# Xfinity deal...



## dmspen (Dec 1, 2006)

My 2 year promotion with Xfinity internet was expiring 12/16. I received a snail mail letter from them with possible options for a new plan. I chatted with a person online who stated my promotion was still valid. Hmmm, seems odd. I ended up calling.

They ended up bumping my speed from 275MBps to 600Mbps for $10 LESS per month. I was shocked. Good for a year.

Now the only problem was my modem only handles 300Mbps! Ha! SO I ended up buying a new modem to handle the speed. Still waiting for it. Modems get more expensive as speed increases.

I still wish I had Gigabit available here for a decent price.


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## Phil T (Mar 25, 2002)

I have been happy with Xfinity since I dropped DirecTV three years ago because of cost and the AT&T takeover. I have been getting speed increases every year without cost increases. My 300/10 X1 STARTER PRO+ DP package costs me less then standalone DirecTV including my XG1v4 4K DVR. They just bumped my speed to 465/11.5. Yes there are some equipment costs for router/modem and the Tivo's I use in extra rooms.

I am currently using a Netgear CBK 752 Orbi CBK752 - AX4200 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi System | NETGEAR That works great for my 4 level home. It should be good for gig service but I won't go there unless the price of the service comes down.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

dmspen said:


> I still wish I had Gigabit available here for a decent price.


Could you really use 1Gbps?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

harsh said:


> Could you really use 1Gbps?


I could ... But I'd rather have the money in my savings account.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

James Long said:


> I could ... But I'd rather have the money in my savings account.


Our cable company it is alike a 25 dollar difference.. The highest non gig plan is 300/20 but has a data cap and is 85. 109 gets you 1000/25 and unlimited


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## NR4P (Jan 16, 2007)

dmspen said:


> My 2 year promotion with Xfinity internet was expiring 12/16. I received a snail mail letter from them with possible options for a new plan. I chatted with a person online who stated my promotion was still valid. Hmmm, seems odd. I ended up calling.
> 
> They ended up bumping my speed from 275MBps to 600Mbps for $10 LESS per month. I was shocked. Good for a year.
> 
> ...


Curious, do you need 600Mbps? How will you be utilizing that? And then same question for 1GB?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

compnurd said:


> 109 gets you 1000/25 and unlimited


Xfinity here asks $100 here for Gigabit but the 1.2TB cap sneaks up incredibly fast. I have their 75Mbps service and it costs $69.95/month and that seems pricey compared to what some are being offered.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

NR4P said:


> Curious, do you need 600Mbps? How will you be utilizing that? And then same question for 1GB?


From my stand point.. Do we need a gig No. however it is nice to know that if the demand hits I have the overhead


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## techguy88 (Mar 19, 2015)

compnurd said:


> Our cable company it is alike a 25 dollar difference.. The highest non gig plan is 300/20 but has a data cap and is 85. 109 gets you 1000/25 and unlimited


Same. I was on the 150/10 plan but it has a 1TB data cap which I began to surpass frequently now that I stay at home more. With my old plan + Unlimited Data bolt-on at $35/mo drove my Internet bill to $103.95/mo. When they reduced the 1Gbps / 25 Mbps plan to $109.95 I said "why the h*** not" and upgraded for only $6/mo more. Do I need that high of speed, no but I do need Internet with no data caps right now. Might as well get best of both worlds.

Must say all around its been a better experience. My Xbox One X is hardwired to my network which allows games I download from Game Pass & EA Play to download quicker. PlayStation Now on my PS4 Pro works a whole lot better. Work wise the increased upload speed is helping a ton.


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## dmspen (Dec 1, 2006)

NR4P said:


> Curious, do you need 600Mbps? How will you be utilizing that? And then same question for 1GB?


I have about 15 devices connected to the internet. As to 'needing' 600, the answer is probably No. However, the fine print is 'speed up to 600...'. My experience has shown that 600 is more likely 400 which i can use. My daughter has a home business and my wife zooms 8 hours a day for work.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

Over 20 devices here. Google Fiber, 500 Mbps down AND up for $55 / month, 1Gbps for an additional $20/month. I haven't seen a need for Gig yet. I will grant that some of them aren't used to full capacity, but they are all on. In addition, I keep 5-6 Garmin GPS current as well.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Every so often I read posts like those in this thread and puzzle.

