I usually like Comcast. The only issue I've ever had with them is the typical clueless people they have in "tech support". For instance, getting new service installed unless you have a Windows PC can be a pain in the ass (in fact a couple years ago I tried with a Mac and they insisted I download an .exe file and try to run it - fucking geniuses). However, I've found workarounds for that (call back over and over until I get someone who knows how to remotely register the cable modem).

Anyway, today I got an email with this:

Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Subscriber:

Action Taken: In an effort to help prevent spam and ensure the security of our network and customers, Comcast has modified your modem’s settings to prevent the sending of email on port 25. That is the default port email programs such as Outlook Express use to send email. We’ve taken this action because we may have detected virus-like activity from your modem or received reports from other email providers that mail from your modem generated complaints from their users. Please read this message to understand how this action may impact your ability to send email and what you should do next.

Now this is annoying on many levels. I'll outline the annoyances in order of severity:

1. They sent the notice after they blocked port 25. For me, this meant I had to not only reconfigure my email client (not a big deal), but also reconfigure the firewall and Postfix settings on my mail servers at the beginning of a business day to accept SMTP on port 587. Nothing I enjoy more than interrupting service for a bunch of people so that I can send mail again.
2. The suggestion that I may be sending spam. I don't have any fucking Windows machines. The real problem is that Comcast's "engineers" are too stupid to setup SPF records to prevent Russian spammers from hijacking comcast.net email addresses. "Our engineers can't spell SPF, so we'll just blame the customer."
3. When I called Comcast to inquire about whether or not they actually believed I was personally sending spam or if this was a network-wide policy change. They informed me it was network-wide. So why must they accuse their customers of being spammers? Oh yeah, they can't figure out how to Google for "SPF".

Anyway, I hate to do it, but I think I may switch to Qwest for a while. Comcast really crossed the line on this one.

My friend Josh just got FIOS (4/2Mb) and sent me his download times from a fast Gentoo mirror that's pretty close by (University of Oregon). His times were decent but not astounding:

Length: 20,403,483 (19M), 18,994,870 (18M) remaining [application/x-gzip]
78% [++++++===============================================================>                  ] 16,057,678   628.63K/s    ETA 00:07

Not too bad but not amazing if you're used to Comcast cable. His upstream is really nice, getting around 190KB/s. This is for around $35/month.

Anyway, I decided to test my Comcast cable on the same file from the same mirror:

Length: 20403483 (19M) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: `emacs-21.4a.tar.gz.2'
92% [====================================>   ] 18,951,374   3.29M/s  eta 0s

Hot damn. I was pretty surprised. I'd seen speeds of around 1.5MB/s coming from my own colocated servers but never this high. Apparently Comcast has increased our speeds again (we noticed a speed jump after we got Comcast digital voice). We pay around $110/month (that's for internet, two digital phone lines and basic cable TV).

Anyway, we've been under a deluge of advertisements from Qwest claiming that Comcast jacks rates (I've had near the same rate from them for several years, even AT&T/@home cost around the same before Comcast bought them). Of course anyone with half a brain knows that Comcast offers an introductory price of $15/month for basic cable and that after six months it goes to the normal price of around $50/month. It really irks me when companies are so blatantly misleading as Qwest is in this case.

My major points of complaint would be:

1. Implying that Qwest DSL is remotely in the same category as Comcast Cable. Judging from my test today I must be getting close to 30Mb/s compared to Qwest's 1.5Mb. This is for around $15 more a month. Even the 5Mbit basic package Comcast offers is far superior to Qwest's offerings.
2. Comcast hasn't changed rates in years. They did cap bandwidth for a while but it was still easily twice as fast as a comparably priced DSL package (and more reliable to boot, I think I've had two outages in 5+ years).
3. Comcast actually wants your business. We run our own business and have struggled with the ups and downs of finances for a while. Comcast has never shut off our service even if we were a couple months late. You can pay in a couple weeks? Not a problem. A friend of mine finished college and was looking for a job and decided to cancel her Comcast account because she was trying to cut expenses. The Comcast rep asked her how long she thought it might be until she might be able to afford service again. My friend told her probably at least three months. They gave her three months of free service to carry her over. The chances of Qwest (or Verizon for that matter) doing that are about nil.

4) Qwest sells your information to telemarkers. When I got Comcast digital voice, two days after getting the new lines (with new numbers) I got a telemarketing call. They knew my name, so I was pretty pissed. I assumed that Comcast had sold my name and number. I pressed the rep until he admitted that Qwest had sold it to them. Apparently even though I buy digital voice from Comcast, that line still has to go through Qwest's network at some point which requires that Comcast notify Qwest of new accounts which Qwest then quickly sells for a couple bucks. This isn't the first time they've done this to me: long ago I had a Qwest land-line and pumping telemarketers who called usually revealed that Qwest had sold them my information. To add insult to injury, Qwest then tries to sell its own customers a service to block telemarketers. Talk about milking both ends of the cow. That's Qwest's "spirit of service". They should just shorten their slogan to "bend over".

I should also mention Verizon at this point. I saw an ad for them last night (on Comcast cable, ironically) taking pretty much the same stance as Qwest: omg, it's cable, run away! What got me with them is they labeled themselves as "a company you can trust". Huh? Is this the Twilight Zone or is this not the same Verizon that just sold all their customer's call histories (and anyone who called someone on their network) to the NSA a few months ago? When they showed all those people following their customers around in their commercials I had no idea how firmly rooted in reality that was. Even if I had I wouldn't have realized those people are all from the FBI and NSA.

Anyway, this whole thing has been rubbing me wrong for some time, so I just had to get it off my chest. Don't buy from Qwest, don't buy from Verizon. If you want to be treated like a person and get your money's worth, buy Comcast.

BTW, here's my full disclosure: I have never worked for any of the aforementioned companies nor do I plan to. So there.