davis_square | RCN vs Comcast

I've had Comcast in the past, and now have RCN.

For the Internet connection, RCN is far superior. For the cable television, not so much, but this may be a function more of the digital cable box they installed being silly. (it takes a measurable and infuriating two to three seconds for it to register each button press on the remote)

This is exactly what I've concluded from lots of intarweb research. Far better for internets, the TV's not quite as slick.

Currently Comcast in Cambridge (nicely alliterative!) but we're moving to Somerville and RCN in about a month after much research.

I hardly ever watch television, but the girlfriend insisted, and the package deal was nice. So I'll let her worry about the remote.

Comcast is a profoundly nasty and unethical company with legendarily awful customer service. RCN is probably just as nasty and unethical, but they've done a better job of keeping a lid on it. My household uses RCN and the service is pretty solid.

I've had both and this is how I view them:

RCN:
pros = better/more intelligent tech support, TCM and GSN included in basic package (key if you like old timey movies and old timey game shows!), nicer/more polite customer service, fewer wifi outages
cons = the free on-demand selection stinks - very little is available, the on-demand system in general is really clunky and not user-friendly

Comcast:
pros = on-demand system is awesome - lots of free shows and movies (CBS, A&E, Bravo, etc.) available in an easy-to-navigate system
cons = fewer channels in the basic package, tech support is maddeningly unhelpful

Having tried both, which one did you decide to keep?

It's more like, having had both which one did the new roommate and I decide to go with -- my old roommate and I had Comcast -- my new roommate wanted to go with RCN and I was cool with that (having had both in the past). So far, we enjoy RCN.

I had Comcast in Lowell for the 8 years that I lived in an apartment and not in a dorm. Had tons of issues - internet dropouts, they shut off our service three separate times because we "hadn't paid" when we had paid, etc.

I moved to Somerville and there was competition! I decided to give RCN a whirl because hey, it couldn't be worse than Comcast, right?

the TV signal would go like this: signal for 5-6 seconds, black green/silence for 3 seconds. the internet was, to put it mildly, slow. they missed two appointments to have a tech come check our apartment. RCN lasted 4 days, and I went back to Comcast.

For the past decade I've been a huge RCN proponent. But no more. Had you asked six weeks ago I would still have been "ra ra RCN". But no more.

RCN is encrypting all their station. No clear QAM. Even the local broadcast HD stations are encrypted.

RCN is also dropping Analog support, sometime between July and February.

Both of these actions combined means that you MUST have a cable box. Period. Get ready to pay $12/mo for each HD tuner you want.

Their Internet service is still okay, but my cablemodem, which has been solid for the past couple years has been having lots of outages over the last week or two.

I wish Verizon would bring in FIOS. :-/

Verizon wants to bring in FIOS, but only if they only have to wire the well-off areas of Somerville. Since that's against our laws (and for good reason) Somerville won't give them a waiver. Of course with the speed of gentrification you'd think they'd realize even our poorer areas are still candidates for interest in another option.

Have they really been so brazenly open about their intentions here? I know they've kind of been doing that covertly across the country all along, but I had no idea they'd actually made it their stated intention.

No, Verizon has always denied that, although the cable companies accuse them of it every time it comes up. Verizon says the problem is that the process takes too long and has to be started again with each municipality. They'd prefer one set of rules at the state or federal level.

Here's an old NPR story about it. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5632648) The bill died in Congress, although I believe similar bills have passed in some states (not Massachusetts).

There was an NPR where Vz claimed that Somerville didn't want Fios, but Mayor Curtatone was on too and publically asked Vz to come to the table to talk to the city, and that yes, indeed, Somerville was interested.

Personally, I think that Vz just doesn't want to HAVE to negotiate with each municipality because they lose their bargaining power.

what's a QAM?

QAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM_tuner) is the standard, unencrypted way of transmitting digital TV signals. Normally you can get at least the local broadcast stations in HD without a cable box (if your TV supports QAM), in the same way that many cable stations are available without a cable box (if your TV is cable-ready.)

QAM == Quad Amplitude Modulation. It's the way cable companies send digital cable over the wire. "Clear QAM" means that a digital-capable TV (read: any HD TV created in a past couple years) can tune the channels directly. But if it's encrypted, it requires a cable box.

Until recently RCN had all their basic cable (and HD) unencrypted.

That changed.. So now there's practically no digital content available in the clear.

I'm surprised the FCC would allow encrypting broadcast channels.

Me too.
The SD (Standard Def) broadcasts are not encrypted, but the local HDs are definitely being encrypted. I don't know what the FCC says about that.

I think because they own their own cable line the FCC rules don't apply in the same way as stations being broadcasted through the public airwaves.

Well, the FCC DOES require cable companies to carry local broadcast stations.

I just dont know what it says about encrypting them.

ALSO: On Broadway near Powderhouse, we had a dreadful time with RCN failing to install cable two or three times. Finally, we canceled, had to fight not to pay for their failed installation, and switched to Comcast.

My experience with RCN made me switch to Comcast.

I had RCN, they called me and offered a great promo price for internet and an expanded cable package that was offered only to existing customers. The service person was a no show twice, and when they did show up--they forgot to bring the right tools. (That's three days of me not at work so far.) The person comes back again, brings the tools, does their magic, says the channels will have to "load" and it might take an hour. I ended up with no channels and then got a bill for hundreds of dollars. I called to complain about no service, crazy bills, and needing to schedule a service call AGAIN and was met with rude customer service telling me I had to be patient and that, oh yeah, their telemarketer read the wrong script and offered loads of customers a package that didn't exist. Not that it stopped them from installing it. The battle went on for months and eventually I got my original package restored and 6 months of free service (and the crazy bills were waived). When the free period ended I switched.

I am happy with RCN, which is good, because I will never use Comcast again.

when i moved last year, my apartment was supposedly already wired for comcast internet, but we had trouble staying online. then they gave us shit for trying to put the bill in a new name without charging us a 'new customer' outrageous installation fee. eventually we gave up and went thru RCN who said that our main cable line had been mutilated by squirrels and ran a whole new line up to our floor for no charge.
we don't have cable tv but our internet hardly ever drops out :)

We've had RCN for six years now and for the most part I've been quite happy with the service. We use it for cable, internet and (local) phone. The internet and phone service have been outstanding and the technicians who we've dealt with have been very competent (the techs were there not because of problems but because we've switched apartments several times and have needed fresh cables run). The cable part is decent, but as already mentioned the on-demand leaves much to be desired. Every once in a while some random channel will pixilate for an hour or so. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with RCN and still pretty annoyed at Comcast for some of the stunts they pulled when moving into the area.

I had this exchange with RCN customer service last fall:

Me: Hi. A truck just drove by, hit the RCN cable, and ripped it out of the side of my house. Can you send someone to re-install it?
RCN: I'd be happy to help you with that sir. Can you describe the specific problems you're having?
Me: Ummm... My phone doesn't get a dial tone, my TV doesn't get any channels, and my cable modem doesn't have any connectivity.
RCN: OK, sir, can you reboot the cable modem for me?
Me: Yes, but that's not going to help, because the cable was ripped out of the side of my house.
RCN: OK, I'm going to try to ping your cable modem, please wait a moment sir.
Me: I don't think that's going to work. The cable was ripped out of the side of my house.
RCN: OK, can you cycle power on your cable box?
Me: No, because I have a Tivo, but anyway that wouldn't work because the cable was ripped out of the side of my house.

And on and on it went... I was impressed at their Indian call center's ability to stick to the script despite my best efforts to actually diagnose the problem.

Anyway, (this is where I attempt to make this post relevant) I don't think that either RCN or Comcast has much customer service.