I feel incredibly lucky to have a very reliable Comcast/Xfinity 1229GB monthly plan for $81.95 a month as much of our rural area even in our community is unserved as even cell service is unreliable.

But I puzzle about speed. Technically our plan is 75 Mbps though normally we get 85-90 Mbps. Of course, when I do a speed test across the country to Boston, for instance, I get about 20 Mbps.

My wife and I spend a considerable time on our computers. We have six Echos and two tablets connected to our network, plus an old phone without a SIM card used as a tablet to check our TV schedule. Oh, and we have two phones that most of the time are connected.

We have two TV's but only watch one mostly through an Amazon Cube. I guess because we only watch one TV at a time I haven't seen anything that seems to indicate our speed is slow.

The only time I can remember experiencing frustrating waits is when I was managing some websites would download an entire website. For everything else, my old brain just does not see waits not related to distant web traffic.

We do lose connection now and then.

But I keep reading about 1Gps speeds. I think I'm missing out. What don't I know?


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## Phil T (Mar 25, 2002)

I have a Comcast 300/10 plan that give me 460 down/12 up. Plenty for everything I do, 35 devices.

I have a friend with a Centurylink DSL plan that is 20 down/856 kbs up. I have told her she needs to upgrade but she is perfectly happy with it for one computer, a Roku and one Echo dot. She streams Netflix and Disney all the time. I notice slow loading of web pages on the computer and phone but she is used to it and does not want to pay any $$ to upgrade. She is on a $40.00 price for life plan.

I don't think you need the Gig plans but the cable companies sure push it around here. A lot of folks think it is a must have. Possibly for gaming but not otherwise.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Phil T said:


> I don't think you need the Gig plans but the cable companies sure push it around here. A lot of folks think it is a must have. Possibly for gaming but not otherwise.


For residential cable broadband/DSL connections, it is often a asynchronous connection, meaning that the download speed is going to be much higher than the upload speed, with the expectation that you will be downloading much more than what you will be uploading. My connection history has been as follows:

Surewest DSL (Sacramento, CA, until March, 2019): 15 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload, then a change over to 20 Mbps/1 Mbps upload
Spectrum Internet (February, 2019-November, 2020, Richardson, TX): Almost a Gigabit download/35-40 Mbps upload
AT&T Fiber (November, 2020-present): 900 Mbps download & Upload
In the case of Spectrum Internet, I was paying for the Gigabit service more for the upload speed than for the download speed as pre-Covid, I was spending some of my work time at home with a hardware VPN connection providing me with a phone and computer connection to the office. I'm also participating in and supporting online meetings, and both desktop sharing and webcam video can take up plenty of bandwidth. When moving into my present home, I had setup one of my closets with a rack and ran network cabling to the master bedroom, a bedroom converted to an office, kitchen, and den. This has paid off tremendously in a rock-steady connection where managers and directors above me have had problematic connections and were working out of basements, guest bedrooms, or the living room.

As for the gamers, remember that some of the games downloads nowadays, including day one patches, can go into the gigabytes for both console as well as PC gaming. And some gamers like to stream themselves playing a game.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

To be honest, at this point in time, most people do not NEED Gigabit - they just WANT it. Your WiFI at home more than likely can't go that fast (unless you have the very,very latest), and most home networking gear can't do much above 1 Gigabit (for UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair)- think Cat5e / Cat6). If you want much faster at home - you're going to need to start thinking about fiber in the house. Synchronous upload / download should be more important for remote workers than Gigabit download / 30M upload (Mark's story about upper management having poor at home networking while he was breezing along is probably more common than not (IT folks recognize that you have to make the investment to do it right to duplicate office performance / reliability). 

