Quote:Many of my friends who have Comcast complain about outages and not receiving the speed promised. None of which I've experienced with Uverse. Our church stream and guest wifi struggles with Comcast. Comcast completely crashed downtown during the Rockville weekend. The nearest available server was all the way out in MacClenny, making service awful at best that Saturday.
DirecTV was my favorite of them all, back when they had TiVo driven DVRs (best interface IMO.) My reason for leaving was to bundle internet. My DirecTV service was out maybe 20 minutes when we had our last hurricane(s) hit about 10 years ago. My mother in law's Comcast service was out an entire week during that same storm.
My kids have two tablets, we have three computers, a PS3, two smart phones, and a smart TV and I've got no issues with Uverse. Occasionally I'll have to reboot the router (2-3 times a year) but other than that it's smooth sailing.
You know you can bundle DTV through AT&T, right? We've done it for years with our mobile account and satellite. And the TiVo DVRs have been brought back as well. We've been customers with DTV for more than 13 years now, and there are the occasional outages when the weather is really bad, but not nearly as frequently as cable drops.
As far as Internet, Xfinity/Comcast is pretty much the fastest service in the area, blowing away Uverse or anything else on the market currently that's readily available. I've got the Blast package, and it was originally 50 Mbps, but they've upped it to 100. I work from home, and rely on my Internet. I need the most reliable speed possible because I'm running video conferencing and IP Phone pretty much all day long. For all the things I truly dislike about Comcast, they keep me as a customer because nobody can match the speed or reliability of their Internet services.
I did try Uverse a while back because AT&T told us that they could get us speeds close to what we were seeing at the time with cable. I agreed to give them a run, and the promised speed vs. what I was actually seeing with the speed tests were off by about 80%. When I called AT&T, they said it must be an external wiring issue, so they sent a tech out. Prior to his arrival, AT&T confirmed that all of the necessary hardware to support the higher speeds had been installed and that it was available in our area. The tech checked the lines at the house (fine), and at the box (fine). He told me he was going to check the main box for the entire area and that he'd be gone about 20 minutes. He came back after checking it and said that while the hardware had indeed been installed, it had not yet been configured. There wasn't even a work order to do so, so it was going to be several months before anything close to what we'd been promised was going to be a possibility.
I called AT&T, asked them where I could ship my equipment because we weren't taking the service, and we were done with them...or so we thought. We confirmed cancellation and returned the modem. But, they kept billing us for the service. This went on for nearly 6 months where we'd get a bill, and they were continuing to tack the internet service fees on. They had the audacity to start sending us late notices because we refused to pay that portion of the bill. Every time we'd talk to someone at AT&T, they'd be polite and tell us it was handled, and then the next bill would come, and it wasn't. We finally got in touch with a supervisor who seemed to have at least some authority to make the necessary changes. She did her part and they stopped adding to our bill, but AT&T didn't remove the erroneous charges. It just sat there on our bill every month. Again, we called and demanded it be removed. Finally a clerk told us that unless we could prove that we didn't use the service, we were on the hook for the amount specified (which was now hovering around $300!).
When we spoke to her supervisor, we were told that we would have to contest the billing in writing. Not email writing mind you, but an actual letter that had to be sent to some special dispensation department in Atlanta. This is a technology company, mind you. We couldn't email or fax a letter requesting a review. We had to send it via USPS. It took another 3 months before they finally completed the audit and confirmed that we hadn't used the service beyond the point where the tech came to the house. At that point, they finally removed the amount from our billing.
We still have our mobile service through AT&T, and DTV is still bundled in that deal, although there really isn't any real deal to be had. I pay a premium for the faster internet through Comcast because I've got 5 computers, 6 tablets, and 4 smartphones to deal with. I monitor the speed constantly to make sure I'm getting something at least somewhat respectable for the premium price, and if it seems to be dragging, I get them on the phone. Their service is why we left Comcast originally, and it still drives me nuts when I'm talking to Bill Bob in Bangladesh. I rarely get a resolution that way, and request escalation to US support when that becomes apparent. The US support folks are far more effective, so I don't waste a lot of time dealing with the offshore folks. If they can't figure it out in 5 minutes we move on.
Quote:I would rather things be hard wired for most of my computer work. For one it's faster than Wifi, and two, it's just a little bit more secure. Out in public, the only time I turn Wifi on is if I'm doing some kind of analysis. In my opinion, if someone accesses their personal information (ie. bank accounts or otherwise) over a "public hot spot" they are opening themselves up to a huge risk. I would also wager that most people that use "wireless" in their homes don't have things secured.
Call me paranoid or whatever, but broadcasting info out into the air is the easiest way to have that info compromised.
It's not paranoid, but there are precautions that can be taken to assure that you're secure. Since I work in the cloud computing environment, and data security is a major concern, I'm equally paranoid, but not afraid to use the equipment. I just know that you have to be very aware of security on your networks whether at home or at hotspots.
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