The words "Indian call center" just stopped me from my planned switch to RCN. Thanks for the heads-up.

Comcast has an Indian call center as well -- not that means much of anything except that they're on the same playing field with that one.

Yeah, I've got reams of horror stories from dealing with Comcast's people. My naive hope was that a "local" company like RCN might have some competent local techs rather than farming it out to generic call centers in Bombay who say things like "You're on a Mac? You cannot use the internet with a Mac," or "Your internet is down because your networking cable is backwards so the signal is going backwards."

You forgot, "well the Internet is a series of tubes." No wait, that was an American who said that.

Back when I lived in Waltham, I got irritated by the over-charging and evil empire nature of Comcast and switched to RCN. With the exception of the fact that they were cheaper, I regretted doing so. The amount of incompetence at RCN is astounding. When I first put in the order to switch to RCN, the guy on the phone typo'd the house number in my address by one digit. You'd think this would be a fairly easy to thing to fix, no? But apparently (at least back then) their computer system had no mechanism at all for correcting an address typo, and could only change your address as if you moved. Over the course of the next few weeks after I noticed the typo, I spent a total of 6 hours on the phone with them getting it fixed, including: the day that I noticed the mistake, the next day when I came home to find I had no internet service anymore, the day after that when I came home to find I had no tv service, and the following week when I got my bill and discovered that my "new" account at my "new" address did not show the free month of service I was promised, and I was being asked to pay for the one month of premium cable that I couldn't afford and had been planning to cancel before I had to pay.

And then there were the two separate occasions when my cable got knocked out/unplugged from the side of the house, and I had the same experience with over-the-phone troubleshooting that someone else just described, but with the extra fun that on the first occasion I was forced to take time off from work to wait around for the tech to show up and fix it. Fortunately (with much effort) the second time it happened I was able to convince them that did not actually need me to be at home in order to fix the problem.

So yeah, I know people find them "friendlier" and all, but I really doubt I would ever, ever use RCN again.

Fwiw, I've been relatively satisfied with Comcast for Internet and cable. Service is fairly reliable, although the pipes slow down on occassion. The times that I've dealt with phone support have hardly been sparkling but better than expected given Comcast's reputation. Field tech showed up on time three years ago, and was pretty good. And I like having the local office on Holland St as it's a convenient way to exchange boxes, which I've had to do do twice, without needing to arrange an appointment with a field tech.

We have RCN (Internet only), and it's great. Something to keep in mind is Comcast has a nasty habit of messing with your traffic (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071019-evidence-mounts-that-comcast-is-targeting-bittorrent-traffic.html).

RCN was slightly cheaper so I went with them. Internet connection is solid, and my high def channels are great.

We have RCN Internet service and are very happy with it. It's advertised at 20 Mbit/sec download and 2 Mbit/sec upload, and actual performance (to RCN's speedtest server) consistently exceeds that. I've NEVER seen a Comcast connection perform as advertised, even to a speed test server. RCN also blocks fewer ports. (Port 25 is the only one I've noticed.)

They also leave a lot of their DTV channels unencrypted, which would be nice for those of us who have more QAM-capable DTV receivers than scruples.

RCN also sells real (i.e. non-VoIP) phone service, and beats Verizon on price there.

They did implement some boneheaded fake security thing where you have to set up a password and some security questions for use over the phone, but I've so far avoided getting into that by saying "Can we do that at the end of the call?". They invariably forget.

Forgot to mention the other stupid thing about RCN: the computer system they use for maintaining your features, costs, bundles, promos, etc. is incredibly hard for the CSRs to use. Apparently setting up service consists of looking up numeric digit codes on paper and typing them in. Errors inevitably occur, so make sure you check your first bill.

This was true when I got my service a year ago, not sure if they've fixed it any since then.

RCN vs Comcast

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RCN NOW Sucks!

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RCN customer service script

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Comcast may be evil, but RCN is totally incompetant

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