 2007 5:31 PM


That's why I'm speaking with the City Council about this issues. It's not going away, people will eventually become bandwidth hogs as more and more moves to the internet (like Comcast and Amazon.com's movie download service for example)

I believe Fiber to the home is eventually going to happen. Comcast is fighting against the inevitable.

u235sentinel said...

André said...

quote: "People get a phone call and wonder if it really is Comcast calling."
We actually get quite a few calls like that at our work. The other day someone called claiming to be from McAffee with information about a new virus threat and wanted to know an email address he could mail the information to. When we returned the call, it wasn't McAffee at the other end, and no one knew the guy.
Our company policy does not allow us to give out such details. But still they try, and it is really easy to fool people.

May 15, 2007 1:18 AM


Most companies have that however city residents don't think in those terms .. usually :-)

Everybody these days is trying to be helpful. Exercising their soft skills. In the words of Kevin Mitnick, "People needs to learn to say no".

These days, a phone call isn't good enough when dealing with customer service. Caller ID numbers can be easily spoofed and Social Engineering is too easy.

Received an email from c-level tech with a youtube link. (thanks dude)

That One Guy said...

Comcast pushed 150Mbps over a copper wire, did they? I heard that back when the UTOPIA battle in the Utah Legislature was going on back in 2004; with the only difference being that someone had pushed 100Mbps over copper or a power line.

The important thing to note is what distance they were able to push it... I don't remember the exact numbers but it wasn't very far and took a lot of hardware to keep it going; much more than Qwest or Comcast will ever come close to being willing to put out. Look how long it took them to get shoddy 256k DSL to most of West Jordan and Taylorsville.

And Qwest is still playing "musical slots" with phone lines to get people DSLable... you can try their loopback test one day on your phone number and qualify for 1.5Mbit (doubtful). Try another day and not qualify at all. Try a few days later and maybe qualify for 256k.

Whatever...

Those on Qwest DSL and Comcast "High-Speed" Internet can run speed tests and most of the time get less than what is told their account is supposed to get. They of course cover their butts by tagging on the prefix "Up to [X]Mbps..."

What's awesome and proven on UTOPIA is that people clock higher than what their account says they're supposed to get... and if they're not higher, they're right around where they should be...

Examples:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/125401427.png
Residential customer in Murray, UT on UTOPIA / MStar ... 15Mbit/15Mbit package for $39.99/mo. (Less when bundled with other services.)

http://wan-party.org/temp/viva_utopia.jpg
Business customer in Murray, UT on UTOPIA / Xmission ... 30Mbit/30Mbit package for $125/mo.
(Note: this test was performed on Xmission's server so optimal speeds are shown here. I had them test on Speakeasy.net as well on the Seattle and San Francisco servers... the speeds were around 13Mbit down and 7Mbit up on an outside speed test.) The point is, they can pull down as fast as the other servers will let them.

Unknown said...

Comcast pushed 150Mbps over a copper wire, did they?

This is not a huge acomplishment...they did it over multiple frequencies.

This new modem is designed to compete with FIOS service of Verizon. It would use a new standard that would use multiple frequencies for download and upload because the limit to a single frequency on copper has been shown to be something like 50Mb/s....So the new modem deemed to be release in 5-6 years or basically when FIOS poses a significant threat to Comcast's customer base.