Does anyone LIKE Comcast? And can I have cable Internet w/o cable TV? (Houston: HOA, how much)

[barackbff]

I had Comcast for Internet and cable TV in Los Angeles, before Time Warner bought it, and it was fine. Here, though, it seems universally hated. Anyone have a good experience?

My situation is that I teach online classes and need reliable WiFi at my Bellaire home. I don't want cable TV because it's not in my budget right now. (Plus it sucks my life away because I can never unglue myself from the TV.) Is it possible to have cable Internet w/o cable TV?

Would you guys suggest DSL? I had Verizon DSL for a month in LA (before getting cable Internet) and it worked for about an hour, I swear. But if it'll be more reliable than cable, I'll get it.

Anyhow, I've rambled. Comments appreciated!

[Topaz]

We had Comcast in Seattle, Colorado, and Portland. They were fine in all of those places. But here in Sugar Land, Comcast has been HORRIBLE. I finally canceled my phone service with them and next time we move, I will chose a different Internet provider, too.

At a block party, a main topic of conversation was how much we all hated Comcast. I had thought my issues with them were typical but it turned out that my neighbors were having even worse customer service and technical problems.

I will add that once I switched to Windstream for telephone service, I have not had any down time. By contrast, Comcast was down every 3 days, even though they claimed that they could look at their system and see that my address had experienced no outages. (Apparently, they don't consider "no dial tone" to be an outage!)

[westres1]

Horrible for phone and cable tv but internet is ok. You can have internet w/comcast w/o the cable tv.

[blkgiraffe]

I love Comcast. I've never had any problems with it here in Houston.

[barackbff]

Thanks for commenting, everyone. Really helpful.

So...would anyone recommend DSL over cable Internet? AT&T would be a decent deal. Again, I need reliability. It wouldn't be good for my service to go out while I'm teaching.

Oh, and AT&T has several speeds, just to confuse me. Do I really need to spring for the most expensive? I don't watch movies on my computer, if that matters.

[sbhubbell]

I have Comcast internet here and I've had zero problems with them, which is more than I could say when I had them in Philly. I don't have their TV or phone.

[ZeroTX]

I have Comcast and it's jet-fast and has been reliable so-far. I will say that I have not yet had to deal with their customer service, so I cannot tell you one way or another on that.

[Oildog]

I recently moved, but would have dumped Comcast for satellite if my HOA would have allowed it. I was in River Oaks. Have Directv now and am happy.

[ZeroTX]

Originally Posted by Oildog

I recently moved, but would have dumped Comcast for satellite if my HOA would have allowed it. I was in River Oaks. Have Directv now and am happy.

HOA's can't prevent satellite dishes. It's a federal law. If someone told you that, they were throwing you a line. Even if it's in the by-laws, FCC regulations override them.

[travelguy_73]

I have had Comcast for internet for about a year now. Only a couple of outages, and they were resolved promptly. Had AT&T DSL before that. Not as fast, but just as reliable.