My wife was working from home from March until a couple weeks ago (they moved her to another department and she has to train in the office). I had her all setup in a guest bedroom , but she had CAT5e connection to our router (and so on to Google's ONT). She could work and I could do whatever and she was never affected.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

scooper said:


> To be honest, at this point in time, most people do not NEED Gigabit - they just WANT it.


It's more than just the data transfer speeds. Depending on the provider and the service level, the lower-speed tiers may have a data cap while the higher speed tiers had "unlimited" internet. Comcast has a 1.2 Terabyte data cap unless you paid extra for unlimited. AT&T Fiber _had _a data on the lower tiers, but unlimited at the higher levels.

My wired network is only capable of up to 1 Gigabit connection. Only the Cat 6 network cabling is able to get faster speeds, but that is only one ingredient. The network interfaces on all my wired stuff is old enough to only cap out at 1 Gigabit speeds, and I wonder if my BluRay players or my Roku TVs are capable of more than 100 Megabits. The network switch, which is a 24 port rack switch, is only capable of 1 Gigabit speed. My FreeNAS/TrueNAS server is only capable of 1 Gigabit speed. My hardware VPN to the office is an older model and is only capable of up to 75 Mbps connection. And, I don't have any of that new-fangled WiFi 6 gear, not that any of my WiFi devices can support that.... yet..... so I'm stuck with 54 Mbps WiFi.

... and, for my internal network, I don't need anything faster that 1 Gigabit. Considering that I schedule my computer backups to occur in the middle of the night, that's not an issue. Since my mother can be streaming the same channel from two different televisions "just to have conversation in the house", yet I can be working away and uploading files, it's all good.

Yes, the folks that did the network cable install looked at me strangely for insisting on having eight network ports in my office, and tried to convince me to run a single cable and hook up a switch. I gently pointed them to my hardware VPN, and explained how that device helps me earn a paycheck.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

Your point about "it's not the speed, it's the traffic limit" is well taken. Yes, if ISPs would get smart and offer unlimited data caps (or caps so much so that most people wouldn't notice) they could offer lower speeds.


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## Davenlr (Sep 16, 2006)

Went to 1Gb/s AT&T Fiber from Comcast Blast. Not because I was using all the speed of Blast, but because the AT&T came with no caps, free HBOMax, and was $40 a month cheaper ($30 after the mandatory $10 modem charge). 
Normally, I would not have worried about the internet side of things, but Xfinity dropped my cable feed to 720p for all channels, and it looked like crap on a 75" TV, so I needed to switch TV providers, and it was cheaper to switch both. It will be a wash for the second year of DirecTv, but Ill still have unlimited 1G internet vs capped Blast.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

And as if they heard us discussing pricing, notices came out today about the latest Xfinity broadband price hikes.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

At least I'm fortunate enough that my employer pays for my Internet. Because the AT&T Fiber is about $45 cheaper than Spectrum, my entire bill is now covered.


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## OneMarcilV (Jul 24, 2020)

I have a neat plan. 60.00 per month for the original speed of 300 mbps free upgrade to 400 mbps like two days ago. Well the plan is only for two years. When the plan is over and I don't see this plan not do continue I will switch back to Verizon.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

OneMarcilV said:


> When the plan is over and I don't see this plan not do continue I will switch back to Verizon.


Comcast isn't all that great about publishing their "deals". What's Verizon offering that makes them a better alternative?


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## OneMarcilV (Jul 24, 2020)

True. Instead of two years this should be never ending.


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## Mike Lang (Nov 18, 2005)

I've been renewing my "promo" $70/mo gigabit internet with Xfinity for years. Since they know I also have AT&T fiber as well as Metronet fiber available, Xfinity has to be competitive.


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## OneMarcilV (Jul 24, 2020)

My thought if I let Comcast know I am not renewing I will be offered the same price and plan.

Verizon let me keep their gateway. So I will sign up again with Verizon. Very much slower than Comcast and the same price. Unlimited usage though. 

I have a grandfathered AT&T internet plan for hotspot devices at 20.00 a month. That is way slower than Verizon by ½ the speed. Unlimited Plan.


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