Just two weeks ago, Comcast announced their updated terms of service, limiting bandwidth usage to 250G per customer per month. This week, Comcast cut off their users from Usenet newsgroups, that granddaddy of all Internet forums. (Usenet newsgroups are the foundation of Google’s Google Groups.)
Users attempting to get to the Usenet newsgroups at Comcast are now greeted with this message:
“The Comcast Newsgroups service has been discontinued.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
If you have already signed up for Comcast Newsgroups, please be aware that this service will be discontinued on
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10/25/2008”
To the Comcast FAQ question “Will I continue to be able to access newsgroups once Comcast discontinues Comcast Newsgroups?” Comcast helpfully answers:
“Yes. While we are discontinuing the feature known as Comcast Newsgroups, powered by Giganews, you can continue to access third party newsgroups by subscribing directly with a newsgroups provider.”
There are places where you can access the Usenet groups; some are even free. You can search for free Usenet groups and access here.
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P.S. Comcast’s cable modems and routers are also inferior to Charter’s. Comcast’s don’t work correctly some of the time, especially on a wireless connection, requiring rebooting of the router or modem every day or two; more often if more than one computer is on the Internet simultaneously for more than an hour or two. I never had that problem with Charter’s equipment.
Also, I’ve never heard or read anything at Charter about having a monthly limit on bandwidth.
They may not tell you this, but Comcast seems to block some Web sites that are perfectly legitimate sites. Since I’ve had Comcast service, I haven’t been able to connect to cherokee.org, which is the Cherokee Nation’s Web site. The page will start to load, then an error screen pops up saying that my connection has been reset by [Comcast’s] server. I had no problems connecting to cherokee.org with Charter’s service.
I’ve used Charter’s cable Internet service, and I’ve used Comcast’s cable Internet service. Charter is the better of the two by a vast margin. Not only do they continue to offer newsgroup access, their speeds are much faster. While Comcast claims 12 Mbps speed, Charter’s 10 Mbps connection is far and away faster. In truth, Comcast’s “12 Mbps” is slower than a lot of DSL connections–more like somewhere between dial-up and DSL. Charter’s connection speed is almost instantaneous. Also, Charter’s connections are consistent and reliable, where Comcast’s connections are sometimes so slow the browser times out before the site is loaded. There are times when my Internet monitoring app says the connection speed is 1 Mbps (should still be faster than 56k dial-up), but I cannot connect to any web site anywhere. There are other times when Comcast is working normally, but downloads are still only about twice as fast as a 56k dial-up connection. Large images take a few seconds to load, whereas with Charter’s service, even the largest images load in a fraction of a second.
With Comcast, a 28MB software update download takes between a minute and two minutes to download, if Comcast is functioning at its normal pace. With Charter, a 28MB software update is already downloaded by the time I specify where it is to be saved–approximately 5 seconds. If I don’t have to specify the “Save to…” location, Charter will download the 28MB file in about 4 seconds.
The problem is that I’m living in an area now where Comcast is the only game in town. It will be worth it to me to move back into Charter’s service area. Forget AT&T and their crappy ADSL service. In this area, AT&T is a joke.
I haven’t checked out the satellite services. I don’t know what, if anything, they have to offer in Internet service.
I hope they lose all their customers to verizon and others and fall off the face of the internet.
COMCAST Newsgroups CANCELLED:
SWITCH IMMEDIATELY TO FIOS
Ya and sorry Craptastic but its still a “cable” , no fiber optics have magically appeared in that cable line. Excellent treatment of your customers ( not ).
Y do this to people we already pay for internet so y f with them some more?