Comcast Digital Voice infrastructure?

[Jerry Feldman]

On Sat, 8 Sep 2007 12:13:27 -0400 (EDT)
Scott Ehrlich <scott at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> My parents currently have RCN for voice, cable, and Internet, and are now 
> re-evaluating who has what and associated costs.  They were at a Comcast 
> service center and called me from their cell phone to have the Comcast 
> customer service person explain to me how their digital service works.  I 
> pushed, verifying their offering was not VOIP, and they confirmed.  I then 
> asked how the infrastructure was designed once the signal left the 
> customer.  The best I got was it goes over coax, Internet services is not 
> needed, the service uses Comcast' own private network, and the customer is 
> given an 8 hour battery in case power goes out.
> 
> What more can the list offer for how Comcast' service works?  How about 
> RCN's?   What do people see if price differences?  How about in comparison 
> to FIOS?
> 
> For Comcast Digital Voice, can I go out and get a larger-capacity UPS and 
> slap it on Comcast' connection and extend the life beyond 8 hours?

I've had Digital Voice for a while and have not had a problem. It is
integrated into the cable modem. Comcast supplies it with 1 battery,
but the unit takes 2 batteries. Certainly if the cable goes out you
lose TV, Internet and phone, but that is the same with FIOS and DSL
(except DSL does not include TV). 

Additionally, Comcast brings fibre down to the neighborhood. I'm not
sure what the ratio is between copper and fibre. 

One of the advantages of Digital Voice over VOIP is that it never goes
out over the public Internet. 

In my experience I have not had an outage in a few years, but I know
other people who use Comcast in other towns have had problems. I know a
few people in Waltham who never got good service from Comcast and its
predecessors.  I also routinely measure over 6Mbps with 8 on the test I
just ran. 

The bottom line is that go with the best price/performance and
reputation in your area. I've had several bad experiences with Verizon
and very good service from Comcast, but others have had the opposite. I
believe that Dan Bricklin posted his experiences, and he had bad
experiences with Comcast and switched to FIOS. Again, check with
neighbors. 

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9