My DSL to cable experience - Southeast Michigan

I thought this was the best spot to post my thread, my apologies if this needs to be moved to the appropriate forum.

There are no questions or anything severely tech related in my post, instead, this is more of a summary of my high-speed internet service for the past three years. This may be especially helpful for those of you in the Metro Detroit area, but keep in mind that your results may vary, this is only what I experienced. I should also note that I used an SMC Barricade 4-port router with every connection (to plug in a laptop computer in addition to having my desktop online).


I originally signed up for Comcast (cable modem) as my ISP from roughly July '01 through July '03. The downstream speeds were great, well over 200KB/sec during off-peak times, slightly slower during peak usage - no complaints there. However, the connection was not as reliable as I would have liked. Meaning, it seemed like it was constantly down for maintenance every few days (especially late at night, when I was gaming LOL). That was frustrating, but I stayed with Comcast for a two-year period. Their customer service/tech help was somewhat lacking in the beginning, but I noticed that they improved on it towards the later stages (had a couple of extremely helpful phone tech support people assist me with troubleshooting my internet connection problems at times). At the beginning of summer 2003, I noticed my rates were increasing, thus I felt like shopping around for a new ISP, in hopes of paying less per month for high-speed service.


Enter SBC/Yahoo's DSL service. Who could pass up their $25.95 per month introductory fee (for the first 12 months)? Great service provider, no major outages to speak of during my 13 months with them, the connection seemed like it was always "up." Now, there was a little network maintenance performed late at night every now & then, but it didn't last for hours like it did when my Comcast line was down. This was also my first experience using DSL and I was nervous in the beginning, because I had heard horror stories from other people in the area (poor downstream performance). However, I would max out around 180KB/sec. That's not bad at all for $26 a month if you ask me. However, my 12-month contract was expiring (and normal monthly fees of ~ $50 were going to start), so I looked for another ISP...


I recently signed up for a WOW! cable modem connection (Aug '04). The cool thing is that WOW! lets you select one of four different speeds (click here for more info), so you can select the service which meets your needs - I chose the 2.0MB package. I ran a speed test and noticed that with WOW! my downstream is 271KB/sec and upstream is 28KB/sec - well over the advertised 2MB "barrier" that was promised! I still have yet to do any extensive online gaming or endure any network maintenance, but so far, so good!


So, these are my experiences with three different high-speed providers in my area. Your mileage may vary! Any questions or anyone else in the area have any similar (or different) experiences in the Metro Detroit area? I would love to hear other stories, just for comparison. Thanks.

 

That Wow seems offly exspensive. How much are you paying for the 2.0 package? Do you need to have the Wow cable TV?

 

Good point, I should have noted that I also signed up for the cable TV package too. You CAN sign up for their internet service "a la carte," without having to get cable TV...